It is so interesting how one simple question can be so hard to answer.

I first heard that question from my friend Marc about 2 years ago. We were leaving a ballroom dancing class and he and I stood there for half an hour chatting about life. He was very excited that night. He was sharing with me the things he has been learning from Zen meditation, his new-found hobby. He just couldn’t stop telling me about it.

You see, Marc was the kind of guy who was full of energy. He was the kind of guy who was constantly in motion. He loved riding his motorcycle fast down the curvy mountain roads around the area we lived. He loved falling down out of the sky, cutting through the air as he jumped out of an airplane many thousands of feet above ground. He loved sharing memories with friends over a nice home-cooked meal. Among many other things, he also really loved women. He was the kind of guy who loved life. He was a man full of passions… and Zen meditation provided him the calmness and quietness he needed to slow down his fast-paced lifestyle. (more…)

I guess I have been lucky.  For the past 9 months during which I have gotten slowly more immersed into the Seduction Community, I have mostly hung out with “naturals” (guys with generally good social skills and assumed to be naturally good with women ), guys who treat pickup as an extension of their social skillset and “natural game” students.  However lately (and probably because of my blog), I have met more and more guys who come from an indirect method background, guys who practice NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and even guys who are truly intent on learning pickup for the sole purpose of picking up women and maximizing their chances in having sex with them as quickly as possible.  This exposure has given me a greater appreciation for the diversity found in the Seduction Community but is also alluding me to a much darker side.

Call me naive, but when I was surrounding myself with guys who treat pickup as a hobby, I only saw the positive side of the Community.  It was the side that was focused on self-improvement and becoming a better person in order to better the world.  It was about creating a lifestyle where women would be drawn to you naturally because of the value you bring to their life.  It was about communicating who you are genuinely and confidently.  After meeting more PUAs through the SoCal Lair, I am painting a new side to this picture.  This side have guys wanting to improve themselves as well but unlike the first group, they are focused on becoming better to gain something for themselves.  They want to reach a specific goal (usually getting the girl) and will go to any length to get there.  Sometimes, their goal involves creating a name for themselves in order to feel worthy in life.

I am not implying that getting the girl is a negative endeavor, but the first group realizes that getting the girl is a by-product of being good to yourself and adding value to the world.  Getting the girl is part of a bigger process in which sustaining a fulfilling relationship with a woman is the goal.  The second group seems to be more focused on the short term and looks directly for tactics and techniques to get the girl.  I am not going to discuss what I imagine as the dark side of PUA right now (Neil Strauss talked about it in his book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists and Tynan “Herbal” also mentioned it towards the end on his interview with Pickup Podcast), but I do recognize two very different kind of men:

1. Guys who are process-oriented
2. Guys who are result-oriented

Most of my friends fall under the first category.  They typically foster a lifestyle in which they show passion and devotion for something outside of pick-up.  These guys are always fun to be with.  What I find exciting about them is that they care for you as a person.  When you meet them, they have a genuine interest in getting to know you.  They get very curious about your life experiences.  If they want to hang out with you, it’s because they find you cool and you can both chill with each other regardless of whether you talk to new women or not.  For them, socializing is about having fun first, and then extending the fun vibe to the people around them.  With this focus, it becomes very easy to approach women and for women to approach them.  When talking about pickup, the topic of women is spoken about in a very casual manner and the philosophy behind seduction tends to be treated with more importance than the techniques themselves.  Pickup itself is not a big deal and everything flows easily.

When I meet PUAs who are more result-oriented, I always feel a little bit awkward with them.  Maybe it’s their vibe but they don’t show as much interest in me as a person.  When they talk to me, I feel like they are trying to use me.  They want to see if they can take advantage of any value I may have to offer.  They want to find out if they can learn something from me and if not, they want to see if they can raise their status/social proof by having me around.  The interaction has a totally self-serving underlying intent.  When going out, they solely find joy in approaching women and  I could never see myself being able to just chill with them for a long period of time because most conversations revolve around pickup techniques.  Pickup is a big deal to them!  If I show any anxiety in wanting to talk to a woman, they would use tough love to motivate me into action way more than use words of encouragement.

Maybe I’m biased but being too result-oriented feels unhealthy.  A common saying is popping in my mind right now:  “Life/Happiness is a journey, not a destination.”  I shared these thoughts with my friend “the Scribe” on a late night session of instant messaging.  Unexpectedly, he confessed to me that for a while, he shied away from the Seduction Community because he had only met guys who didn’t know how to appreciate him on a personal level.  Everything these guys did with him was for pickup related reasons.  It’s like he was “being gamed” by them.

I understand that there’s a time to be process-oriented and a time to be result-oriented.  You actually need both and I know why it’s so easy to become result-oriented.  Guys just want to see positive results to prove to themselves that they’re actually internalizing what they’re learning.  However I believe it’s important to realize that the path to PUA mastery still require us to master the basics which lies in our ability to connect and leave a positive impression on just about anyone.  Be personable!  The better we project our personality outward, the better responses we are going to get.  And what’s a better way to do it than show how we are genuinely interested in the person we are interacting with?  Once the other person feels that we like them for who they are, it’s a lot easier to seduce or convince them to do something for us.  That’s the law of liking/friendship with a hint of the law of reciprocity from Robert Cialdini’s “Influence:  The Psychology of Persuasion.”

No matter what the mainstream press may say, I still believe in the goodness of the Pickup Community.  I have seen many guys’ social and romantic lives change for the better as they embark on this journey into PUA-dom, but there are a few people… I just can’t hang out with.

The more I study the Seduction Community, the more I realize how important it is for someone wanting to learn a method to meet an instructor or an accomplished practicioner of that method.  You can THINK you understand a method, but you won’t get it until you meet the person behind it live. 

This is why I was so excited to have the opportunity to finally meet Wayne “Juggler” Elise at the SoCal Lair meeting of 04/26/2007.  I have been a fan of Juggler for a long time.  My buddy from Tampa was one of his earliest student and was raving about him to me for months.  His enthusiasm sparked my curiosity which led me to read all his e-books, listened to all his Charisma Arts podcasts, and watched all the videos he has released (including the bootcamp DVD I borrowed from another friend of mine).  Intellectually, I knew everything there was to know about the Juggler Method but as I later found out, there was something else I needed to figure out: the Juggler VIBE!

On that evening, I headed with the “White Woman” to  K1 Speed in Irvine, CA where the meeting was being held.  If you were wondering:  yes, she drove.  She even brought me leftover Thai food from her work.  I know, I love her too.  She’s awesome like that.  You can’t ask more from a friend like her

As you can imagine, I was happy.  I was in good company and was about to meet another “pickup guru.”  Some of my posse would be there too (a couple VAC alumnis I had invited) but the cool part was that we had another woman with us.  She was a friend of “the White Woman” and sported colorful purple hair.  Oh yeah… she was white too but I guess I’ll just nickname her the “Purple Woman” for storytelling purposes.  It was the first time I met her but I liked her.  From the few conversations we exchanged in the car, I could tell she was confident and very intelligent… just the kind of woman I like to surround myself with.  As expected, they ended being the only 2 women in the room.  Maybe I should have put a wager because  I would have made some easy money there LOL

We didn’t have to wait long for Juggler to show up.  From his towering (estimated) 6′2 height, he looked very relaxed in front of the audience.  Unlike the majority of PUAs I have seen, his clothing was not flashy.  He wore simple jeans with a blue sweater.  If you were to believe the fashion advice of the Seduction Community, he would barely pass the “fashionably trendy” test, and would definitely fail the peacocking test.  His demeanor was casual without being overly alpha.  His scruffy looking face gave you the impression that he just woke up and didn’t have time to shave.  The “White Woman” turned to me and whispered in a disappointed tone: “Is that him?”  From appearance alone, I guess she was expecting a little bit more.

After the typical speaker introduction, Juggler leaned against the table, looked at us and said nothing, a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y nothing.  For a while, it seemed that he didn’t know how to begin his speech.  Maybe he was giving the audience time to settle down.  Maybe he was searching for words.  He finally pointed to someone and broke the silence with “So what do you want to talk about?” The guy quickly replied:  “The Juggler basics.”  Juggler smiled and said:  “The basics?  I will show you a juggler trick later.  Before I leave, I WILL show you a juggler trick.”  The audience laughed as Wayne Elise crafted his next response:  ”The Juggler METHOD basics… I don’t even know what those are.  What I have been thinking about lately is knowning how little I know.”

At that moment, I knew.  I knew my drive to Irvine was time well spent.  Within 2 minutes of his presentation, Juggler has just showed 2-3 applications of his method.  He vacuumed the audience, used playful misinterpretations, related to guys in the audience by disqualifying himself.

Juggler continued talking mostly about the importance of vibe and logistics.  Instead of summarizing his speech, I strongly recommend you download it instead (duration – 1 hr 32 min) and listen for yourself.  Some things are better experienced first hand and he definitely deserve all the honor and credit he can get:
- *.wav format (58.48 MB)
- *.mp3 format (84.28 MB)

Right click and hit “save as…” to download the file.

For people who are too lazy to actually listen, here are some sound bites that hopefully will entice you to listen to the speech in its entirity:

• Interaction is really about just showing up:  just being there, being there at the right place, the right time.  It’s logistics.
   
• (About compliments) Unfortunately, people don’t believe in truth. There’re a long ways from being truthful to making it believable.  In fact if you can make it believable, that’s so much better.  You can say to a girl “you know what?  I think you are hot” and she will like that and that will work… if she believes you.  She has to believe you [...]  It’s not even about her.  If you tell a girl that you are hot, it doesn’t matter if she believes if she’s hot or not.  She has to believe that you believe [...]  Our job is to convince them that we believe it.
   
• (Escalation is about) Owning it.  
   
• I want you to be Forces of Nature. I want you to know what you want, I want to know your opinions, I want to know the essence of “John” and I want to bring that out of you and kick somebody’s fucking ass [...] On your own authority.
   
• There’s only one reason things don’t work:  it’s because either your vibe is wrong… or your logistics are wrong.
   
• Two things make vibe: (1) how you handle yourself in the interaction and (2) if you really care about people.
   
• When a girl says:  “I don’t sleep with guys the first night.”  It’s not necessarily bad, that’s a limitation.  That means that she’s willing to commit within that limitation A LOT.  Guys hear that and they think:  “Oh, she doesn’t like me at all”.  No, that means she wants to go home, make out and get naked with you but no actual penetration.
   
• Two techniques for handling AMOG:  (1) making negative presumptions about the person and (2) making the audience decide.
   
• We hear it all the time in the Community:  “you are gonna be better in relationships because you have options.  Because you can pickup somebody else, that means when you commit to somebody, that means more.”  You know what?  They are wrong!  I don’t believe that’s the way to feel secure.   I believe the way to feel secure is to be okay with your aloneness.  Once you are okay with your aloneness, you realize you are never alone.
   
• The tendency for most people is to move that interaction off of themselves because most people are not comfortable with that.  One thing I teach is keeping that (conversation) centered, keeping that focused on the other person but at the same time focused on me.  So that’s the only thing I talk about:  myself and the other person.  The topics are just kind of ways to put our personality through that.

By the end of the presentation, I fell in love with the Juggler Method (or maybe just Juggler himself) all over again.  It was interesting for me to see the parallel between his take on “vibe & logistics” and theApproach’s “Sex = VAC + Logistics” formula.  I guess in the end, each guru explains the same thing in different manners.

What I liked about Juggler is how he embodied true warmth and genuine compassion in the way he interacted with people.  He was never condescending nor did he try to come across as the all-knowing guru when he answered the audience’s questions.  He was funny without being a clown, he was confident without being arrogant and he had this very zen-like internal emotional state.  If I had to make a comparison, I would describe his vibe to be closest to a Buddhist monk… but conversely more engaging than a Buddhist monk.  I guess he’d be one of the few gurus in the Community that I would feel comfortable introducing to my sister, my mother or grandparents.

In terms of his skill as a teacher, he had this innate ability to explain social interactions in simple terms without using Community technical jargon.  Just by watching him, I understood how and why his philosophy were so powerful and so well-regarded.  His open vibe is what I think was  missing in my application of the method.  As friendly and as social that I was, I realized that I was still fairly selective of the people I chose to interact with whereas he tried to make EVERYONE feel appreciated. 

However, as much as I enjoyed meeting Juggler in person, I was not prepared for the best comment of the night.  The “White Woman” later admitted to finding Juggler progressively more and more attractive as he kept talking.  Sigh… so much for a negative first impression!

Wayne “Juggler” Elise, I send you my regards