If you want to improve self awareness, start by improving your awareness of the world. As above, so below, as within, so without. Pay attention to all those sensations you gloss over in a normal day. KingYoshi's tutorial on ADA is useful for this matter.

The benefits of meditation are plenty. You'll get better at all things that involve concentration: visualization, WILDing and thinking. If you decide to practice any form of occultism, then meditation is the steppingstone to all of it. Furthermore, even if you choose not to believe any of that, you'll notice that you're developing 'something' new. Perhaps it's a new perspective of life, or you'll feel like you suddenly understand people or concepts better, or you can predict the behaviour of the world much better than you could before. Meditation is the first step you have to take if you want truly understand the world. Then comes med school and 4 PhDs.
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