One of the intuitions I had at an early age, Intuition, echoed what Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, "vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Human life is short, it will be over before we know it, and the real work is the preparation for death. This realization informed a lot of the decisions I made for learning, career, and so on. Though things have worked out OK, at the same time I've pondered off and on if I followed the right course. For example, I could have pursued engineering, or a different field, instead.
Lately I've been teaching, which gives a good amount of free time, which is very compatible with the spiritual life. If I were in Europe this would not be as big a deal, as working class jobs there provide more time off. But, here in the States it was a good course for work/life balance. However, it is also a path that brings its own stresses and insecurities, does not pay very well, and does not provide a lot of status in society.
At one point I considered becoming a monk, but I also have very little patience for institutional religion and would likely rankle under all the unnecessary rules. I also felt that as a modern person, in many ways it was not appropriate to follow a monastic path. Certainly I may have done so in a previous era; but for a life in the 2000s no. I ended up studying philosophy (again something I could have done without the university degree :p), exploring many different intellectual and religious traditions in the process, without the baggage of dogma.
One thing I have internalized, is that my long term goal is to maximize my freedom, so I can dedicate more to spiritual pursuits. This resulted in my changing my view of personal finance in my mid-20s. I did not put any thought into money before 25 ("do not worry about what you wear, or what you will eat..."), but I started to become a lot more practical about it. I worked for a short time at a bank and that got me more interested in investing. I was always very frugal ("what is the need for physical comforts?" - very ascetical type of attitude) and incidentally from this was saving a lot. At the bank I got to thinking "why not find a way to make these savings grow?" which got me interested in buy-and-hold investing, using savings to buy stocks with dividends, and letting them compound.
On the web there is the idea of "FIRE," financial independence and retire early, which despite my modest income I have been building towards as a long term goal. So, save as large a percentage of the income as possible, invest it in large cap dividend or growth stocks, and let the portfolio compound over time. Then, the dream is to be able to retire early and be able to live off those savings. The idea here would be (if successful) retire or start working part time by 40, then be free to dedicate whatever time was desired to spiritual pursuits.
This has been an interesting development, because it is actually a contradictory view of money. In other words, I have both a disparaging ascetical view of it, and also a practical embrace of it. There is a famous sociologist Max Weber who said this is called the "Protestant work ethic," as a lot of the people who founded the New England colonies here in the States had this similar idea, and Weber said that incidentally it led those settlers (the Pilgrims) to prosper. So, make of that what you will.
Here I have to confess a few things about my own experience of the contemplative life. As a teenager I read the great mystics of history, the accounts of the ecstasies, samadhi, and so on, and I always imagined my practice of meditation would bring great fruits. However, for myself this has not been the case. Though I experience energy and vibrations, they have never turned into some spectacular state. I have never experienced a "nondual" state in which I lose a sense of "I." And I have never had an experience in which I have consciously left the body. While this is irregular for someone on this forum, I have been reading more on OOB forums, and it seems like this is typical there. Many people meditate or attempt OOBEs for years, and experience no spectacular phenomena, and unfortunately this has been the case for me. This was very distressing to me for some time, as I have always felt my "main focus" has been spiritual matters, but I have gradually accepted it with idea of "amor fati" (love your fate) and that it is "God's will" and one should "submit."
So in my own case the contemplative life has not been particularly impressive. And even when I dedicate many hours in the evening to the practice, I am underwhelmed by what results. So in this regard I am starting to become a lot more skeptical of my young idealism about what the contemplative life is, that for the most part it is very mundane and unfantastic, that it is more a hard life of simplicity and sacrifice. While I am filled now with esoteric wisdom that the layperson does not ever encounter, have certain knowledge of phenomena the average person cannot understand, and have conquered sorrow, loneliness, anger, and so forth, I cannot say it has reformed me into some type of spectacular "superhuman." It also provokes the question of, "is more free time than I have now really required?" Or, if I should lead a balanced life and pursue a family, finance, pleasure, and other ends (in Hinduism, they call this the four Purusarthas).
Recently I was watching an interview with William Buhlman (the successor to Bob Monroe, the coiner of the term "OOBE"), who has certainly impressed me with his experience and wisdom. And, he offered a very interesting point. That we are here in the human realm because living out this existence is precisely the point of it. That by living out your life you are fulfilling your purpose - learning and growing, and developing wisdom. So, I would not be averse to the experience of the here and now, but just like you embrace the spiritual life, you embrace the human experience as well. :)
