A) Spirituality is full of traps no matter how you slice it.
B) This problem is solved through studying diverse sources and having maps like the Zen ox-herding pictures and Spiral Dynamics.
The greater danger with the way you are presenting enlightenment -- as total mastery -- is that people will always fall short of the fantasy, including yourself. Which then produces guilt and suffering. What you are really talking about is totally emotional mastery, and that is VERY different than enlightenment. It is significantly harder and a lot of people can become very frustrated chasing that.
This sort of all-or-nothing approach is counter-productive and fills newbies with fantastical ideas of becoming perfect human beings after awakening. The fact is, you will awaken long before you become a perfect human being. Because these are independent variables.
By all means pursue mastery. But make a distinction between it and awakening.
If your definition of enlightenment excludes Ramana Maharshi, Shinzen Young, Osho, etc. you might want to rethink your definition.

@Antonius Better to have too much knowledge than too little.
You just have a lot to implement.

The solution to emotions is to observe them mindfully. But of course this takes years of practice.
There are also emotions of the higher self which pull you up to spiritual pursuits. But they are often drowned out by negative emotions like fear, anger, envy, greed, lust, etc.

At good way to view emotions:
Emotions are self-manipulations to maintain the self's survival agenda.

@Speedscarlet Of course.
But "feeling better" is not a good measurement. Rather, how conscious are you of how your emotions manipulate you.

Part of the problem with Green is getting lost in relativity: "everything's relative so anything goes. Let's let criminals run loose and do whatever they want."
No!
All POVs have some partial truth, BUT not all POV are equally functional. Some POVs are really pathological, dangerous, and limiting to upward mobility on the Spiral.
Green is a more evolved and healthier POV than Orange, but Green still has its limits and problems.
Your Orange friend is slightly more deluded than you. And it can be useful to point out his delusion to him.

To awaken on your deathbed is like to open your eyes as the credits start to roll at the theater.
I cannot imagine a greater tragedy.

The Dark Night does not usually last for years. That is rare. Many people don't even get a Dark Night.
When the Dark Night lasts a long time that is for people who have no theoretical foundation, no good guidance.
By watching my videos and reading the books you should be able to avoid all that.
P.S. Giving up your loved ones will be necessary regardless. All loved ones come and go. They do not last forever. Enlightenment requires you to surrender everything, but after that you come back and can appreciate it that much more.
Detachment -- counter-intuitively -- heightens your capacity to love.

It's a quality problem to have.
Eventually you'll probably get so over-stuffed with self-help theory that you will need to detox from it.
Eventually, to deeply awaken, you'll have to let go of the desire for hoarding theory. But right now you might still be at the point where more theory is helpful to you. You'll have to play it by ear.

First of all, humans are social creatures and we need a sense of belonging for a basic level of mental health. You're not crazy. The emotional body is trying to tell you something. Isolation is very unhealthy and the idea that a person shouldn't need others is just plain wrong.
 
Second, you said something about life purpose. From where I sit, it's obvious that your immediate purpose is to get this handled. We all need friends and social skills are super important. Do you not see this work as part of your life's purpose?
 
Lastly, consider getting help from a mental health professional. I did years of therapy and I highly recommend it, especially to people who suffer from isolation. Isolation is a modern-day epidemic and this is well known in the mental health industry.

Of course you should try to maintain as high a consciousness state as much as you can.
This is transformation, this is growth. You will change and people around you will start to notice it and they will usually not like it because they expect you to be the old self. Become your new self anyways. Change requires the old dying to the new.
A metamorphosis must happen. You are the caterpillar turning into the butterfly. Other caterpillars will not understand your new butterfly form until they do it themselves.

@kingroboto I disagree with the notion that we don't need relationships. We need relationships in the same way we need food. To be completely obsessed with food is unhealthy. To never eat is also unhealthy. You should eat but you should also be happy when you are not eating. There is a huge difference between isolation and solitude. Relationships play a key role on the spiritual path. Growth, joy, love, challenge, exchanges of ideas, opportunity to name a few.

@Simke I'm gonna provide a word of caution, as I've been doing this work for over 4 years now. 
You might be better of starting with a book, deriving actionable steps (after you have finished reading it), starting to take action on them and then moving on to another book. The biggest trap I've fallen into is reading lots of books, feeling all smart and fancy, but still having a shitty life because I wasn't taking enough action.
The ratio should be 10% reading, 90% implementing.
You can go the other way though (reading 40 books at once, like I do now), but be prepared for a massive backlash that comes with the radical increase in openmindedness and knowledge.
After your first book, you will feel good. After your 50th, you will feel like you know nothing anymore. LIke all you've ever grown up with was a lie and you might discover that you need to redraw your life from scratch at that point. It leaves you totally paralyzed. That's the critical point where you should not give up.
Only at the 100th book onward will you start to gain some clarity again and get a feel for the road.
So the path looks like this.
1st book - You feel good cuz you're learning something new and feel like you're making progress.
50th book - "All my life was a lie. Wtf. I don't know anything anymore. I know nothing. Nobody knows anything. What is next?"
100th book - Ooooh, ok. I'm starting to see patterns. I'm starting to get in touch with my own intuition and I can see concepts repeating and interconnecting. It's starting to feel like a dance, and I have to keep up the rhythm. Everything starts to be more clear and my confidence is increasing. I'm over the hurdle.

@Pilgrim If it was easy you wouldn't wake up. You would become lost in The Land of the Lotus-Eaters.
By trying to make life easy, it actually becomes hard.

That's rule #0 in God's handbook: Life is not supposed to be easy.
You can tattoo that one on your chest. It will come in handy for decades to come

@Wisebaxter Psychedelics are profoundly therapeutic. They will help you sort all that shit out.
It just isn't always a cakewalk. Sorting some of that shit out can be emotionally taxing. But that's all good. That's exactly what produces true growth. Even the bad trips are good in retrospect.
You don't have to worry too much about bad trips. But you do need to follow proper protocol, ensuring your set, setting, and dosages are proper.

Yes, music can have a powerful uplifting effect. Which is precisely why music is so popular.
Most people don't understand that the reason they like music is because it gives them a tiny taste of that spiritual/metaphysical connection to reality which they don't even know is missing.
Music is all that stage Orange people know of spirituality. Which is quite sad. But better than nothing.
Music is watered-down spirituality for the vulgar and lazy masses.
But you ain't gonna get enlightened by it alone. Think of it as a little boost to your spiritual journey.

This is a very tough line to draw. It cannot be drawn conceptually. You must find it through lots of trial and error and failure.
You know when you are breaking integrity, violating your own high values.
But what makes this so tricky is that blaming and berating yourself only compounds the original problem.
Still, as a newbie, you almost can't help but do it.
This is all part of the problem of self-control. I have an old video called The Problem Of Self-Control which is pretty profound.
You must be both hard-working and disciplined, but also gentle and loving with yourself. Not any easy balance to strike.
I also have a video called: The Paradox Of Development Self-Trust, and one called Freedom vs Discipline. They all touch on this topic to some extent.

Was on the phone talking to my Mum and I found myself whining to her about some issues I currently have. I got off the phone and my mood had become negative. 
I walked around trying to feel it consciously but trying to observe the negative mood. 
I then asked myself out loud. "Are you feeling sorry for yourself? Yes." I replied.
"Are you playing victim? Yes "
"What are you playing victim to? Your own problems you've created."
The emotion literally just melted away.

Don't try to become one. Just expose yourself to stage Green people, books, videos, ideas, events.
You don't want to adopt a New Age identity. You just want to learn from it.

Because all that anyone ever really wants, is love. The love of God which they are too scared to give themselves. So they seek shallow substitutes from external sources.
Love is the greatest high in the world. It makes the ego feel complete.
All you ever want in life is to feel complete. But this impossible for the ego to feel constantly because the ego is partial and incomplete by definition. So it steals love in little bits because it is not strong enough to love the entire world.
What the ego misunderstands is that what it really wants is not to receive love, but to give love.

Determine what you want and then do it.

@Annoynymous To understand that requires you study chaos theory.
A nonlinear system is deterministic but has so many variables that it is impossible for any human or machine to model or predict in detail. Such systems behave chaotically but are still fully deterministic.
The weather is one example of a nonlinear system.
A double pendulum is probably the simplest example.
Almost all interesting and significant systems are nonlinear.

@Enizeo Self-inquiry is a tried and true process, but it is possible to get stuck with any technique.
Self-inquiry requires strong focus and a fairly silent mind to work. Many people are not there yet.
You might want to experiment with another method if self-inquiry feels stale.
Kriya yoga is the most effective method I have found aside from psychedelics. It is more powerful than self-inquiry in my experience.
Mindfulness with labeling as described in my Mindfulness Meditation video is also very effective and easy for newbies to start.

@Nadosa Try sitting and just staring at your hand for a long time. Do not think, just stare and enjoy it.
Repeat every day.
That is the straightest path to enlightenment.
As you stare wonder what existence is. But do not let the mind talk too much about it. Just wonder and stare. No philosophy, no stories, no theories, no science. Just stare at the existence of your hand!