-
To the extent we are perceiving anyone's guilt -choosing to focus on the errors of their personality rather than the eternal innocence of their spirit - we're closing our hearts, deflecting a miracle and causing our own inevitable suffering.
-
I think optimism is a moral imperative.
-
Everyone, archetypally, is a parent to future generations.
-
Thought that is no longer limited, brings experience that is no longer limited.
-
I feel that the term "new age" is used by basically hostile media to diminish and marginalize a conversation that is very significant. It's held in place by journalists who are constantly looking for hooks and sound bites to keep them from having to make the effort of a deeper understanding and a more profound level of communication with the public.
-
The greatest force of personal liberation is the decision to widen our circle of compassion, moving from focus on self to focus on service.
-
I believe that the truth with a capital T is at the center of all the great religious teachings.
-
Some of the most patriarchal thinkers I know are women. Some of the most feminist thinkers are men.
-
Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.
-
I'm haunted sometimes by the thought, what if we lived from that place all the time? What if we went there without tragedy striking first? The very thought of who we would be together, and the kinds of collectives decisions we would make. The kind of world we'd create makes me want to cry sometimes.
-
In the century now dawning, spirituality, visionary consciousness, and the ability to build and mend human relationships will be more important for the fate and safety of this nation than our capacity to forcefully subdue an enemy. Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don't want.
-
The way to have the life we want is to receive more deeply the life we have. Sometimes we keep our own life at arm's length, thinking we'll wait until circumstances improve before giving it all we've got. But life is just a reflection of consciousness, so it's never going to give any more to us than we give to it. Don't wait for a perfect life; breathe in the life that's already perfect.
-
The sense of endings as well as beginnings in the air is now so obvious in so many dimensions of our experience that a critical mass has been reached.
-
I would never, ever in my life say, 'I want to go to Washington to heal the soul of Washington.'
-
God's truth is literal truth. The illumined mind has more operative cells. In reclaiming the mystical, we take back our whole selves. Formerly barren mental lands spring to new life through the planting of spiritual seeds.
-
Sometimes sadness is appropriate. Not something to run from, not something to numb...just something to feel.
-
The universe is wired with the electricity of God, & each of us is a lamp. It doesn't matter the size or shape of the lamp; it only matters that the lamp is plugged in. With every prayer, every thought of forgiveness, every meditation, every act of love, we plug in. The more of us who plug in, to more the darkness of the world will be cast from our midst. Today, let's all increase love's wattage!
-
By softening our attitudes, practicing mercy and compassion, we transform our lives by transforming other people's experience of us. Send love before you when you enter a room, and people will subconsciously feel it; they'll be prone to show greater kindness in return. That's how love makes things work better in our lives; it realigns the reactions of people and things around us.
-
I have lived enough to know great things will unfold for me externally only if I allow them to unfold for me internally.
-
My biggest sorrow, when looking back on my youth, is how much of it I somehow missed. Now, looking at my life today, I don't want to make the same mistake. I don't want to miss this. As Bonnie Raitt sang like she was singing it for all of us, "Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste."
-
The people who have achieved more than you, in any area, are only a half step ahead of you in time. Bless them and praise their gifts, and bless and praise your own. The world would be less rich without their contributions, and it would be less rich without yours. There's more than room for everyone; in fact, there's a need for everyone.
-
If you did something in 1975 that you deeply regret and that you now can recognize as having been profoundly irresponsible, for example, the only way to be lifted out of deep regret and the pain over it is through atonement - through the kind of remorse that leads to genuine atonement, the making of amends, and forgiveness of self and others.
-
Once we reach a certain age, we tend to recalibrate our expectations. We expect less from the world once we've seen it up close.
-
Society never progresses because the majority one day wakes up and says, "Let's do things differently." The majority didn't wake up and say, "Oh, let's just free the slaves." Society always progressed because a relatively small group of people usually considered outrageous radicals by the status quo of their time had a better idea and articulated another way. That's simply how evolution works; it's the mutation. The member of the species who does things differently - that points the way to the future because they're better adapted for survival.