It is your birthright to have a life of meaning and purpose. Whether or not the people in your life have consistently celebrated your incarnation, you deserve to celebrate your existence.

Healing from our past is an essential aspect of expanding our sense of self and awakening our capacity to love. This shift often manifests as a change in the questions we've been asking ourselves. Instead of What do I need? we ask, How can I serve? Instead of What am I getting out of this? we start to ask, What can I bring to this situation to promote the highest possible outcome for everyone involved?

How do we allow God into our minds, bodies, relationships, and life? We stop squeezing the divine out through our preconceived notions of what is sacred and what is profane. When we assume the mind-set that everything is ultimately divine, though sometimes more disguised than others, then we can see that all of our thoughts, impulses, and desires arise from and can bring us back to awareness of the sacred.

Unless you loosen the hold that your past has on you, your future will unfold in much the same way . . . it is time to begin writing a new script that accurately reflects the beautiful, powerful, and worthy being you are.

I don't consider myself to be a crusader of any sort. I was bystander to a certain number of newspaper crusades. They end badly, in terms of being either fraudulent or by inspiring legislations that makes things worse. So, I regard myself as someone coming to the campfire with the truest possible narrative he can acquire.

Barack Obama's understanding of what the drug war had cost the country was meaningful. And very quietly in his second term, he and Eric Holder did make some adjustments in terms of the use of the Department of Justice, on the federal level. You saw ratcheting back of drug prohibition, and mass incarceration. You also saw, on the part of some certain states, a realization that they followed the war on drugs to a useless place, that they were only doing damage to communities, and bankrupting budgets with prison construction.

Meditation is like a bath for the mind; it clears and refreshes our windows of perception, allowing more light, love, and happiness to flow into lives.