While holding positive thoughts and emotions is advantageous, positive thinking itself is not "Hallmark Card thinking." It's really an ongoing awareness that all truly is well with the world, with life, and with oneself. It's also a commitment not to mindlessly pass on fears but to bring positive energy, images, ideas, and feelings into the lives of others, to help them attune to the wellness at the heart of the world.

Love really is the answer to human problems: love of oneself, love of others, love of where one is, love of what one is doing, love of nature, love of life, love of the world, love of spirit in all its wonder and splendor. Love sets our energy free. It opens us and puts us in a flow with spirit and life on many levels. Love is the true secret behind manifestation.

But one thing the New Age folks and those who pursue alternative spiritual visions need to be aware of is how easily we can become and at times in my experience are like the religious right.

The only successful manifestation is one which brings about a change or growth in consciousness; that is, it has manifested God, or revealed him more fully as well as having manifested a form.

We live in two worlds - order and chaos. In the world of order, we plan, reflect, and think about what to do next. In the world of chaos, things happen, we get things done, yet unpredictability persists. In one world, we like to think we are in control. In the other, we mingle together with increasing complexity, conflict, and uncertainty.

It is no good hearing an inner voice or getting an inner prompting if you do not immediately act on that inner prompting.

Not everyone knows how to be alone with others, how to share solitude. We have to help each other to understand how to be in our solitude, so that we can relate to each other without grabbing on to each other. We can be interdependent but not dependent. Loneliness is rejected despondency. Solitude is shared interdependence.