The great piano virtuoso Paderewski was once playing before an audience of the rich and the royal. After a brilliant performance, an elegant lady waxed ecstatic over the great artist. She said, "Ah Maestro, you are a genius!" Paderewski tartly replied, "Ah yes, madam, but before I was a genius I was a clod!" What he was saying was that his present acclaim was not handed to him on a silver platter. He, too, was once a little boy laboriously practicing his scales. And even at his peak, behind every brilliant performance there were countless hours of practice and preparation.

We have been taught to keep the commandments, and we have kept them all too well. We have enshrined them like religious relics in sealed containers on the altar. Thus, it could be said that one lives by the commandments in much the same way as many persons live by a neighbor, never learning his name, let alone having any understanding communication with him.

A true desire is not to have but to be. We are whole creatures in potential, and the true purpose of desire is to unfold that wholeness, to become what we can be.

The innermost essence of my being...is fearless; it is immune to criticism; it does not fear any challenge.

Fundamentalists believe Jesus was God becoming man. I believe that Jesus was man becoming God.

Faith simply tunes into and turns on the divine flow that has always been present.

More important than learning how to recall things is finding ways to forget things that are cluttering the mind.