In high school I was drawn to the study of literature, poetry Shakespeare, contemporary fiction, drama, you name it - I read it.

The way you succeed at all this stuff is by stopping trying to succeed and just working very hard without thinking about it, just trusting, completely. It's that faith that creates the bridge on which you walk across to eternity.

It is best to think of karma, not so much in terms of physical action, but as waveforms of vibratory energy.

Don Juan, in the teacings of Carlos Castaneda, makes the same point. You have to fool people into seeking knowlege. People will not do it of their own volition.

Meditation is the use of symbols, not abstractions. A symbol is something alive. It is a hyphen between one reality and another.

Drinking alcohol takes you into a lower state of mind. If you drink a lot of it, things get very fuzzy and they are not very sharp or defined. This brings you into a lower state of attention.

My feeling is that drugs and alcohol take away from the pure experience of meditation. That does not mean that occasionally, a person couldn't have a glass of wine or a drink.