You can live in the world and have all the myriad experiences that life has to offer and yoke your awareness field to the planes of light, and eventually to nirvana itself.

We cut up time and space and mind and place and being and non-being. We create a world of ideas. This is duality, pairs of apparent opposites.

Spiritual balance is the principle that allows the mind to be still. You cannot expect the world to settle down, everything to work out, in order for you to be happy. You have to get control of your mind.

Learn to be happy in any and all circumstances, whether you're experiencing pleasure or pain, whether there's loss or gain, whether the world loves you or hates you. Learn to be happy.

If we get above the individualized soul's journey, you will see that we are all one. We are all one light. In that sense, we are all enlightened.

If you accentuate yourself, thinking or acting like you are important, then you must want to look good to someone in this world. In order to impress or sway anybody in this world, you have to be in this world yourself.

That's why their realization is not integrated and complete, and they must go through many, many lifetimes very often before that acceptance will take place.