You could use a flower, a candle flame, anything you want that's suggestive of beauty and eternality.

If you live in the city, it is necessary to get out of it on weekends. Then you will realize that most of the thoughts and desires you have are not yours. You will see what is you.

I started to meditate formally at about 18. I would sit on a mountaintop in Southern California around twilight and focus on my third eye. Everything would become still and rings of light would appear, and I'd go through them. I would be beyond time and space.

People don't necessarily take power from you for themselves. It just means they are operating at a lower attention level and you got pulled down by it. You are not sufficiently strong enough to be with someone and be unaffected.

There are other options that no one ever told you about. These are things mom and dad never explained to you; your teachers didn't know; they weren't enlightened. They weren't luminous beings that stood out of time and space.

Life is an endless matrix of existence. And as you experience it in that pure form, that's what we call enlightenment.

We live in a world of careers. Work, as Sri Krishna points out in the Bhagavad Gita, is a necessary path for everyone attaining enlightenment. It is something that we all do. Some people work very hard at not working.