As you do your daily meditations, your life will change. Most people change between the ages of zero to four. The older we get the less we change. When we meditate we become perpetually young.

To think you can just go out and help people and somehow get a better life is not reincarnation as I know it. A better life comes from being happy and inner realizations. Now if helping others adds to that, well then, it's great.

We want to see the universe in its absolute, pure, naked, perfection. We want to know its wonder. We want to know the totality of ourselves. That's done in steps and degrees and not in one day.

Combine meditation with career as a yoga. You will find that your practice will not be any less powerful than a person who lives in a monastery. You might even excel because practice in a monastery can get very one-sided.

Be a perfect flow of energy in whatever you chose to do. This is perfect action.

In poetry, and in my study in graduate school, I was drawn to a particular poet, Theodore Roethke. I did a dissertation on "The Evolution of Matter and Spirit in the Poetry of Theodore Roethke" for my Ph.D.

The last game on earth is in progress. And when you lose, you win. And when you win, you can't lose.