If you are just spaced out and you have no purpose in life, you pick everything up. Everybody else's thoughts will come into your mind, everyone else's desires.

If you are doing that which is within you, what that part of you that is beyond body would like you to do, then you would not experience stress because you would be very fulfilled.

Changing the way you dress can make it easier to make deeper changes in the structure of your personality.

Karma means who you are and where your awareness field is on the band of perception.

Meditation simply means entering into states of mind which are happiness, profound happiness, simple happiness, beautiful happiness, complicated, uncomplicated - There are ten thousand states of mind.

You can summon up power from past lives and bring them into this life. That can give you a boost into the next state of mind or further up.

As Buddha points out, you should not rely on the opinions of others for validation of your internal progression.