We're just animals, creatures smart enough and unlucky enough to have figured out we're alive, and we're going to die without ever knowing any purpose. We can pretend all we want and we can wish all we want, but that basic existential fact remains—we can't know.

Beauty is something we can affirm and intend to have more of. What happens then is our perceptual ability, no matter where we are, expands in that direction.

Blaming our behavior on forces outside ourselves is a way of avoiding responsibility.

Love is not an intellectual concept or a moral imperative or anything else. It is the background emotion that exists when one is connected to the energy available in the universe, which of course, is the energy of God.

The true, or higher part of the self is always seeking the state that mystics talk about, the state in which we are filled with a universal love and a peaceful euphoria.

Energy doesn't come to us so much from the things around us-although we can absorb energy directly from some plants and sacred sites. Sacred energy comes from our connection to the divine inside us.

When we dislike someone, or feel threatened by someone, the natural tendency is to focus on something we dislike about the person, something that irritates us. Unfortunately, when we do this--instead of seeing the deeper beauty of the person and giving them energy--we take energy away and actually do them harm. All they know is that they suddenly feel less beautiful and less confident, and it is because we sapped their energy.