Personal growth can be painful, because it can make us feel ashamed and humiliated to face our own darkness. But our spiritual goal is the journey out of fear-based, painful mental habit patterns, to those of love and peace.

To me, liberation doesn't mean that I can think just like a man. Real liberation means that I can think, act, and be like a woman and receive equal respect, honor, and compensation.

The way I see it, we teach our children through modeling.

Happiness is the choice I make today. It does not rest on my circumstances, but on my frame of mind...In cultivating the habits of happiness, I attract the people and situations that match its frequency. I smile more often, give praise more often, give thanks more often, and am glad more often. For such is my choice today.

I realize that the curriculum is my life on any given day. At this point, more than anything, my spiritual path means looking at every circumstance and trying to see my part in where it's good and where it's not so good.

There are other kinds of emotional pain that emerge from our own mistaken thinking. As we surrender that pain, we are inviting into our thought system a guide who will lead us to different thoughts. It’s like the song “Amazing Grace”: I was blind and now I see.

As long as you identify with the universe - which is perfect and can correct material conditions to bring them back into alignment with that Divine perfection - as long as that is where your mind is aligned, it's as though there were two parallel universes. You decide with every thought you think which one you're going to inhabit. Two parallel universes of experience, as it were.