Once you see that everything in life is a gift, you see that food is also a gift. If you are about to eat chemically processed, unhealthy food, you realize that to do so is, on a certain level, an act of violence against yourself.

I don't think of spiritual principle as a struggle. I think of life lived without spiritual principles as a struggle.

Chaos often fosters the greatest creativity. Breakdowns often precede the greatest breakthroughs. And when the pain is greatest is often when we're on the brink of the greatest realization.....When the pain is burned through rather than numbed, when our darkness is brought to light and then forgiven, then and only then can we move on. And move on we do.

We need more than a new politics; what we need is a new worldview. We need a fundamentally different bottom line.

Healing works through a kind of detox: things have got to come up in order to be released. That is true of our personal issues, and also our collective issues. We can't just push the darkness down, pour pink paint over it and then pretend it's not there. We have to look at it, accept that it exists and then release it for healing.

Sometimes we think, "We're the only people who see it this way," but that's really not the case.

Midlife is not the time to disenchant ourselves. It's a time to turn on all our magic in full force.