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.

When infants aren't held, they can become sick, even die. It's universally accepted that children need love, but at what age are people supposed to stop needing it? We never do. We need love in order to live happily, as much as we need oxygen in order to live at all.

Again--nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you.

The world we live in pictures a pie with only so many pieces, and if other people have more you have less, and you have to compete with other people in order to try to get ahead. You have to sell yourself at every available opportunity. The shift, the enlightened shift, has to do with a movement from competition to collaboration, from sales to service, from ambition to inspiration, and to a belief in scarcity to a belief in abundance as an eternal spiritual quality.

If there is anything interesting about my story it's the fact that it's not unique at all. I feel that I have been through what almost everyone I know has - a slow and gradual maturation process.

When I was a child, my society lifted me up - though education primarily, as well as through other kinds of cultural stimulation. It wasn't just my parents or my religious community. The entire society lifted me up to the bottom rung of the ladder. Then they said, "Girl, it's up to you whether or not you climb." I don't have a problem with that. I think that is the best way to go about living.