No matter what is happening in our lives, we choose how we wish to think about it. And the greatest gift we give ourselves is often our willingness to change our minds. Despite what might seem to be the saddest and most intractable situation, we have the power to believe that something else is possible, that things can change, that a miracle can happen.

Our most meaningful conversations go on late at night when we're on the phone with our friends or talking to our lovers.

I think those of us on a spiritual journey can help create a new conversation, a new America, and a new world.

The love within us is meant to extend outward. The closer we grow to our inner light, we feel a natural urge to share it. We all long for meaningful work, some creative endeavor that will be our ministry, by which the energies within us might flow out to help heal the world.

It's been fascinating over the last few years, watching the high and mighty in business and politics fall precipitously-not because their plans didn't work, but because their character flaws undercut those plans. Whether the microphone caught them making racist comments or their greed overcame their common sense, who they were as people made all the difference-more than their résumés, their degrees, or even their past successes. If you fail at the art of being human and staying human, you recklessly court disaster.

The highest level of creativity consists in being, not doing. When the being is intense enough, when the words are spoken enough, when the thoughts are thought enough, the doing will automatically follow.

Gender or skin color does not of itself determine the nature of a person's thinking.