To be able to hear our own feelings and needs and to empathize with them can free us from depression.

Regardless of our many differences, we all have the same needs. What differs is the strategy for fulfilling these needs.

Two questions help us see why we are unlikely to get what we want by using punishment... The first question is: What do I want this person to do that's different from what he or she is currently doing? If we ask only this first question, punishment may seem effective because the threat or exercise of punitive force may well influence the person's behavior. However, with the second question, it becomes evident that punishment isn't likely to work: What do I want this person's reasons to be for doing what I'm asking?

Depression is the reward we get for being 'good'.

Unless we as social change agents come from a certain spirituality, we're likely to create more harm than good.

Very often, the way love is defined, it does violence to both people. It almost makes them a slave to the other. For example, if to be in love, or to be married, it means that I'm responsible for the other person's happiness, now we get into this guilt game, where if they're upset, I'm at fault. Soon, that makes the person we are closest to about as much fun to be around as a prolonged dental appointment.

My ultimate goal is to spend as many of my moments in life as I can in that world that the poet Rumi talks about, 'a place beyond rightness and wrongness.