There is something that is transcendental about when we are immersed in that which we most love.

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were.

The conversation between Fletcher and Jonathan Livingston Seagull is centered on why some have achieved more than others . . . are they divine . . . ahead of their times . . . Fletcher says, Well, this kind of flying has always been here to be learned by anybody who wanted to discover it; that's got nothing to do with time. We're ahead of the fashion, maybe. Ahead of the way most gulls fly. Poor Fletch. Don't you believe what your eyes are telling you? All they show is limitations. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.

Through default or intention, unaware or by design, we not only choose but create the visible outer conditions that are most resonant to our inner state of being.

At last, the answer why. The lesson that had been so hard to find, so difficult to learn, came quick and clear and simple. The reason for problems is to overcome them. Why, that’s the very nature of man, I thought, to press past limits, to prove his freedom. It isn’t the challenge that faces us, that determines who we are and what we are becoming, but the way we meet the challenge, whether we toss a match at the wreck or work our way through it, step by step, to freedom.

I'm absolutely convinced that this is a world of appearances, not reality. There's one reality and that's Light and Love. When some say, we create our own reality, I always demur and say, "Please, would you mind adjusting that a little bit? We create our own appearances." We become master of appearances and as we change our thought, we will see the appearances around us change. That gives us this huge sense of dominion and power and control over our world.

One of the delights of the new age is that it's a turning of consciousness to give us permission to look beyond appearances. But there are traps that come with it. It's brave to throw off the old altars and churches and ceremonies that kept us from discovery, it's not so brave to replace them with chants and rituals and new priests who are retreads of the old.