In the New World, you'll kick your own ass and I'll wash my own brain. I'll be my own parents and you'll be you own wife. And vise versa. That'll be normal in the New World - different from the Old World, where everyone except me is to blame for my ignorance and you call on everyone except yourself to give you what you need. I'll push my own buttons and right my own wrongs. You'll wake yourself up and sing your won songs.

The "Kumulipo" is an old Hawaiian prayer chant that poetically describes the creation of the world. The word literally means "beginning-in-deep-darkness." Here darkness doesn't connote gloom and evil. Rather, it's about the inscrutability of the embryonic state; the obscure chaos that reigns before germination.

Somewhere there's a treasure that has no value to anyone but you, and a secret that's meaningless to everyone except you, and a frontier that harbors a revelation only you would know how to exploit. Why not go in search of those things?

BIBLIOBLISS. Transported into states of transcendent pleasure while immersed in reading a favorite book.

Assume that your drive to experience pleasure isn't a barrier to your spiritual growth, but is in fact essential to it. Proceed on the hypothesis that cultivating joy can make you a more ethical and compassionate person. Imagine that feeling good has something important to teach you every day. What might you do differently from what you do now?

Any media-brainwashed automaton can summon the insipid courage to peer into the horrifying abyss. But it takes a freaking genius with a fearless imagination to peer into the maw of happiness.

Don't save your enormous creativity for "something better." Give it to this.