I certainly spent many years in my early life chasing all over the globe for meaning and purpose. I'd feel like I'd found it, then it would fade away again.

Practice remembrance of the present moment, again and again.

Time, for example, is intimately connected with the goddess Kali, which partly accounts for her destructive nature. Energy - in Einstein's equation, E=MC2 - is personified in India as Shakti in her various guises.

The love of someone else is more accessible or more possible if one lives with a sense of loving embrace towards oneself because that extends out into the world.

The great French Impressionist painter Renoir, right at the end of his very long life, said to a friend, "I am just now learning to paint." Renoir carried his gift with a humility which realized how much he still had to learn. Anyone who goes deeply into a field in life and realizes this, gains a sense of proportion that can only make you humble.

The American culture especially, and Western culture in general, urges us to not only become the best that we can be, but also win against the competition.

This question of love begins and ends with the willingness to be welcoming to one's own experience as a loving action towards oneself. It may be dark, it may be light, it may be joyous, it may be sorrowful, but it's your experience, and therefore, your life. As we have that kind of loving response towards our own life, then life itself in terms of the outside world, begins to feel different.