We can choose to function at a lower level of awareness and simply exist, caring for our possessions, eating, drinking, sleeping and managing in the world as pawns of the elements, or we can soar to new and higher levels of awareness allowing ourselves to transcend our environment and literally create a world of our own - a world of real magic.

When I was a kid at 16, sneaking into a burlesque theater in downtown Detroit was a big thrill. Today, in every hotel room in America, you can turn on the television and see hardcore pornography. So the shifts can go both ways, and it's incumbent on us as leaders of the spiritual community to get as many people as possible to really begin to think in God-realized ways.

Your circumstances do not determine what your life will be; they reveal what kinds of images you have chosen up until now.

The only thing an excuse gives you is an option out of the life you'd like to live.

It's not what is available or unavailable that determines your level of success and happiness; it's what you convince yourself is true.

While you were four, you didn't know anything other than being terrified and scared; you're not four any longer. Now [as an adult] you have to make a choice and recognize that even the abuse that came into your life offers you an opportunity to transcend it, to become a better person and even more significantly, to help someone else not go through what you did.

I am thankful to all those who said no. It's because of them, I did it myself.