I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

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.

I think we have to go through everything we go through in our life, and I believe my purpose in life was to teach self-reliance. So I had the experience of relying on myself very early in life in order to have that knowing, because otherwise I would've just read about it. I think of it now as a great advantage that I had. It certainly taught me to rely upon myself at a very young age. And that's what I've been teaching since I was a little boy.

My great definition of success comes from Thoreau: "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." That always has defined my road to what you call phenomenal success. I have advanced confidently in the direction of my dreams. I have lived the life I imagined, and I have had a ball doing it.

if we focus on what's ugly, we attract more ugliness into our thoughts, and then into our emotions, and ultimately into our lives

When you're an orphan, you don't wake up every day and tell yourself, "I'm an orphan again today. Why did this happen to me?" You just get on with your life. I've had other challenges that were much greater than that.

If you take a glass of water and separate it from its source - the ocean - then pour the water away from its source and ask it to sustain life, it flitters away. It just evaporates. It can't sustain life. That's a metaphor for us when we separate ourselves from our source and believe that God is separate from us.