We are all, after all, just human beings, and most of us have a lot in common.
Karma exists within causality. It is three-dimensional. Free will exists outside of causality; it is not bound by karma.
The balance and patience factors are much more critical in surfing than they are in snowboarding. . . if you're out surfing serious waves and you wipe out, you don't land on soft snow. It's usually either very sharp coral, or you get raked across the beach gravel and sand while you're tumbling underwater.
As the kundalini energy increases, as the energy of the psyche becomes more pronounced, which it does as thought becomes eclipsed by silence, all the variant mind states burn away.
Energy is gained by giving energy. When we give energy, we gain energy. This is different than having someone manipulate you and take your energy.
The Winter Solstice is the time of ending and beginning, a powerful time -- a time to contemplate your immortality. A time to forgive, to be forgiven, and to make a fresh start. A time to awaken.
Samadhi is not going to take away your humanity. It will give it to you. You will become more cosmopolitan, more conscious, and more infinite.
People need immediate places to refresh, reinvent themselves. Our surroundings built and natural alike, have an immediate and a continuing effect on the way we feel and act, and on our health and intelligence. These places have an impact on our sense of self, our sense of safety, the kind of work we get done, the ways we interact with other people, even our ability to function as citizens in a democracy. In short, the places where we spend our time affect the people we are and can become.
It's essential that we do what's right - not necessarily what appears to be immediately popular.
At one point I felt a tension between objects, their real, physical lives, and the idea of meaning: the physical, material reality of a book, and the totally intangible experience of reading it.
We need the stars. . . We need purpose! We need the image the Destiny to take root among the stars gives us of ourselves as a purposeful, growing species. We need to become the adult species that the Destiny can help us become! If we're to be anything other than smooth dinosaurs who evolve, specialize and die, we need the stars. . . . When we have no difficult, long-term purpose to strive toward, we fight each other. We destroy ourselves. We have these chaotic, apocalyptic periods of murderous craziness.