each of us has a choice. We can passively take our place in the negative chain, accepting the harm to ourselves and passing it on to others. Or we can break the chain and turn the energy of a destructive emotion into a constructive action. Energy is neutral. It is what we do with it that makes it destructive or creative, harmful or healing.

Lamenting the past is a waste of energy that we can turn into positive energy through work and acquiring skills.

We only have a certain amount of energy for each day. If we use it for the wrong purpose, if we focus on the negative or dwell on whoever hurt us, then we’re not going to have the energy we need for the right purposes.

It is feeling the energy, becoming conscious of it, that permits us to redirect it according to the best of our physical, intellectual, and ethical knowledge.

The task of power is to transform the always possible 'no' into a 'yes.'

"When emotional energy comes our way, we feel it. We take a few moments, acknowledge the sensation, and move on to the next step. We don't censor. We don't block. We don't run from. We don't tell ourselves, "Don't feel that. Something must be wrong with me." We don't pass judgment on ourselves for our feelings. We experience them. We allow the energy to pass through our bodies, we accept it as being our emotional energy, our feeling, We say, "Okay." Next we do that mystical thing so many people refer to as "dealing with our feelings." We appropriately respond to our emotion. We examine thoughts that go along with it, and we accept them without repression or censorship."

Every day we awake with a certain amount of mental, emotional, and physical energy that we spend throughout the day. If we allow our emotions to deplete our energy, we have no energy to change our lives or to give to others.

If you're angry, if you're despairing of whatever - what that is is energy. The only thing you have to do is harvest that energy and change the characteristic of it, and then you're contributing to the solution.

Your energy is powered by your thoughts, negative thoughts drain you, loving thoughts fill you with love

We try to transform our spirits using nonviolent means towards everybody; and this love and sacrifice gives us the guarantee that what we cannot change with our own human strength will be changed by the future, by the infinite, by nature, by God (according to the various faiths, it doesn't matter; what matters is this opening beyond our actual forces, in the name of love for everybody, of the honesty, of the purity of the values on which conscience feeds).

Connecting with energy is something humans have to be open to and talking about and expecting, otherwise the whole human race can go back to pretending that life is about having power over others and exploiting the planet. If we go back to doing this, then we won't survive. Each of us must do what we can to get this message out. p. 157

The energy we put out in the world is the energy we get back. So if you want more love in your life, set your intention to be more loving. If you seek kindness, focus your energy on empathy and compassion. Conversely, if you wonder why there are so many angry people in your life, look no further than the resentment you hold in your own heart.

Transformation is no longer lightning but electricity. We have captured a force more powerful than the atom, a worthy keeper of all our other powers.

Negative emotions warn us about a specific threat: when we feel fear, it is almost always preceded by a thought of danger. When we feel sad, there is almost always a thought of loss. When we feel angry, there is almost always a thought of trespass. This leaves us room to pause and identify what is going on when our negative emotional reaction is out of proportion to the reality of the danger, loss, or trespass out there. Then we can modulate our emotional reaction into proportion. This is the essence of cognitive therapy, but in a preventive mode.