Decide what is sacred to you, and put your best life energies at its service. Make that the focus of your studies, your work, the test for your pleas… - Starhawk

When young people ask me for advice today, I generally say, “Decide what is sacred to you, and put your best life energies at its service. Make that the focus of your studies, your work, the test for your pleasures and your relationships. Don’t ever let fear or craving for security turn you aside.

There are many methods of trance induction, but all seem to function on one or more of four related principles: relaxation, sensory restriction, rhythm, and boredom.

Was there some deeper, level some plane upon which the consciousness of mountains responded to death and waste and pain? Was there a compassion embedded in the very rocks, so that they offered their beauty in compensation for human loss?

That is exactly what nobody seems to grasp about this karma business. It’s not a simple matter of cause and effect, reward and punishment. It’s a question of what’s available. You see, as long as life for the majority of souls on this planet is just a long round of starvation, misery, torture, and early death — and believe me, outside this fortunate watershed that is an apt description of the state of affairs — as long as only a few live in comfort while the masses scrape along in want, then all us returning souls have to take our fair share of shifts among the hungry. You think this life you’ve lived was tough? Let me tell you, it was just R and R between the ones where you never get a solid meal two days running or you die before your first birthday from drinking bad water.