“Alienation and loneliness plant the seeds for rebellion and consciousness.”

We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld or CNN.

It began in images and it ended in symbolism.

May the ability to see many points view keep us gentle.

The myth of Canada, its hidden story, is of a contemplative country, a place of inwardness, where people can question the idea of nationhood and ponder what values we wish to see expressed and achieved, and what solitudes of identity and reverie we wish to preserve.

There is, it seems, an unbridgeable chasm between the concerns of a Sri Aurobindo and a Pat Robertson.

We have to learn how to contact one another over an enormous land space, across five-and-a-half time zones, in what as once a wilderness of scattered settlements, in what is now a sprawl of suburban edge cities and satellite towns. Technology forges connections and disconnections here.

Threaten the balances of justice and you threaten the potential enlargements of mind and soul. Therefore justice is part of the safeguarding of the heart.

Democracies should be a delirium of choices – more options, not fewer; more avenues to travel, not fewer.

No rebellious heart is ever at ease with paths established by others.

A just society will appear less spectacular, and less clearly defined, than a society with totalitarian leadership, theocratic goals.

Followers of another political party tell us that we will strengthen ourselves by ignoring our history, our traditions, our mythologies, our culture and vision, and by following the American way.

Each voice carries a portion of value, no matter how unpalatable or distasteful that voice may be: no one person, government, ideology, transnational, or religious institution can own and dominate the whole.

Canada is like several puzzles that we are all working on at the same time. Everyone has a part to add, but no one has seen the whole picture yet.

We remake the world through our technologies, and these in turn remake and extend us, in ever spiraling lattices of complexity. McLuhan uncannily foresaw the future, where electronic technology would shape and expand cultures and societies into a global membrane of communications.

If you make things sound inoffensively obvious, then it is likely that no one will listen.

Here I find a puzzle of great beauty: Canada works well in practice, but just doesn’t work out in theory.

We are on the planet to wrap our consciousness around the divine treasure within us.

You are the light of consciousness and also the witness of this light. You are pure awareness.

Consciousness is the creative element in the universe. Without it, nothing would appear.

Gratitude places you in the energy field of plentitude. Perceiving life in a consciousness of gratitude is literally stepping into another dimension of living. Suddenly the seeming ordinariness of your days takes on a divine sparkle.

I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it. But this separation of consciousness is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is to believe in an undivided being between us.

The task of science is to stake out the limits of the knowable, and to center consciousness within them.

Attempting to understand consciousness with your mind, is like trying to illuminate the sun with a candle.

All the ups and downs are grace in different wrappings, sent to refine consciousness. Say thanks to them all.