If you make a choice that doesn't please your mate, your friends, your mother, or whoever, the world will not fall apart - the people who truly love you want you to love yourself.
I live in the space where God is. There is no question that that is why I am where I am, and why I have had the success that I've had, is because I allow myself to be guided by that which is greater than myself - than my personality.
Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, it's accepting the past for what it was, and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward.
What I know for sure is that pleasure is energy reciprocated. What you put out comes back. Your base level of pleasure is determined by how you view your whole life.
If something feels right, I do it. If it feels wrong, I don't. It's really very, very simple, but you've got to be willing to take your chances doing stuff that may look crazy to other people - or not doing something that looks right to others but just feels wrong to you.
My first deepening of spirituality came when I was 6, when I was moved from my grandmother and sent to live with my mother - whom I really did not know - who had moved to Milwaukee. Something inside myself knew that I was never going to see my grandmother again - I would be wasting my time to live in that space of wanting that.
I don't know what kind of egomaniac is sitting at home thinking about the impact they have had on the culture. It's not something I actually think about until it comes up.
How can you say you're trying to spiritually evolve, without even a thought about what happens to the animals whose lives are sacrificed in the name of gluttony?