Fear Keeps You Sharp So a man can't be afraid if he is a coward, or a woman if she's timid, but if you make the mistake of fearing nothing at all—that's the one thing you should fear, more than anything. Because if you fear nothing, then you will be safe from nothing, and that is a dangerous place to be. **Moses** No man is strong enough to do all the good he would like. _On Duties_ I'm looking at you and your life, and I'm saying, "Do the best you can with the time that's given you." You're a person who doesn't owe the world anything. You owe the world love, because you were made in love. And you owe the world joy, because you were made for joy. And your job is to do the very best that you can do with that package that was given to you. You owe your own soul to do the best with that gift. **Moses** Just as the Lord will be with you to show you what to do, so He will let you feel the reality of your own situation in time. You have to know what's real, and that's always something that's ahead of you. He would rather be in the place where your fear is greatest than where your love is least. Because he is God, and God is love. So He'd rather be in the place where you could fall apart than where you could not reach out. **Ralph** God has no desire to destroy any of you; He wants you to be all that you can be. He knows the potential of what you can be, and that is His great and constant desire for each of us—to put you in a state of maturity where you can reach your potential and be all that you were intended to be. So if you take a deep breath of God's truth into your being, then that is what you will be: truth. _Rabbi of Love_ My own personal belief is that whatever you do, if you go deep enough, you can find a way to do it beautifully—as the gift it is. _Rabbi of Love_ The goal of the spiritual life is not to be correct, it's to be humble. For me, humility is the essential key. _Rabbi of Love_ He who is unwilling to risk confrontation has not grasped the meaning of life. _Rabbi of Love_ I don't believe in the concept of a sin. The word _sin_ was invented by priests to manipulate the population into submission. It has no value in this life, and it certainly does not convey what sin is. I believe that sin is one of the greatest misunderstandings of our time. The essence of sin is a loss of love, a loss of compassion. Sin is a choice, like all other things that we do. People are constantly losing love, and to them, that is a sin. _Rabbi of Love_ The quality of our relationship with God determines how well we love. For if our love for God becomes clouded and murky, then we will not be able to understand the relationship we are having with other people. For the same reasons we need to be in right relation with God, we need to be in right relation with one another. The reality of loving people is that you must love them all. Not everyone in the world is God, not everyone in the world is going to last forever. _Rabbi of Love_ We cannot create true intimacy with anyone until we learn to love and accept ourselves. There is no other way. Unless we realize who we are, we can never love anyone else. If you are not at peace with yourself, how can you love anyone else? _Rabbi of Love_ We need to learn how to speak lovingly to ourselves. _Rabbi of Love_ We all need to be willing to look at our own behavior. We don't have to hide it, we don't have to put a sugar coating on anything—we just have to say "good morning." And as we stand at the gates of our own life, love says "good morning" to us. And what we do with that experience is ours to do with. _Rabbi of Love_ When we see others we love, we should see our own likeness reflected in them. We are so easily deceived into thinking our children are the only ones who can ever understand us. When people have really reached a point of self-knowledge, they recognize themselves in others. You find that you have this image of who you are and the kind of life you want to live, and when you look at another person you say, "I like that." Not just that, but you can see that person doing the same thing. It's really just as simple as that. _Rabbi of Love_ People are always looking for an experience to take place between the two of them that will help them gain more closeness and understanding. Their experiences are not helping because the quality of their relationship is defined by the quality of the one they're closest to. If you are in a relationship with someone that is unrewarding, you will stay in the relationship and blame your partner. The only way out is to grow more and more. It is your responsibility to transform the quality of the relationship you are having with him or her. This means that you must face yourself and transform yourself. _Rabbi of Love_ There are three basic components of learning to love: your mind, your heart and your soul. Our minds see us in an impersonal way. Our hearts know the truth and see the beauty. Our souls are touched, and they respond with joy. _Rabbi of Love_ If you don't feel something, it is either because you don't know what it is or it's because you are thinking of other things, or else you are being selfish and looking to fulfill your own needs. There is a way to make sure that you feel things for yourself: you have to learn to feel other people's feelings. That's why meditation is the most important part of spiritual life—to learn to feel other people's pain and to realize that we are all in this together. It is so important to give a feeling of belonging to everyone around you. _Rabbi of Love_ The first aspect of spiritual life is to recognize that you are the answer to someone else's pain and that you need to share it. Then you need to put your heart into it. You can do this by making your commitment to others. You can also achieve it by making it a lifelong commitment to give happiness to all those around you. You can see how to do this by learning to give love to others, so you can show the meaning of your own love. By showing love to all of those around you, you will be giving life to yourself. _Rabbi of Love_ My work is to find love in my life, but if there is no love around me, I find myself in trouble. _Rabbi of Love_ Being spiritually mature has nothing to do with how smart you are or how learned you are. A spiritual life is a journey that involves self-analysis. And the only way you will have spiritual growth is if you have the opportunity to explore your own consciousness and self-awareness. _Rabbi of Love_ One of the essential areas of our lives that needs to be looked at and understood is how to be good company, to be at ease with ourselves and with others. How do you achieve inner and outer balance? That is the focus of meditation and spiritual practice. And the only way to live a spiritual life is to learn how to balance your life. If you don't learn how to balance your own life, then you're living in disharmony. The minute you realize that you can't control or manipulate yourself, you'll find the key to peace and happiness. It's when you start to lose control that you gain true freedom. And the more you surrender control, the more life will surrender itself to you. If you really want to understand me, you must understand that by becoming aware of myself I become aware of God. This is the key to becoming wise, or if you are wise, this is how you will attain it. _Rabbi of Love_ You learn to surrender when you start to accept yourself. If you don't accept yourself, it's going to be very difficult for others to accept you. You will always be a little bit better or a little bit less than anyone else. _Rabbi of Love_ When you want to learn something, you have to be willing to give up your opinions, opinions about what you know and what you don't know, and who is right and who is wrong. You have to be willing to sacrifice the idea that you know something because that may be a mistake. _Rabbi of Love_ Every time we meet someone who feels insecure, lonely, desperate, or isolated, we should be moved to be the kind of people who do what we can to bring them the joy of being known. And then when we are alone, we will be able to recognize the power that is moving through us from these acts of love. There is a healing