2. Choice: Choose to be a conscious cause rather than an effect. Be the creator of your own life. Set Goals, make choices and take responsibility for your actions. This means giving up being a victim which is not always easy.

3. Awareness: Stay aware of current reality. Face the obstacles and acknowledge your opponent's (both inner and outer) and know your own assets and strengths. To move from here to there you need to know your starting point as well as your goal.

4. Respect: Respect your adversaries, inner and outer. Beating your head on a brick wall is not useful behaviour, even if the wall eventually would fall down. Instead, respect the wall's inherent nature and work with it instead of against it.

5. Oneness: When you move to a higher level, there are no enemies (you may need to go back to principle one - trust)

6. Action: When action is needed, act and act confidently without regret or doubt, moving from your own centre and leading forward to your goal.

7. Surrender: After making the very best decision you can, using the information and resources available, and acting on your decision, let go of all attachment to the outcome (again go back to principle one - trust)

Wisdom is achieved very slowly. This is because intellectual knowledge, easily acquired, must be transformed into 'emotion' or 'subconscious' knowledge. Once transformed, the imprint is permanent. Behavioural practice is the necessary catalyst of this reaction. Without action, the concept will wither and fade.

Theoretical knowledge without practical application is not enough. It is as if humankind were not in its natural state while on earth. It must reach an altered state in order to fill itself with love and charity and simplicity, to feel purity, to rid itself of its chronic fearfulness. How does one reach this altered state, this other value system.

It is as if a large diamond were to be found inside each person. Picture a diamond a foot long. The diamond has a thousand facets, but the facets are covered with dirt and tar. It is the job of the soul to clean each facet until the surface is brilliant and can reflect a rainbow of colours.

Now some of us have cleaned many facets and gleam brightly. Others have only managed to clean a few, they do not sparkle so. Underneath the dirt, each person possesses within his or her heart a brilliant diamond with a thousand gleaming facets. The diamond is perfect, not one flaw.

The only differences among people are the number of facets cleaned. But each diamond is the same, and each is perfect.

When all the facets are cleaned and shining forth in a spectrum of lights, the diamond returns to the pure energy that it was originally. The lights remain. It is as if the process that goes into making the diamond is reversed, all the pressure released. The pure energy exists in the rainbow of lights, and the lights possess consciousness and knowledge.

And all the diamonds are perfect.