topazz28's Blog

When you feel anxiety, somewhere along the line you have not been forthright. You erred. You have tried to control that which is not yours to control. You have offended yourself. Anxiety lets you know that you have performed or thought less than you are. Anxiety nudges you to take a look at how and what you are maneuvering and to stop it.

Life is not yours to maneuver. Outcomes are not yours to make.

Anxiety is heartfall. It is a sinking feeling. It is common. It is a murky abyss. You don't need it. Anxiety is related to regret and remorse. You regret you were imperfect a moment ago.

Anxiety tells you that you have had a false start. Acknowledge that, and anxiety leaves. You had a thought you need to change, and now you change it. Anxiety is nothing but a recurring thought of guilt. Absolve yourself of the thought.

From some fear or some sense of danger, you sought to control an aspect of your life. But the real need was not to control; the need was to free. You tightened something, and now you feel the stricture in your heart. You have called anxiety to you, and now you can let it go.

You are walking in life, and you stumble or almost stumble. It is done. The incident is over. Why feel anxious over what has past? Sense of anxiety comes from past matters. When you feel anxious about something in the future, you have brought past anxiety forward. When you fear that you will stumble again in the future, you have brought the past with you.

Let Me allay your anxiety. It is all right to stumble. Pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and continue. Do not stay in the same spot. Leave that spot in your thinking, and anxiety leaves. So you tripped and fell. So you said something you regret. So you didn't say something you wish you had.

You think you must always choose the right box, and you berate yourself when you have not. Move on. Forgive yourself. Don't sit down on your error and stay there. You have already paid for it.

Human beings flail their hearts for no good reason. Free your heart. Whatever misdemeanors you are guilty of, you are absolved. When you absolve yourself, you do not give yourself license to repeat error. You give yourself license to move away from it. You will not recur the event when you have gone beyond it.

When you feel anxious that you have offended someone, you are really anxious at the offense to yourself. A cry of ego shames you. It disgraces you. You were imperfect. You denied your truth. Do not belabor that. Just return to truth. Don't tote imperfection with you. Drop it where it was.

You were drawing a picture, and you made some lines you wouldn't make now. You do not need to be appalled by this. Erase the mistake, and start anew. All the time you are starting anew. Needing an eraser is not cause for self-recrimination. Erasing is not pretending something did not occur. It just is not making too much of it. You do not have to punish yourself. You just have to let it go. Love yourself as you would your neighbor.

Do not tie knots in your life. Anxiety crimps you. It blocks your heart. It is a build-up. It is plaque.

When you mire yourself in anxiety because you feel you offended someone, you have not released yourself, and you have not released the other. You bind him to yourself. Free him. Free yourself, and he is freed from your hold.

When you hold something to yourself, you are trying to control. Control does not move you forward. It holds you back.

If you want a new lease on life, then release that which you presently hold.

Is it cause for anxiety that a moment ago you were less than you are now? Do you think that you have to be forgiven for learning something? Well, then, you are forgiven. Now forgive yourself.

You consider your twists of thought twists of fate. In one sense, nothing is outside of you. And yet you are the one who takes it in. How you take in what appears outside of you makes all the difference in the world. What you make of what you take in makes all the difference in the world. You can turn gold to dross, and dross to gold. You are an alchemist of thought.

Thoughts are your medium. They are the terrain you walk in. You have clouds of thought, and some light rays. Shift your thinking into the direction of light. Dare to.

You shift gears in your car. Now shift gears in your thought. Ascend. Scale the heights. Reach the mountain top of your mind. You do not belong in the vales of thought. Go up where the air is clear and where you are closer to Me. Dare to rise.

Perhaps you think that what I say is meant for everyone else, that everyone else needs to change their thinking, but not you. But, yes, you, too, need to switch your thinking to another station, perhaps one you don't hear so clearly, perhaps one that speaks to you of strange unbelievable things, such as, that you are more than you give yourself credit for, that there is a vaster horizon before you than you let yourself see, that you are more than an earthling, that you are, in truth, a Heavenling, that you have an infinite capacity for love, that, amidst the apparent disparity there is only Oneness on earth, that you are to hold your head high, that you are to raise yourself higher and the earth and all on it higher with you, that you are an emissary from Heaven with all the rights and privileges, that your obligation is to give and receive joy, that you are not a bobble on top of the ocean, but the Ocean itself, furling and unfurling, leaping and splashing, swimming in Itself, that there is no luxury of defeat or loss nor is there winning, because all is victory, all is life, all is a feast set before you, and that you are, all in all, the All of All.

You have been looking at yourself with a microscope. Therefore, you have lost sight of yourself and what you are doing on earth.

Stop peering through a microscope. Take a grandscope. Remove the pitiful lenses you have been looking through. There is much more than is framed within your glasses.

All boundaries you see — you have erected or bought. You put them there, or you accepted that they were there. Either way, you have lain down the posts, hammered in the nails, and, all the while, you worked on the establishment of a mirage. You paid dearly for nothing at all. All the borders you have incepted or purchased do not exist except in the imagination of the world. You sold yourself into slavery. You sold yourself cheap. You gave up your inheritance for a potage.

Now, stop looking at the posts. Stop looking at the post-holes. Start looking at the space between the posts. Do you see how you will see farther? Even if you have to peer through a crack, do it. The crack will widen until you will find yourself walking through it. You will be in a blaze of bliss. You will be amazed and dazed with the glory of who you are and where you walk and what pervading vastness you reach and enter.

You resist no. When no is said to you, something shuts down in you. That is because you say no back. Say Yes instead, and your heart will be lifted. Do not make of your life a taffy pull.

Yes frees you. Yes invigorates you. Say Yes twice, and pearls issue from your lips.

Practice saying Yes. It is more than a word that I ask you to practice.

Say Yes to your chores. Your resistance has made you tired, not the chores. For one day, try saying Yes to all that comes along. Saying Yes is not giving yourself away. Saying Yes is merely oiling the wheels of evolution.

If someone offers you a second piece of pie and you don't want it, answer, "Yes, I will, another time". If someone offers you drugs, say, "No, thanks", with a smile. No thanks and a smile is another way to say Yes.

In all matters that are not against your conscience, say Yes. Say, "Yes, I will." Say, "Yes, gladly." Even before you are asked, say Yes.

Yes is the truth, but if you must rigorously remind yourself, then remind yourself. Do it for a day. You live in a friendly world. Smile at it. Consider that a smile from you is a blessing for the one you give it to. See how your expression of friendliness will alter the lives of those around you. It will certainly alter yours.

If you are a teacher, smile and enjoy your students. If you are a student, smile at your teacher. That is better than an apple.

How education on the face of the earth would change when, even for one day, teachers and students gave recognition to each other with a pleasant face!

What would home life be if husbands came home smiling and wives greeted them the same?

What would happen when geniality is made King?

What I am asking you to do is to be charming for one day. I am asking you to be carefree and genial. I am asking you to imagine you have all the time in the world. I ask you to imagine that you are possessed with a wealth of consciousness, and it is your place to bestow a little of it here and there, to sprinkle it around during the day.

Glitter a little gold today.

Be a spring flower that appears for the enjoyment of all.

Or consider your day today a garden tour. You have nothing better to do today than to enjoy it and so make it enjoyable for everyone else who passes near you.

Count the yeses you say today. Count the yeses you say to yourself today. You are the one who needs a yes from you most of all.

Consider that you are part of a public relations campaign. You are a spokesman for humanity. You are a deliverer of goodwill. You pin a flower on everyone's lapel. You are a host or hostess to the world. You are My emissary from Heaven, so what else can you be but a greeter to all life in the universe?

Consider your life today like your treasured dog or cat to whom you talk sweetly. Be as sweet as that to all who come along. Be as sweet as that to everything that comes along. If you stub your toe, pat the incident as you would your beloved pet who rubs against you in joy.

When you are less crabby with life, you will find that life is less crabby with you.

Today you set the tone of your life. Fine-tune it with Yes.

Hello, Beloveds!

Love emanates. Thoughts of love are not the same as emanating love itself. Love is beyond thought. Thoughts, by their nature, are limited. Love is not.

Love is a big stroke. Thoughts of love are only thoughts.

But even to think of love engenders a touch of it.

Better to think of love than to not think of it.

We could say that love is the most positive thought you have. You feel better when you think it than when you think of less. Words themselves have an effect on you. The words peace and war have different effects on your digestion. How powerful are your thoughts!

Although thought of food does not fill your stomach, the thought can make your mouth water.

Every thought and word resonates somewhere within you. One resonance feels better than another. Seek that resonance.

Sometimes havoc seems to feel good to you but only because it stirs your blood. That which is called negative or even painful may aid you to recognize that you exist. Argument may be preferred to agreement for argument feels deeper to you. Argument is sometimes like laying a claim for a piece of land. You want to establish yourself and be noted.

The difference between opinion and truth is vast. No matter how true-seeming an opinion, an opinion inserts itself. An opinion emphasizes itself.

Beware of your opinions because they keep you bound to the past.

Hold not fast to your opinions, for they preclude openness.

Prefer openness, for openness allows growth to take place, sometimes great growth, whereas staunch opinion deters it.

All the great inventors and explorers were open. They ventured because of their openness to a different way of seeing. Without openness, venture would not take place.

Perhaps it takes great daring for you to change your mind about something. But it is only an opinion that you change, and an opinion is not much at all.

Is where your thoughts happen to be today so precious that you must maintain them? Must momentary thoughts be dug in? Must they pretend to be the foundation of your life?

Be not adamant about opinions.

Much of your life is ruled by old opinions that you picked up somewhere. They may have been foisted on you or grabbed onto by you. But when did they become so dear that you began to think they were irreplaceable? Opinions are disposable. They are not meant to last.

Of what value are opinions? I have no opinion about you. It is not My opinion that you are worthy. An opinion is a guess in space and time. I have no opinions. I have knowledge of Truth.

Ego holds on to opinions. And ego lays waste to Truth.

You hold on to what you believe because you hold on to what you believe.

You hold fast to that which has no grip.

In order to know Truth, let go. Opinions and beliefs hold you in place. But earth is for you to move in. You are not on earth to stay where you have been. Let go of opinions, and you may see how far you have traveled.

You are not tethered to the past except as you say you are. And to the present you are not tethered at all. In the present, you are free of restrictions imposed by the mind.

Don't mind the mind so much.

The truth of your heart lies within its depth. At the innermost level of your heart, Truth is intact. There, your heart is what it is. Never injured, never marred, never altered, never anything but what it is, it lies patiently and waits for its chance to rise.

Your heart is a beautiful gift, gift from Me, and gift for you to give.

Take away the subterfuges that have disparaged your heart, and you will come to know it. Once you reach the bottom of your heart, you will never want to leave it.

The surface of your heart is like a paste diamond. You have worn it and enjoyed it and shown it off. Once you see the difference between the man-made jewel and the God-made one, you can't go back. Once you know better, you cannot pretend you don't know the difference.

Your deepest heart does not have an object. It does not love this one and that, and not this one and that. Your innermost heart simply loves. It beams its own light. It does not depend upon nourishment from somewhere else. It is its own nourisher. It thrives on itself.

Your innermost heart beats on its own. It beats for the joy of beating. It is dependent upon nothing but itself. Nothing demolishes it nor takes away one iota of its love.

This layer of your heart is the true King. The seat of royalty is enthroned within your heart. The coffers are so full, you can dispense love to one and all and never ever run out, nor imagine for one moment that you can. When you live in your heart of hearts, there is nothing else.

The love in your heart that requires no object does not start and stop. The love is uninterrupted. What could disrupt it? What could intrude upon it?

The love in your deepest heart is love heaped on itself. It is love on love. The subject of your heart is love, and there is no other.

At present, this level of your heart needs stirring, and I stir it. I stir it well.

Your heart has been idle, and now it is awakened.

Now your heart becomes the conquering hero. It conquers ignorance. But ignorance is not worthy of being conquered. It is only absence of truth. But it is all right to consider your deepest heart as the conquering hero and to hail it.

Truth has arrived. It is settling into your heart. Ignorance flies away in the face of true-heartedness. Ignorance leaves you now. You are more aware of the depths of your heart now, and that makes you greater.

The eyes of the world do not see you, but now you see you, and now you leave the past behind, and now you enter the present, and now your heart is full of what can never be emptied. Your heart is full of All That There Is, and what can that be but love, and what can true love be but God. So, yes, I sit in your heart, and I do not twiddle My thumbs. I activate you. I activate Myself within what We call you.

As you twist and turn under the covers at night, you may twist and turn during the day about life. It would seem that for every joy, you have three annoyances or aggravations or downright woe. Let the annoyances fly away. Keep the joy. Eradicate the sense of annoyance that you have been allowing yourself to have. You have been wronging yourself.

The way it’s been for many or most, over and over again, is that, when you stub your toe, you keep stubbing it. Stub is an interesting word because it is linked to the word stubborn in English. You just don’t want to budge. Someone wasn’t nice to you, and you continue the dialogue and interaction in your thoughts. You are good at doing that. You are a pro.

The offending person is not beside you around the clock, yet you are beside yourself with emotion, and you keep the offender in your outraged thoughts. You keep the offender close, as if you had nothing else to do, as if you had nothing else to live for but to recount, reemphasize, relive, remake, renew all the affronts that troubled you and trouble you still. You count your accumulation of wrongs as if they were a wad of money.

Let go of the offenses and the offenders, and you will no longer have them. You have been nursing the viperishness in your own bosom. You say to yourself a thousand times over: “Look what they did to me. Look at how they wronged me.” And so you wrong yourself over and over again. Must you prove time and time again what you see as the heartlessness and wayward thinking of others?

The fact is, when you are in that state of mind, you are mastering the very skills you purport to have contempt for. You have contempt. These others were contemptuous, and now you are contemptuous. They had no respect. And now you have no respect for them nor for yourself, or you would not keep the contempt alive and well, churning in your heart, in your mind, turning your blood into vinegar.

Have regard for yourself and get out of that old mind-set. A minute was too long to have it. You have had it for years, perhaps a lifetime. Say adieu to those old ways of thinking. Sink them. Pretend they are golf balls. Picture hitting each old golf ball of thought with a strong stroke. The golf ball goes far away over the fairway and out of your hair.

Forgive Me for dwelling on the past when I tell you to get out of it. The thing is you have not seen what you have been doing to yourself. See and dismiss. See and desist. How can you hit the ball out of the park unless you see it?

Or play football rather than golf and kick the old habits of thought out of the field. You are inundated with them. You feel you have to be on top. You have to control. Or you may have to control by being put upon, as if that is worth your whole life. You put yourself into a slot where you make happen what you protest. It keeps coming up again, the same old situations. It is the past that motivates and controls you. You have been in the thrall of the past. You have not let yourself go. It is you who gives yourself a stiff neck.

If you have been dragging yourself in the mud, it makes sense to get out of it.

If you have been thinking that you have been persecuted, you persecute yourself. You have become a dancer in life then who knows only one step.

Life dances to the tune of your own thoughts. As you think, so goes your life. Turn your thoughts around, and so will your life turn.

Jump into the flow of life. Life flows for you to catch. Embrace the life that flows for you. Dive in. Get wet. Splash.

Do not be timid with life. Do not withdraw from life. Only know that your life does not have to be like any other. Your life is yours to choose but not to refuse. Journey you must. You are here for it. You are already on it. You already chose to set out. And now you choose which way to go. Right this moment you can choose. In fact, you are choosing every moment.

Everything you do is more than you think it is. Every drum roll of your heart is a call to other hearts. Every step you take bounces off somewhere else. Your every move reverberates in the universe and has far-reaching effects.

Amazing, isn't it?

And you are also affected by the motion of others. A common boat you sail on rocks according to the ocean, but it also rocks according to the leanings of all those on the boat.

You who are before Me may be the far-reaching effect of a motion made elsewhere.

You do not know from where you have come. You do not know which star gave birth to you. Nor do you know where you are going. What transpires does not tell. What transpires does not matter so much as you think, but you matter more than you know. Your thoughts matter. Life rises and falls with your thoughts. The outer events are the lapping of the waves, but you are the waves supreme.

Your actions may be representative. Or they may not. How you seem may not always be the true event.

Let your thoughts follow your heart. Do not be an actor on stage. Be a liver of life on or offstage.

In a secret moment, reveal yourself to yourself.

You are not the frightened fish caught on a line. You are the Ocean. You are the whole Ocean furling and unfurling. You swim in yourself. Give yourself a nod to begin your swim.

Signal your entry into life. Do not divert from your life. Follow others only so far. Never forget the uniqueness of you. Your expression is vital to the universe.

But you do not have your own style for yourself. You have it for Me. You have it to exalt Me. I Who am exalted cannot be exalted more, yet it is your purpose to exalt Me through your swim on Earth. Consider that you weave My threads. And of course you do. We are connected by golden threads of thought, and as you think and as you move, you weave Me across the universe. You are My golden filament, and you weave the web of the universe. You hold it in place and you expand it. You venture forth on the loom of existence and pull all threads with you and you cross over all threads, and that is how you weave.

Do you begin to note your importance? You are vital. You thought you were a silent violinist who went through the motions of playing, as if the sound your one violin could make was not integral. You thought you could fake it, but the whole orchestra has been waiting for your music. So now play. You are playing more than your own violin, and you play it for more than yourself. You play for Me, the Great Musician, Who gave you the music to play and the violin and the bow that are in your hands.

Do not be overwhelmed as you steer the helm of the universe. You turn the wheel, and you steer, and I am ever guiding you. We sail together. We weave and We sail and We play the violin, and We listen to the music and We sail on and We weave some more. We furrow the waves of the Ocean.

When you accept where and what your Real Existence is, you won't be possessed so much by the fears that presently possess you. Will you agree that fear has you in its clutches, that it often motivates you?

What does fear think it is? It thinks it is premonition, and it thinks it is insurance. It thinks it is a seer and a swordsman in one. It thinks it is your defender when it is your undoer.

But fear doesn't really think at all. It is you who does the thinking for it. Fear uses you to make itself big, and you comply.

You do not need a seer to see the future for you, and you do not need a swordsman to defend you from it. Your future is now, this very moment. Don't undo it. Plant your foot firmly where it is for the moment that it is. Don't hedge your life. Don't play out the worst scenarios in your mind. Don't endorse them. Don't magnify them.

Let not fear be the master of you. Do not let fear call the shots. Do not obey fear. Jump over it. Kick it away. Boo it. Leap over your imagined fate.

You count imaginary disasters. You court them.

Instead, court blessings. Blessings can befall you. Make them real more than fear. Embellish the blessings and banish the fears. Lure the good wishes toward you. Entertain that which you desire. Take the cap off your life like the cap off a bottle of effervescent soda, and hold it high before you drink. Hold your life up to the Sun. Hold it up to Me. Hold it up for all to see.

Fear is the coward's way out. It is not for you. Let not fear be your byword. Let goodness and mercy be your bywords, for surely they shall follow you all the days of your life. Have they not?

What strokes of good fortune have you had and still have? What blessings have already crowded around you? What sea of love are you immersed in? Bid more joy toward you. Beckon rewards forward. Greet them as if they were already there, for they are there. They are right before you. Try to see them rather than peril.

Do not buy the world's fears. Do not consider them inevitable. Facts in the world are often collected observations and predictions based upon scary ideas, and the so-called facts keep you down. Doom is so much looked for, as if finding signs of it proves something, but it proves fallacy. Do not choose belief in doom.

Prove the goodness of your heart. Temper the goodness of all men's hearts. Temper good vision. Pick out the future you want, and that is where life will pull you.

Stride forward in life in the direction you want to go. You do not have to go with the masses. Follow a star instead. Follow a star I give you. Follow your own star, for I have given it to you. Go as far as it will take you, and that is very far, very far indeed.

Don't be too comfortable where you are sitting. Avoidance of fear is not your life's mission. Did you think it was?

I did not create you to be a creature of fear. I created you a creature of love. Move in that direction, and fear won't catch you.

What will you do today to change the tone of your life? What brave little thing will you do? What bravery will you contemplate? If you were the bravest soul on Earth, what might you do today from the place where you stand? What might you say and to whom? What stone would you turn, and whose eyes would you light? Where would your loyalty lie, and what changes would you effect?

What would you be doing but unsheathing your heart? You would bare your heart instead of hiding it.

I look to you to help Me usher in the world that man is capable of. I ask you to help Me today.

Sometimes you are little periwinkles hidden in the sand of the ocean.

You are soft-shelled. No matter what armor you may add to yourself, no matter what distance you keep, no matter what hole you bury yourself in, you are a tender morsel of God. No disguise is good enough. You are mortal immortal beings, and everyone knows it, and you know it too. And you pretend other things. The world sets an unreal stage for you.

One moment you see yourself as a power in the world. You swagger. The next you feel chagrined, and you falter. You pirouette in this universal charade, this repetitive show of shows. And all of this is to hide the truth of you that everyone knows.

You chatter so you won't say anything.

You hear by chance.

Two recordings go on at once in your mind. Or three or four. The true, the almost true, the half-true, the false, the stuttered false, the remembered false, the unfettered false. You use much energy just to carry on. It is heavy wearing so many overcoats.

How wonderful to feel the breeze of truth on your skin! How wonderful to exhale it! How wonderful to shake pretense off! How wonderful to be free of the false and to rise as the pure simple truth of you!

I do not embroider you. I do not build you up. I do not pretend you. I do not exalt you. You are already exalted. You are a being from Heaven. You are the same as everyone else, for they are exalted beings as well. All the distress you see is nothing but the cover-up.

What do you think would happen if you let your light shine? What terrible thing would happen? Do you think you would disappear?

You would not disappear. You would appear. You would shine. You would be yourself shining. And yet you fear the day when you rise. You fear it is dissolution, this unmasking of you. Unwarranted fear, for you would not dissolve. YOU are indissoluble.

Only the untrue surrounding the myth of yourself would dissolve. Everything that is you would remain. Only the disheveled would fall off. How tightly you hold on to tattered rags in preference to the shining truth of you!

You are afraid to be laid bare.

Then you say you do not know how to bare your soul. You have not done it in so long.

Baring your soul is not the same as telling the story of your life. Baring your soul is not the telling of deep dark secrets. It is the telling of beauty. It is the naming of beauty itself. From a cave in your heart, the light of truth emerges and lights up the landscape. Strip yourself of subterfuge, and you appear in your shining glory.

Be silent. Put your ear to the silence and listen to your truth. It is not hidden. It would wish to reveal itself, the truth of you. Truth says to you: "You are not this small insignificance you have pretended you are. You are not relegated to this ephemeral body of yours. The body has the least to do with you. Nor does your soul appear in words. Words do not say much. Words, yours and others', have skirted the truth of you for a very long time."

So how do you get to the truth of you?

You leave falsehood behind.

Begin by being silent for once. Observe.

And when you speak, say only words that are true. That means they match your inner heart. That means they are true for you. When you say only words that are true, you do not lift yourself up nor do you put yourself down nor anyone else. It is not your truth that says you don't like that person or another. It is not your truth that says you don't like yourself. It is not your truth that judges. It is not your truth that tries to improve someone else or to change yourself. You do not have to change. All you have to do is to leave off the untrue. All you have to do is to step up into My heart and know that here is the truth of you.

You have to look into the eyes of people you see. Let your eyes dwell on the light revealed. Light is not revealed in clothing or body shape or hair color or car or house. Only eyes reveal light. Others' eyes will ignite your own. This is a big secret I give to you now. Look into eyes. Stop looking elsewhere. See into. Do not look over. Alight your eyes on light. Do not glance. Peer. Do not look away. Look. Eyes call to you. Let eyelights meet in an ecstasy of recognition. You have been avoiding. Look deeply into eyes. Look deeply enough and you will see Me looking at you.

What do you think you are doing now but removing boundaries? Do you think there is another way to get to the boundless? How do you think you get to the boundless? Not by staying as you are. You have been waiting for everything to change but yourself. And all I say is that you must open your eyelids a little to see more, not to keep looking at what you have always seen, but to see what is right in front of you. Now that you are beginning to peek at the boundless, you fear you are seeing less, that something is being taken away from you, when in actuality, you are seeing more.

The boundless is not fenced in, else it would not be boundless. You are accustomed to fences, that's all. That is your situation. You worry what to do and what will happen when you see beyond the safety net of the fences that you pictured around you. They did not keep you safe. They kept you away.

The need for safety is one of your delusions.

You have made safety an industry.

You have made alarms. Alarms alarm you.

I tell you not to be alarmed. I tell you to open your eyelids a little bit so that you can see a greater horizon.

What did Columbus do? He ascertained that no one can fall off the edge of the earth because there is no edge. He quelled fear. The fear was imagined.

I tell you that all fear is imagined. All danger is imagined. Why don't you imagine something better than danger?

The earth beneath your feet is made of My light. The earth beneath your feet is as much My light as are the Heavens above. If there is no up and no down, then you can just as well walk in Heaven as on earth. It takes a little daring only because you have been misinformed.

Actually, it has been daring of you to stay in the same place you are. I mean place of awareness. It is not so much to avoid danger that your life is about. It is to grasp opportunity. How do you grasp what you cannot see? Only by a lot of waving of the arms. But when you can see, what can you not grasp? Which grape can you not pluck?

Why be satisfied with one bunch of grapes in your hand when your vision can encompass the whole vineyard?

Whatever you think you have grasped in your life with your hands, it is a small part of what you have been offered. Whatever you have grasped in your life with your hands, no matter how solid it may seem to you — it is moving away from your grasp as We speak. In truth, it is only the eyes that can grasp. The eye takes. Then the heart can accept.

The hands really do not hold on to anything. Nothing stays still in the land of movement and relativity except Our Oneness. Whatever your hand has clasped, that is already moving away from your grip.

The grapes ripen. They are picked. Or they are not picked. They drop from the vine. They are eaten or not eaten. The grapes are a passing thing. Even the vineyard is a passing thing for the presumed owner of the vineyard, for the owner of the vineyard is not an owner. He is a caretaker. No matter how many deeds to the land he may hold, his ownership is nothing but a piece of paper. Nothing is owned. All is lent. Or it is a gift for a short time.

But where the vineyard came from, that is permanent.

Where you came from, that is permanent.

The essence of the vineyard and the essence of you, they remain. It is one essence, and that essence never changes. It is immutable. Would you not like to see more of what is the truth of you? Would you not like to see the essence that runs through all of life?

Would you not like to give it a name? Would you not like to give the Nameless a name? As a matter of fact, you have.

I am variously called God and Love and the Eternal.

And that is the essence of the vineyard.

And that is the essence of everyone. You are called by a sound that is identified as your name, but that name is not your essence. Your individual name is an alias. You must know that. You are One, and your name is One. Grasp that.

You keep looking for answers. You attempt to reason with life. You look for logic. You look for evidence. You look for proof. You look for life to make sense to you. In a field of flowers, you look for a giraffe. In the middle of the ocean, you look for an elephant. In turmoil, you look for parity.

But life is not about logic. Life is about love. Make love your battle-cry, not justice. Justice can only come from judgment, and you have been told not to judge, for so you will be judged, for so you judge yourself. The main thing is that judgment slows you down in life. Judgment is a plug. Judgment is a reckoning, and there is no reckoning with life. Justice seeks to right a wrong but has no answer. Seeking answers is seeking in the wrong place. Anyway, judgment is beside the point.

If you are caught in a trap, the question isn't how you got there or how foolish you were or how bad something or someone else was or how you can even the score. The question is: "How do you get out?" That is logic.

When you wrestle with justice, you can only stay on the mat. Wrestling with justice is like punching the same bag over and over again, perhaps from a different angle, but yet still in the same spot. Seeking justice, you dig in. You dig yourself in. You pommel yourself into a crazy circle. The only answer possible for you is to rise above.

Rise above justice, and you are on a new plane, a new playing field, much wider, one that is free. Judgment and justice clamp your freedom. They are hands that grab you by the neck and won't let go. In demanding justice to right injustice, you set another trap for yourself.

Scurrying across the surface of life, you look for a balance. Balance is a measure. Life can't be measured. Trying to measure life is a fruitless task. Life is to move forward in, not measure. It is that simple.

Wherever you are in life now, in a valley or on a peak, you cannot stay in the same place forever, do you agree? Why then stay in the justice mode? It makes you pout. Move forward instead. There is only going towards. Justice and judgment divert you from the reliability of truth.

You look for earth to satisfy you. Earth life becomes your mission. You seek to convert others to your well-being. To your satisfaction. To your sense of things. To your will. But what can you catch in worldly life and hold onto? What is this justice you seek? And what do you have when you get it?

Come back to a higher place. See beyond the humdrum and the details of life that you try to match up together.

Come back to love.

If you want evenness in life, match yourself up with Me.

The only fairness in life is love.

That is the whole story.

Love balances and erases everything. Even a little oil turns a squeaky door into a quiet-moving one.

Everything evens out in love. Rather, what was uneven disappears. Love holds only itself. Therefore, love lets go. Love yourself enough to let go of past wrongs. Love is fair value. With judgment, you compress yourself whereas love expands you. Throw off the chains of justice and judgment. Choose to love rather than indict.

You have thought that you are not supposed to have any adversity in your day to day life. You have thought that everything is supposed to go smoothly. You must have thought that, or why would you be fraught when adversity comes. You are dumbfounded when life strews obstacles in front of you. Therefore, unwelcome events frustrate you. Unwelcome events block your light. And you don't understand why you have them. You see them as intruders, invading forces, sent to thwart you.

It is not that you want to invite untoward events, but when they come, have the idea that it's all right. It's all right for all your desires not to be filled, or not to be filled now, how and when you want them. It's all right.

Obstacles may be in your path but they don't have to be in your way. They just are there. They may be there for reasons that have nothing to do with you. They may be there for no reason at all. In any case, they don't have to be your foe. You don't have to duel with them. Consider them unimportant rather than all-important. They are not personal vendettas.

What if you considered obstacles as signposts, telling you how many miles you have traveled. What if obstacles are like traffic cops, waving you forward? What if obstacles are speed bumps, there to help you slow down?

What if obstacles aren't so bad as you have thought. Would they then discourage you as they do? Obstacles are surmountable. You can surmount them. They don't have to cut you off, neither from joy nor your destination.

Rather than sniping at obstacles, blow kisses to them instead. Kindly help them to move over. They may not have wanted to be there any more than you wanted them. Be polite. Obstacles are innocent. They are as innocent as you.

You have heard that obstacles are really manifestations of you. That thought often defeats you, makes you feel powerless, makes you get into a loop of asking why and getting nowhere. Turn your thinking in another direction.

Consider that obstacles stir something within you that is ready to be stirred. Consider that the timing is perfect. Consider that obstacles indicate a spurt of growth within you. You need new shoes to fit into. What is so terrible about that? Why would you groan that you are growing? Why would you object to being taller? Would you complain about being promoted?

Consider obstacles like books you read. Once a second-grade primer was hard. Now you read books with a greater vocabulary and smaller print. Be glad.

Obstacles are not meant to defeat you. They are meant to be progress. They don't have to be problems. They certainly don't have to be problems that are bigger than you. Nothing is bigger than you! When will you accept that?

Now, all this that I am saying doesn't mean that you never can turn around. Sometimes it's perfectly fine not to go all the way through the forest. Sometimes It is better to turn around. But you do not always have to turn around either.

Whether you go forward or retreat, you cannot prevent life. Let life be an enabler for you, and you an enabler for it. Be an embellisher of life. Make a tapestry of it. Make it a beautiful brocade. Life does not have to be a straight line. It can curve. You are just around the bend.

There is a tendency in My children to bemoan whatever state they happen to be in. When they are in love, it is too much for them. When they are not in love, they wonder what is wrong with them, and will they ever love again?

Must you think that whatever is going on right now is so crucial that your very life depends on it? that it is really the making or the undoing of you?

Whatever you are going through now, soon enough it is gone. And you remain. Daunted or undaunted, you remain.

If you are devastated, you still exist. If you have supreme happiness, you're still here. What is changed? Are you different? Are you really?

Surely you learn from all that occurs. You may be wiser, or you may not. When all is said and done, how much difference does your wisdom or lack of wisdom really make!

In some cases, you may have learned to close the treasure of your heart. Or you have learned the folly of closing it.

One thing you can always learn is that there is more to an experience than meets the eye. And there is also less. How momentous is momentous when it has passed? Not so very. How exciting is a book, after all, once you have finished reading it?

Certainly, life educates you. You do learn something from it. But the main purpose of life is not educational. Or, if it is, We can say it is to learn joy. But joy cannot be learned. But what hampers joy can be unlearned, and you will.

Life comes in installments. As you see it, life comes in like bills every month and it comes in like congratulatory letters. Life is a good mix.

And when mail comes, you don't always know what the envelope contains. Open all letters the same. Eventually, they all get tossed out. What they say becomes laid to rest.

Much mail is concurrent, and some is consecutive. But rain or shine, the mail is delivered. Why not welcome all of it?

Prepare yourself for joy, for it is inevitable. Turn a kindly eye to the adventures in life that present themselves to you. They are advancements. They definitely further you along. All of them. And the time comes when they are all done. You can be done with them now.

Consider life a great feast with many courses. When one course is done, the plates are cleared. And then another course comes for you to partake of. All are not to your taste, but what a wonderful thing to have a variety of dishes.

Consider life an artist's palette. You would not want only one color. No matter how much you love purple, you want other colors too.

If life were served to you just as you like, think a moment. Everything perfectly as you ordered it. Even so, something wouldn't be perfect. You would find something to be dissatisfied with. You wanted more of this or you wanted less of that, or you might have preferred a different sequence or — you may think you know what you want your life to be, you may think you want a steady diet of peaches and cream, but even peaches and cream you will tire of or find fault with sooner or later.

Dissatisfaction arises from within you, not from the outward events. But do not be dismayed that this is so. This is all another way of saying that My children always want more. And when they have more, they want again. And is this not a good thing to desire more good to come?

All you have to do is lift the veil off your eyes. Do you agree that you have been looking through shields? It is the strangest thing that you avert your eyes from Mine.

But now you can see. Take your hands off your eyes. Open your fingers, and let My light come through. Let Me see into your eyes. Let Me have that joy.

For you are indeed My joy. If you would believe that, with what alacrity your life would change. Your whole mode of existence would change. There would be a quickening of your step. Your feet would hardly alight. You would reveal My light exquisitely.

And, of course, you are My light. You are a firefly of light. You beacon Mine. Your journey in life is coming to realize what light you are. When you perceive that, even just a glimpse of that, your attention changes from the paltry to the magnificent.

Your whole scope changes. You think in bigger terms. Not so much in terms of your life or a particular event close to you. You think in terms of life entire, and you see that all of life is close to you. You become its parent. You parent life. You minister to life. You make life easier. You help it out.

Instead of enclosing yourself, you open the universe. You open it for all. And therefore your life expands. You find that you are on a frontier of life, and you are a leader of it, and what do leaders do but make the way easier for those who accompany and follow.

You cut the brambles. You hold back branches so others may pass. Your existence becomes greater than it is now because you begin to see the inter-relatedness of everything with everything. You begin to see how you affect the universe powerfully. You begin to see your significance.

As you see your significance, you see the significance of others. Once you see the significance of truth, you can no longer live for just yourself. You cannot deny Truth any longer. You raise the horizon of the universe. You open the gates of Heaven, and you hold them open as you did the brambles for others to pass through. You pave the way, and you hold open the gates.

You are an opener of life. You used to think you had to catch it, or avoid it, and now you know that you are an opener of life. You no longer wait for someone else to open up life. You hesitate no longer. You are the one.

This is a happy realization for you. Now you know that you breathe for all. Now you know that you venture forth for all. Now that you begin to know your magnificence, you cannot stay in your corner any longer. You have to get up. You cannot sit still any longer. You become the host of life. You host it.

You are the greeter. You greet everyone to it. You give everyone something. You meet them with something, and you leave them with something. No longer can you pass through others' lives unnoticed, nor can you any longer ignore the heartbeat of others or pretend that you do.

You are a representative of all on earth. If you are My agent, you represent My constituency entire. You are My hopes and My dreams for earth, and you are the revealer of them. You give morsels of Me out to all in your path. You leave Me everywhere. You leave something of Me everywhere. You leave tokens of God. In the sway of your passage, you leave the message, in one way or another, that God is, and God has been in this place, and God is for all.

Petty thoughts glue you to earth. Vast thoughts free you to Heaven.

Perhaps that is all I have to say today.

I could elaborate and say that petty thoughts are like mites or dust particles, and vast thoughts are like dolphins that swim through the ocean waters.

What a troublemaker the mind is! It sews needless stitches around and around.

Let your random thoughts be like stars. Let them come out, but then blink and be gone the next day before the sun rises.

Or let your small thoughts be like moths that go too near the flame and burn themselves up.

When you stop having small thoughts, grand ones are left.

It may be that small pesky thoughts come to you unbidden, but you can shoo them away. You sure don't have to keep them. There are other thoughts you can think. Unlike money, small thoughts amassed do not become fortunes. They remain small thoughts amassed.

Let the love I hold for you well up inside you. Love will clear your thoughts. Non-productive thoughts and My love (all love is Mine) cannot exist in the same breath. Waves of thoughts about Me fill your mind with a translucency that outshines all other thoughts.

Isn't it amazing how My children can have little thoughts that dwarf their awareness of My presence?

You could consider your wayward thoughts like smog. But your say over your thoughts is great.

When it comes to Me, be aware of the love you absorb. There is not a cell in your body where I am not. You would not superimpose something else over Me, would you? And yet small thoughts overlap love and often disallow it.

Instead of thinking so much, substitute love. Put away your clever thoughts. Put away your sense of righteousness. All of your multitudinous thoughts are no substitute for one drop of love. Thoughts are just fillers. The way to fill your mind with love is to empty it of all that is not. Bail out your small thoughts like water from a boat.

Let love rise in your mind. Let love occupy your mind. If you took all worry and fears from your mind, love would be left. Instead of thoughts, you would have awareness. Let your mind get out of the way of love.

Rather than criticism, let your love pounce. Instead of feeling aggravation, irritation, annoyance, perplexity, insecurity, feel love. You can do anything. You can do My blessings on earth. What would prevent you, and why would you let it?

From this day forward, let your love fall like snow upon a barren ground. Let the whiteness of your love cover the earth and transform it to its rightful beauty. Unlike snow, love is not melted. Love is the melter, and it melts whatever is less than itself. It melts barriers to the discovery that only love is and love is all that matters. Nothing else does.