topazz28's Blog

You are at least ten times more sensitive than you ever need to be. What makes you so sensitive is that you take everything so seriously, so very seriously, so inordinately seriously. Words are like knives to you. A look is a machete. And certain deeds are like buzz saws. Words are just sounds and intonation made from mouths or written on paper. Your life and your well-being depend not upon words, and, yet, to you, words seem to be that serious.

Be more remote. Take not personally. Even when you are the person addressed, no one is addressing you. They may be talking to you or about you, but what they think of you has to do with them and not you at all. Everyone has his own picture album. Everyone misconstrues. There is a screen within everyone where old scenes are played, and you have been taken for someone in the past or a situation in the past. Someone else is watching his own script. Even if he calls your name, he is responding to someone or something in his past, or he would not get so het up about it. You just happen to be nearby or handy to vent on.

The other person who may be lashing out at you, no matter how unknowingly, is reading from an old script. He has his agenda, and it may be a total surprise to you.

When you feel that a person is wronging you, he is undoubtedly a prisoner of his past. He sees clouds instead of sunshine. He sees you as a cloud. His poor vision does not turn you into a cloud. You can still be the sun and shine on even the one who spurns you. If you really mean nothing to another person, he wouldn’t focus on you. Yet, of course, he is focusing on himself. He could be having joy instead of putting you down.

He may not be demeaning you at all, yet you are tied to a perhaps long-forgotten past, and you are not seeing straight either.

Improve your eyesight. Change what you want changed. You can do it. So why not do it?

If you knew of a sure-fire way to gain happiness, wouldn’t you use it? Of course, you would. I am telling you how. You gain happiness in proportion to how much of the past you let go. For what reason would you accede to the past? Especially, when it was not wonderful then, why would you look for the past again at every turn? When you keep the past in front of you, you live your life as if you were walking through a mine field. You are stuck in the mine-field. You dodge mines that are not even there. They are long past.

When you resurrect old thoughts and ways of thinking, you batter yourself from pillar to post. You wear yourself out. All because you see with old vision. Old vision does not stand you in good stead now. If it didn’t back then, it sure doesn’t now. Let go of the past, and you will create a new present, not a present fraught with past pain, but a present sought with joy. One way or the other, the past is fraught with pain. Who would choose pain when he can choose freedom?

In Heaven all is new. In Heaven all is in now time. This means that all is new. All is as if new. New music, new time, new events, new cast of characters. In Heaven, the past does not hold. In Heaven, the past is known as water under the bridge. Come get some fresh water.

When matters seem to get in the way, when little troubles with inanimate objects pile up, the car won’t start, the computer acts up, the kitchen faucet drips, then, beloveds, turn the other cheek of your mind. Your sense of humor had been hiding, and now you will find it.

In the world, things are not always in your command. The fewer things you have, the less will be your wrestling with them. It is not for the mechanical item to understand more, to behave better, to stop or to start. It is innocent. You may be too, but you are the Human Being. No need to kick the tire of your car.

When you drop a favorite dish and it breaks, you don’t blame the dish. You may blame your wet hands or the configuration of stars or your cluttered counter, but you don’t blame the dish. You are sorry it is broken, but you don’t vent anger on it. Why then on inanimate things that don’t act according to your will?

Physical things are only physical things. They are at your mercy, beloveds. You are not at theirs. Get a little distance between you and obstructions that presently seem to overtake your life. Aggravations are only aggravations. You cannot get caught up in them. A washing machine is only a washing machine. A car is only a car. A kitchen faucet is only a faucet. And yet you let them wound your heart and ruin your day.

And, beloveds, when you aggravate over other people, there is a part of you that is looking at people as ungainly objects who are in your way, also responsible for how you feel. We come back again and again that your feelings belong to you. Your irateness is your irateness. The puddle you step in is not the cause of your mood. The customer service person who doesn’t hear a word you say is not the cause of your mood. A knife is not responsible for a gash. It is the hand that holds the knife, When it comes to your stabbing thoughts, most often the hand is your own. You do not have to wound yourself, beloveds, with the incorrigible contingencies of life. Cars are going to break down. Computers and customer service personnel are not always going to serve you. Glass breaks, dust falls, and unexpected obstacles will trip you. You live in the relative world. Beloveds, why are you surprised? Why are you so adamant?

You could occupy your life with fighting every little thing. You could always be standing with your dukes up. Every minute you could find some cause to aggravate you. A door won’t close. Traffic goes slow. A dress fell off its hanger. Beloveds, fall off your anger. Pick up the dress, and be done with it.

If you want excellent health, walk through obstacles and come out the other side. You have had an idea that you have to have anger, that somehow it serves you. I do not say you must not have anger. I am suggesting that it may not serve you. Anger keeps the psychiatrists and courts busy, and expression of anger fills the world, and yet, no matter what incites the anger, anger does not have to rule and occupy the territory of your life so much. Anger does not have to be.

Forgiveness is the release of anger. Angriness is not the release of anger. And if you feel anger, you do not always have to express it. Acknowledge it, and move on. Don’t keep dragging it with you. You may feel that anger pulls you, but anger is the cart that you pull. No matter how justified, no matter how right you are, anger is anger, and you do not have to have it.

Much of the time in life, you sputter. You go back and forth in activity as though it were a loom. Sometimes you dart here and there so as not to think or not to do that which is before you to do. You spin your wheels, beloved. You already know that.

That is all right. Just acknowledge that is what you are doing, that you are getting caught up in something that is not significant, just occupying yourself with it. It is true that you do have to be occupied with something while you are on Earth. You are never really doing nothing. Even when you are sitting still, you have thoughts going around. Even when you are sitting still, you are contemplating getting up! You play well the game called Activity.

Whatever you are doing or not doing, your thoughts are somewhere, staying focused or going hither and yon. Always you want to know what is the point of any given activity or non-activity, even when you know the point is love. Wherever you meander, remember love. Remember that is what you are here for. Just have that in your awareness. Even when you are lying on the grass and looking up at the sky, you are in the line of love. You are giving and receiving it. At this moment, as you read My words, you are in the mainstream of love.

Keep your attention easily on love and the awareness that love is your purpose. Anger is not. Disappointment is not. Boredom is not. When in love, what place is there for boredom?

What is it like to be in love? Be it. Be love. Be in love with something, yet love needs no object in order to be love. Be in love with love then. Be a painter of love who spatters it. Be one who writes love on a window-pane or in the air. Write love in invisible ink, and still it is written.

Do even that which you do not like to do in the frame of love. There is no other way to do it. No matter how menial the task, make it one of love. No matter how much you don’t like to do it, you can still do it for love. No matter how repetitive a task, it can be repeated in love.

You know resistance very well. You know how to be stubborn. Now be stubborn in your donating of love to the universe. Whatever you are called on to do, do it with love in your heart. All you have to do is to remind yourself of love, and love is there. Love comes at your bidding. Bid love to come. Bid love to assist you. Bid love to give itself so that love may be known.

If you would take all the resistance you use to push against something and transform it into doing something and doing it with love, what a world you would live in. If you would persist in love as you persist in resentment and all that sort of bother, what a Human Being you would be. What a life you would create, all because you dwelled on love. Can there possibly be anything as important as love?

What is the good of anything without love? Love is foremost. Everything else is secondary. Put love in its rightful place, and then all else follows. All else takes a back seat.

Let business be founded in love. Let money be founded in love. Love is great energy. It is the energy that will sustain you. It is the energy that does sustain you. Now, sustain love regardless of anything.

When I ask you how you are, what will you say? With Me actually right here with you, sitting across from you in the counselor's chair, what would you say to Me? Would you really list your grievances? I think you would not. I think you would be so enthralled at My presence that you would either have nothing to say or you would gush appreciation. I don't think you would even remember one complaint. In the bright light of Truth, what could you possibly think of to protest. What would there be to say when My light shines on you and you beam in it?

How much worth are all your hurts and aggravations? Even the mighty ones. Would they even matter in My presence? Whatever life and limb you had lost, what would be its significance when you sit knee to knee in the parlor with Me.

You would not even ask for My blessing because, in My presence, you would know only of blessing. Shadows of life would retreat, evanesce, and all there would be left would be Our light. You would know you have only been blessed. You would know your light in eternity with Me.

You would see that you had never been out of it.

You would see the glory of Human existence and know it for what it is.

You would see nothing else. You would know there is nothing else to see but blessed beautiful light shining everywhere and you would wonder how you had ever missed it.

By then, you probably wouldn't even remember that you had missed it, so consumed in light would you be. You would know there was nothing else. You would know only Light, and that nothing else can glint in Our Light.

Bedazzled in light, you would know only Light. You would know Love, and you would know Eternity. You would be aflame in all of it. All your myriad thoughts would have vanished at the first glimpse of Light. That which you thought was intelligence would vanish in the presence of Intelligence.

That which you thought was yourself would be laughable in the light of yourSelf. Illumed in My light, you would see yours.

You and I are Twin Flames. All your life you had searched for a soul mate, and now you know that I am the One you have been searching for. And where was I all this time but right with you? How careless you have been in your insight!

You have seen Truth today, and like Scrooge you have been given a second chance. You left with an assignment I gave you, and you have been returned to life on earth. Like Rip Van Winkle, you wake up and see a changed world. You are not the same as you were on what you thought was the day before. Like Columbus, you have set forth to find a new land, and you have reached it. This is different soil you step on today.

This is the real You today, and this is real Life today.

The assignment I gave you was to shed My light everywhere.

And now that you know what to do and you know there is nothing else in existence but My light, what else can you do but share it?

You know now that you are the fulfiller of everyone's dreams. You are the angel dispatched to earth as a beacon light of Truth. I have sent you. I always had. But now you know. And now it is yours to do.

Lay down light for all to see by. Lay down a carpet of love for all to walk on. Make your awareness a handrail for all to hold. Strew petals of My love everywhere. What else on earth is there to do?

God above all. God alone is. There is nothing more to say. The thought of Our exquisite Oneness precludes any other thought. What else is there worth thinking about. What other thought can compare? What other candle can be seen amidst Our light?

You are My beloved, and I love well. I know how to love. Love is My Consciousness. Although I recognize the unwieldy sense of problem that occupies you, I certainly do not relate into the concept of problem. My vision is greater. I have love to think about. I have love to engender from sea to shining sea. I see from the topmost mountain. My view is great. I am God above all any way you look at it.

Let Us say that I include everyone in My Will, and that is, of course, fact. I am eternal, and yet I bequeath all to you. I embrace you so dearly to My heart that there is no distinction between you and Me except that you set yourself apart for some undisclosed illusion of purpose. And yet you are still a satellite of the One God Who created and maintains the Universe. I am the Crux of it. And you are beloved in My embrace.

We are great, you and I. If you would glimpse the wonderful Oneness of Us for just one moment, no shoes would be big enough or fast enough for your feet. No coat would hide your wings. You would know nothing but soaring. You would know that soaring is another name for love.

You would know the love that is yours. You would know My love as yours. Swept up in My arms, you could only be swept up in My love. Love alone I am. And love alone are you.

In terms of love on earth, you have been a stutterer. You have looked at love as though it were a craft. You have surmised love through squinted eyes and have seen it as a result or as an object that is transferred, a deal made, a business arrangement of sorts, an exchange of love, when the truth of love is that it swims in itself. You have thought that love was difficult.

Love encompasses the world. Love is the medium.

I am a God of Love, and you are a Child of Love, and you are not all those other things you have thought. The world gave you an appraised value, and you believed in it. You believed in it more than you believed in anything I said. But that changes nothing but your perception, and now you must change your perception.

The extent of you is far greater than anything the world has ever indicated. The power of your thought is as great as the power of world thought. It is greater.

Align your thoughts more closely with Mine. Hear what I call to you. Hear Me say your name and proclaim you so that all the world may hear.

Even if the world cannot hear Me, you can. You can hear Me very well. I speak in your heart. I speak with and without words — yet no words can say what I have to say. What words can possibly express the totality of love. No words can capture My love. No words can encapsulate the love I give to you.

But you can hear. And your heart can swell with the love heretofore sequestered. Today the love in your heart is released. Love yourself, and then you will love your neighbor with all your heart, because your heart is a great gift I have given to you to commandeer all the love in Heaven so you may reveal it to the world who hungers for it.

When you release your attachment to ideas, you release yourself to Me. You come closer. Do you see? Attachment is resistance. As you resist less, you let go, and so you relax, and where is relaxation but with Me?

Your holding, gripping, and clutching on to the events and locations and people of the world means you have let go of Me. I do not tell you to abandon the world. I tell you to let go of your hold on it, or its hold on you. Do not tug the world or the people in it. Leave them to their own orbit. Release your hold because, unless you do, you are bound to that which you hold.

What do you want to be bound to? Others? Your ideas? What can hold more, the hand or the heart? And the heart holds by not holding. The heart must free in order to be itself free.

When you are free, you are with Me.

You do not need to hold on to Me, for I hold you.

When you can let go of your supposed hold on Me, you have faith. Faith is knowing you can let go of your grip even on Me.

Often My children have thought of Me as their whip to crack. It's so, isn't it? You have wanted Me to dance to your tune. You have wanted Me to obey.

Let go of that wearying control, and then you are Christ. Then you are My Will. Then you know no other.

It is ego alone that has needs. Very needy is ego, for it is nothing and has nothing but its attachment to you. All you hold onto on earth is food for your ego. But your ego is not soul. And your ego is not you. You have no need for ego. You have need for awareness. As your awareness grows, your ego can only flee, and you are free from it and all that it consumes, and then you are free, and then you have lighted Our Oneness, and you, who are always in My awareness, become My awareness too.

What are miracles but the absence of ego?

What are miracles but everyday occurrences that arise from themselves without your input? They are surprises. The word miracles has to do with what you see. There have been many unseen miracles, not taken note of, not observed but overlooked.

You do not like it when I say that all of life is a miracle, because you want MIRACLES. You want sudden happenings out of the ordinary. But I tell you that nothing is ordinary but your perception.

What does this have to do with you?

It is advice to open your eyes a little more.

There are no little miracles. Because they are everyday does not mean they are of no account.

See the little miracles, and they will grow into breath-taking splendors. And then you will see that there is only the splendor of life as it is, and that it is miracle.

You are one of My miracles.

You are one of the wonders of the world.

And the greatest wonder is that you don't accept that.

You would rather accept lack than fullness.

I tell you that you are full.

You are full of My love.

You only think you are your own personality, but you are not that fragileness.

Your personality is a digression.

You digress from Me.

Christ did not perform miracles.

He allowed them.

He had recognition, not doubt.

Least of all did he doubt his worth to Me.

He was not concerned with himself to even spend time doubting. He had work to do in service to Me, and his eyes were on Me and not himself. That was his service. And service is honor. He was knighted by angels to work for Me. And so have you been. You simply haven't noted the tap on your shoulder.

And what is it you have to do?

Not much.

Think of Me. Walk in My light. Be true to yourself. Follow your heart to Me. Stop following other things. When you follow your heart to Me, you lead. You follow, and you lead. Following and leading are inseparable, as We are inseparable. Look at Me, and know your truth.

Money is a microcosm of the world. It is a great purveyor of the world. It is nothing by itself. It is what people make of it or do with it.

One who has it shares it. Another who has it keeps it to himself. Another takes someone else's. One spends what they don't have. Another duns to collect his debts. Another erases.

Money can be a great blessing. It can also be a great bone of contention. Or the whole issue of money can be denied.

The thought of money makes you happy or sad or bitter or discontent or distressed or hopeful or hopeless.

The holding of money is equated with power. The withholding of it by one who has it also is powerful. Possession of money is dominance. Lack of money is equated with weakness and makes one who has not feel subservient.

Money has great world value. What a scorecard it has been made! Insignificant paper is made significant according to what is printed on it. Oh, much value is set on it, on pieces of paper that can be torn up and tossed into a stream as well as intact pieces of paper that are considered gold and circulated throughout the world. Or mere notations of money are also counted and transferred without ever touching hands.

But money that never touches your hand also wields its power. It is in the bank. Or it is in the market. You are up or down with it.

The word "money" is connected to the word for hand. Money was handed around. There was touch connected with money, and the word "touch" is still associated with money. But now, it seems, that money has gotten out of hand.

Who owns the money? What is its great attraction, and what is the drive for it?

And what is it anyway? Certainly, you never want to be without it. You know you don't want to be without it, this microcosm of the world of men.

In the world, money is everything, and yet all know it is nothing. Yet the search for it pursues you. You are driven to possess it, keep it, or spend it. Money is like a demon in Human life when you scratch for it. But it can be an archangel when it benefits the Human screen of life.

What God do you serve with money, Me or ego? Money is not your livelihood. I am. What currency do you pay Me in? There is only one modicum you can pay Me in and that is the heart. The hand is connected to the heart. The hand that receives or gives money is connected to the heart. To what does your heart wish to give? Pray that your heart yearn to give out and not only take in.

Give your heart now. You who can buy now, and pay later, spend your heart now. Do not wait. Do not save your heart for a better day the way you save money for a rainy one. Spend your heart now.

When you have great riches accorded to you, what will your heart do with them? How many purchases will come before a thought of Me? Don't feel bad. I am not scolding you. I am just pointing out where I seem to be on your list. Give yourself credit if I am on your list at all.

Scatter your blessings back to Me, for you know that I am from Whom all blessings flow. I am not exacting a trade from you. I am just telling you how to best live in the world.

The exchange of money is another attempt at wholeness. You really do want to connect with the whole of humanity and be blended in Oneness. However you engage with money, it is your search for Oneness. The good you do comes back to Me.

Intention is energy. It is a certain kind of energy, powerful and unwasted.

Intention is like the lowering of a raft boat into the sea. Intention is like a paintbrush dipped into a certain color. Intention is like an upside-down funnel filled from the pointed end and poured out from the wide. Intention is like an arrow that becomes many arrows spread out. Intention is the opening of a door that opens, not into another room, but into a vista. Intention is an airplane ticket valid for an around-the-world-tour. Intention starts you from where you think you are and takes you where you want to go. Intention is the instrument by which a pilot sets his course. The course is set, and that is where the plane will go, and the pilot sits back.

Set your intention, and release your hold. I will take over. Set your intention, and let life unfold. Otherwise, you stab at life. Otherwise, you are like someone who gashes open a locked suitcase with stabs of a knife, when all the while the key was in the lock and a touch of the clasp would open the suitcase and reveal its treasure. You do not have to wrench life open. Let the intention of your heart open it for you.

Life is not lived by will. You do not will more joy. Will has a certain force to it, and force is control. Control keeps fulfillment away; it does not bring it. Consider the difference between the energy of insistence and the energy of intention. Which goes further? Which lasts? Which takes you where you want to go?

Attract what you want your life to be. Draw it to you with your intention.

Consider yourself a fisherman. First know which kind of fish you want to catch, and then you cast your line into the lake where the fish swim. Cast your intention into the lake that holds your deepest desires.

Maybe you just fish where you happen to be. Then intend to catch what you desire.

Intention is not a plan. It is an intent. It is a leaning in the direction. Intent is your eyes seeing into the distance, and then you simply follow the path of your eyes.

Or consider that you are at a train station. What is the name of the train you want to go on? There are many local trains around, and you can hop on them again and again. But perhaps there is a train that goes a further distance. It will also take you where the local does but it will surpass the local and take you beyond where you have thought you were.

What is your will? What is the meaning of your will? Your will may be a little peevish. Certainly next to Mine it is. Your will is many little hops. My Will is the express train that will take you where you want to go. Intend to catch the God's Will Express, for that is how you discover the magnificence of your own being.

This is what I mean by your having asked for too little. You want this and that and not that and this, but you see too little. You haven't seen far enough. You have missed some wonders to choose from.

Catch My vision. I give it to you. When you have trust in yourself, you will have faith in Me. By your faith in Me, you accept My vision as your own.

Your will is fishing in a small pond.

My Will covers the oceans.

Come beside Me, and cast your line into the depths of the ocean where treasure is to be found.

What is love worth? How big can love grow? True love, love that is not dependent upon the external, love that arises from your heart and alights everywhere, love that depends upon itself and itself alone. It isn’t dependent upon anyone or anything but itself. The love I speak of never runs out of itself. That is because love is the fuel to its own fire. True love is its own kindling. Love sees with the eyes of love. There are no splinters in the eyes of love. I love you young, and I love you old.

As you grow in love, not your capacity for love, for your capacity of love is utter right now, but as you grow in giving love without requiring certain attributes, then you love as I do love. Then you love because you love. Then you are love radiant that lights up any room and all the beating hearts in the room.

This is not a scholarly treatise I give. I am giving you the straight goods. The love you can give is equal to the love I give. I give without doubt. I am not mushy, yet I give love the same way you breathe. Love is Mine to give, and I give it. I give it fulsomely.

Once you countermand ego, then you too can give love without requirement. Whatever someone thinks of Me or does not think of Me does not alter My love. My love is a given. There is no way to stop the flow of My love. The little considerations that influence your love are not considerations to Me. I love because I love. Whether you are true to Me or not leaves no mark on My love. Nothing touches My love. The love I give is a given. My heartbeat cannot be stopped. It cannot be paused. My love is and it pours in sunshine or in rain. It pours in Heaven, and it pours on Earth. Love, which is never routine, never fluctuates in this heart of Mine.

My heart is full of love, and I have no ego. I do not have a speculated need to make Myself important. I do not have to have applause or even approbation or any standing at all. And you don’t either. Your heart doesn’t require the prods to love that the world holds sacred. We are not speaking of personal love here. We are not speaking of the mad dash of love that is rampant on Earth. We are not speaking of love that is dependent upon anything at all.

We are talking about your natural vision. When your eyes are clear, when judgment and ego leave, you too are left with love that soars and displaces all the riff-raff that got deposited in your heart. Enough of requirements for love.

Just love. You do not need someone to be a certain height before you can love him. He does not have to be of a certain profession. He doesn’t have to be somebody. He can be anybody. There are no illusions to your love once you get the hang of it. You simply love. You simply love, and your love covers everyone.

This is not an effort, you understand. If you have to cringe in order to exhale love, that may be noble, but it is not love. Love is not noble, you understand. Love exacts no price. There is no bargaining with love. Love is a state of consciousness, and once you see from a larger vantage, once you remove hidden and unhidden judgment, you will simply love. There will be love, and you will be it.

Heavenletter #2683 Published on: March 30, 2008

To have peace, there must be honesty. Pretend peace isn't peace. It is good you want to live up to your ideals, but a pretense of living up to your ideals is a far cry from living them. I know you want to feel loving, and you don't always feel loving. Sometimes then you have gritted your teeth. I know it is not easy for you. You don't want to dissemble. You don't want to pretend what is not, and yet you do not want to have anything in your heart but love. And so you drum up love, and you try to maintain equanimity, or We could say you feign it.

Perhaps you tell yourself that you must mask your true feelings. Certainly, sometimes it makes sense to simply be polite. You do not run around telling everyone everything that bothers you. Certainly, you want your attention on the fair and fine in life, and yet, you cannot always tamp down your feelings, swallow them as though they do not exist. Not forever can you.

You would be perfectly happy to transcend what ails you if only you could. Meanwhile, you may stifle your feelings. Is it not a law of physics that steam expands? That it cannot be closed up forever?

And so your feelings cannot stay bottled up. Despite your good intentions, your feelings will burst out - in tears, perhaps, or in anger and words you later wish you hadn't spoken.

Perhaps it will be good to assign a time, perhaps once a week, when you and your loved ones will meet to amiably discuss what you are feeling, and what your loved ones may also be feeling. Such a regular meeting sets up a framework where your feelings and needs can be addressed amicably. Such an assigned meeting takes the sting out. It is friendly and easy-going. It is not a confrontation. It is a meeting that acknowledges that both of you are vulnerable human beings and that sometimes you are subject to frustration. It is a meeting that allows for openness and the effusion of pure hearts.

It becomes not a question of who or what is right but rather what is going on.

What a wonderful thing such a meeting would be in the workplace. Employer and employee meet one on one to discuss what each can do for the other. Such a meeting recognizes that there are needs that can be met. It recognizes the value of open safe communication. With such meetings, there will be no need for flare-ups. With such meetings, employees will not be complaining, nor will employers. There would not be a need to complain. There would be no talking behind one another's back.

Think, if instead of parent teacher conferences, there were student teacher conferences, one on one. What if the teacher asked the student: "What can I do to make our classroom meaningful to you? What can I do for you? Please tell me, and I will do it." What need for outbursts would there be in the classroom then? What need would there be for outbursts at all? Who would want them?

A simple thing, an arrangement whereby two sentient beings meet to see how things are going and what can be done to make them better. Two people meeting with a common goal. No longer are they stuffed into the roles of teacher and student. The teacher isn't controlling the student, and the student has no need to rebel. Two caring individuals meet. They express. Perhaps they laugh. They breathe better, for two hearts are meeting with divine purpose.

In the relative world, vanity reigns. And yet, everyone knows that vanity is not gold. It is only vanity. Yet much of the world is run on vanity. It is vanity that carries you on its shoulders so that the world can cheer you, and so that you can cheer yourself for a moment. But all is not vanity. All is love.

Vanity wishes to paint a pretty picture of yourself as if you were not already beautiful. Must beauty be dependent upon your looks meeting the standards of the day? Alas, vanity serves delusion in the world. It is like the Emperor's New Clothes. Everyone goes along with it, and so vanity is nudged and wants more of itself. Vanity is like a detour from love. It is not a substitute, and no one really thinks it is. Vanity is of the material world whereas love transcends all worlds.

Vanity, of course, is another word for ego, that niggling itch that makes so much of itself and tries to get your attention. It wants to be appeased. It wants you to have the latest, the best, the envied and so on. Vanity beckons you with its finger, and you go to it. Vanity is a hypnotist. Did you think it is not?

You want to be the belle of the ball. You want to be the he-man on the block. You want this and that only to find out that it doesn't really mean much, and so you discard it or it discards you, and you look for something else, and so you appease that itch of ego and its partner vanity for a little while until they betray you once again.

Half of the things you buy you buy in an attempt to soothe the rash vanity gives you.

Surely there is value in making yourself pretty and developing muscles and accruing wealth and so on, and yet, beloveds, and yet, their accumulation or their lack becomes a pebble in your shoe. In some ways, sometimes, you are like the queen who looked in the mirror and wanted to be sure she was still the fairest of all. How you scorn this queen, when all along it is your face in the mirror you are looking at.

There never was a fairest of all. The queen never had a claim to superlativeness. All was vanity. She really thought she needed to be the fairest, that the value of her life depended on it. That is the way of vanity. It makes you very aware that you can lose something even when it was never yours and even when everything in the world is temporary anyway.

A beautiful fluted vase is only a vase. It may be beautiful and magnificent and expensive when a mayonnaise jar would hold flowers just as well.

Notice where your attention goes, beloveds.

By all means, have a beautiful vase. Use it, adore it. Just know that your value is not more because of an exquisite vase any more than your value is less because of a plain glass jar or paper cup.

Beloveds, the material world will let you down every time. It never really magnified you. It never really made you important. Fame, wealth and other accoutrements of the world are just a quick look in the mirror, no more than that.

What you really have is love. Love is the only thing you can take with you, and love is the only real thing you can leave behind. All the other is dross, beloveds. Love is the gold, and love is what you really want, not the semblance of love, but love itself, love lasting longer than your sojourn in the world, outdistancing it by more than a mile.

Heavenletter #2325 Published on: April 7, 2007

Love is the peace that surpasseth all understanding. Love is beyond comprehension. But, of course, love is not for understanding but for giving.

Love creates harmony. Harmony does not exist all by itself. Harmony does not mean everyone is in agreement. It means that differences are not the focus. Differences are not looked for. Unity is. Love surpasses everything. It even surpasses itself.

In life, you will almost always trip over differences, and so do not burrow into them. There is so much love in the world, and so little time to love in. Love exists, and time does not, yet the love given in time and space from your heart is a timeless gift in the concept of time. Space does not exist, and yet love is to fill it. Nothing else can. And yet love is much more than a filler.

Can you love when agreement is not? Can you love even when another does not have the sense that you do? Can you love even when someone else is arbitrary and opinionated and does not see as you do see? Can you love despite the appearances of disagreement? Do you want to?

Can you let go of control even in your thoughts? Can you be with people like a mother bird who lets her fledglings fly? Can you accept that no one has to matriculate in your school? Can you accept that no one’s mind or heart lies within your jurisdiction, that no one is subject to it? Can you let My people go?

Can you accept that everyone is a free Being, and that they do not need your approval? Can you accept that, indeed, you don’t have to approve nor disapprove, that you yourself only have to be? Will you accept that there is room in the world for all? Do not squares and circles and triangles also exist in the world companionably? Angles and curves meet, and there is delight, rather than elbows sticking into each other. 

If you were an angel who appeared on Earth in a human body, how would you flow through life? How would you avoid obstructing life? How beautifully would you offer passage through life to others. With a sweep of your arm, you would usher others before you. You would well know the distributor of love that you are. You would not be self-effacing, no, not at all. You would be so powerful that you would not need power. You would not try to control another. You would not even try to control yourself, for you would know that in the arena of love, there is no seating for control and no place-setting for it. It is not that you keep control out. Control simply would not enter.

Beloveds, when you abdicate control, disagreement is no big thing. Sticks and stones live amicably together. No one tries to convert a stick to a stone. Everything is welcome. All are welcome.

Decisions would come from grace. There would be easy exchange back and forth when no one is superior nor inferior but rather equal in say. This is respect, beloveds, and it is respect that is missing when you are so sure you are right and so sure than others are unbending and do not see what is right before them as you do see. They have been served a different tray of wonderful things. They do not have to see as you do. They don’t have to. And you can open your eyes and heart wider, and you can be less adamant without giving up what you see as integrity . Give yourself permission to be disagreed with. Give yourself permission to be without tension. It is from tension that disharmony comes.

(Written by Gloria in Minden, Nevada)

Heavenletter #2329 Published on: April 11, 2007

How is it that life can be so wonderful at one minute and so dire at the next? What has changed, beloveds, but your perception of what’s going on? That’s seems to be all it takes for the world to rise or the world to fall, a mere switch in your perception.

Naturally, you blame it all on a switch in events, as if events are the precursor of you. You were here before the sequence of events, and you will be here after, and yet your perception switches as if you are dependent upon whatever chord is played. It has to be that you are more than a simple reflection of the world. It has to be that you exist with or without the world’s say-so. Surely, you will not let outside events forever be the determiner of you. Surely you are more than a mark on the calendar or where the planets happen to be. Who is responsible for the configuration of your mind? Who is responsible for your anger? Will you forever be at the mercy of what way the wind blows?

Created in My image, how can you not be sovereign of yourself? Must you clap your hand to your forehead with woe? Must you shed tears? Must your face grow red because someone throws a firecracker that lands at your feet? Must you be angry because of what someone else says or does or doesn’t say or doesn’t do? Who is responsible for you, beloveds, you or someone else? Who is responsible for your perception?  Who perceives?

Where is it written that your perception must depend upon one other person’s perception or the perception of the whole world?

Today stand from a new height. Be above the world, not as an elitist, but as a one who is wealthy and sees from a greater vantage. If someone picks your pocket, what exactly is lost when you have unlimited access to more? You are loved by God. Really, must you have someone else’s good wishes? Whatever insult is thrown at you, it does not have to reach the tenderness of you. It does not have to reframe your position in the world.

You are the most loved Being in the world. You are My child of love, and I love you. Can that not tide you over? Can that not matter to you more than the hurts the world or someone in it would toss at you? There is a God in Heaven and on Earth who loves you, loves you just as you are. I do not love you more because you have imposed suffering upon yourself. I do not love you less when you are happy. My love is yours day and night. Have more love in your heart for yourself and for those who seem to disparage you.

Can you imagine if I took to heart every remark thrown at Me? Do not take personally any longer the perambulations of someone else’s perception. Let it be theirs. Let them think what they want. They are talking about themselves anyway. If it is their perception, it belongs to them and not to you. It has nothing to do with you. It may be pointed at you, but they are the ones throwing something. Must you catch what they throw? 

I am not just giving you a pep talk. This is how it is, beloved.

When a man kills another, it is not the slain who caused him to kill. The one who kills made an irreverent decision, do you agree? Why, then, is anyone but you responsible for your thoughts? You can raise or lower your thoughts at will. Raise them now.

Extend your vision. Look into the horizon. Look up at the sky. Look even higher.

And also look directly before you. Just don’t be hemmed in by any present picture. When your immediate life is beautiful, enjoy it and let it work its magic. When your immediate life seems unwieldy, surely, it is not to set you back. What happens in life is not meant to be the determiner of you. You are far more than the life you live at any one moment. So, enjoy what you enjoy and don’t take to heart that which seems to squeeze your heart and wring it dry. Don’t worry, not even a dry heart is permanent. Not even a hardened heart can turn to stone. You do not need to be stoic, nor do you have to beat life at its own game. What you do have to do is to move your thoughts on as quick as lightening. Reach another plateau.

When you feel wounded in life, do as you would do with a cut on your hand. You might blow on it to cool it for a minute, and then you would quickly wash it, put something on it, perhaps, and then go on about your life. The cut wouldn’t hold you back. It is only a nick. You might even kiss it. You would not relive how you got the cut a dozen times and how you didn’t deserve it or how you foolishly caused it. An accident happened. All accidents are foolishly caused. And now you leave the scene.

One thing you do know for sure is that the cut will heal. You do not feel that this wound will follow you all the days of your life. Why then be so obdurate about the emotional cuts you take such offense to? They won’t last either. You can’t even remember now what your last flurry was all about. You will not remember this one either.

Move on in life quickly. Do not react quickly. Just pick yourself up and go along your way.

Beloveds, you do not really know that it is an ill-wind that blows. Even so, ill winds clear the air. Whatever dust and debris that have steeped in your heart, the winds of change will blow them away.

Nothing is final. Do not think that anything is final. Your hurt is not final. Your relationships are not final. They also move and reassemble themselves. As with a kaleidoscope, a new picture is forming. Right before your very eyes, it is.

Whether it is a real tempest or one in a teapot, it is the same. You leave it. You do not stay there and mull it over. You go past it. Whatever amends you or the other can make, that is good, but in any case, you move past it.

You are in a moving van of life. Life does not stay still. Life forges ahead.   

Beneath the churning ocean lies a stillness, yet surface waves lap. Sometimes the waves go high, and sometimes they go low and then the waves are little ripples. You cannot predict. You cannot stem. You cannot depend on the waves to do as you bid. You can know that there is the constant depth and stillness of the Ocean that the waves ride on.

When a hurricane rages, you do not take it personally. You may not like it, but you weather it. All storms blow over. You can count on change in life. You can count on that it is ever-moving, and so must you move along as well, knowing full well that you always, always have My love.

Beloveds, mothers and fathers give a great many toys to their children. The children play with the toys. The children use their imagination. From blocks they build tall buildings. They play with dolls in a doll house and create families and playact. Trains go around, and the children pretend inanimate toy cars have engines, and the children make the engine sounds and zoom the cars around the floor and maybe in the air. The children have joy from the toys, and so the parents take joy in their children's joy. What a wonderful thing for parents to witness their children's wholehearted acceptance of abundance. What else can equal the joy a parent takes in the joy of his children? What other gift would a parent want than this of drinking in his child's joy?

Can you imagine a parent bringing home wonderful toys for his children, and the children open them up and then toss them away, perhaps stamp their feet, complain they wanted other toys, perhaps the ones their friends have? Has this not happened? The child is not happy, and the parents also glower.

You realize I am making a comparison between God in Heaven and My children on Earth. The comparison is not perfect, beloveds, for My joy does not go up and down according to the pleasure or displeasure of My children. I have a wiser knowing. And yet the comparison does hold water.

Look, dears, what I have brought home for you! A bright yellow sun. A blue sky to put it in. Soil to put flower seeds in and vegetables to grow. Trees to bear fruit and give shade. Look at all the colors and textures. Look at babies! Furthermore, I gave you snow to play in. Deserts to be hot in. Oceans and rivers and puddles and water to drink. I gave you the five senses and more. I gave you hot and cold. I gave you two feet to trod the ground with and hands with which to bless the world. I gave you all kinds of animals to teach you love. I gave you nooks and crannies in the world. I gave you other people, mirrors of you. I gave you language to speak. I gave you hearts to swell. I gave you pencil and paper on which to express appreciation of all you receive. I gave you music and art. Tell Me, beloved children, what did I not give you? What manner of gift have I left out? Is there anything I forgot?

I gave you a myriad of ingredients from which you can make cakes and pies and bread and puddings and chop suey. Perhaps there is something you can make that was never made before. Perhaps you make something that isn't as edible as you wanted, but yet you made it. You made something. You gave it a whirl.

Young children will even take stones and make castles from them. They will take a rag and turn it into an animate doll. They will take mud and make pies! What will young children not turn into fun?

And then, every now and then, there is the child who will say, "I wanted what Johnny got. I don't want what you gave me. Get me something else."

My children on Earth will sometimes get down on their knees and beg Me for something they feel they have not been given. Beloved, what will you make of the ingredients of life I have given to you? Will you accept My blessings?

And what you cannot see as blessing, can you just move on from it and turn your eyes to greener pastures?