topazz28's Blog

It’s better that you consider yourself a novice rather than an expert.

Novices are open to learning. They know they don’t know everything.

There is a tendency for experts to think they have it all down pat, so they speak and do not listen.

Be a novice, beloveds, and you will always be open, and you will always learn. You will be humble rather than high and mighty. No matter what your experience, you will know that you do not know it all.

Two so-called experts in the same field do not always agree. Even in very technical fields where you would think there could only be agreement, there is not.  Let the world call you what it will, still know that you are a learner not an expert.

One of the troubles with being high and mighty is that you are ripe for being knocked off your throne. Even if the whole world appoints you to a throne of expertise, better for you to know you don’t belong there. Better to know that no one belongs there. Come down off your high horse.

Have confidence in yourself. And have the confidence that you don’t know everything and that, therefore, there is much for you to learn.

Punks strut in the world. Don’t be a punk, and don’t act like one. Learn rather than strut. 

You don’t need to learn to eat humble pie when you are humble. Being humble doesn’t mean you underestimate yourself. It means you don’t overestimate yourself. We are speaking in terms of the world.

The world is full of the unwise who believe they know it all. Be wise and know you don’t.

If you want to be a great teacher, be a great learner. The truth, anyway, is that great teachers learn from their students. So if you desire to be a great teacher, be a great learner.

Wherein lies the virtue of knowing everything, or thinking you do? Jump down from that precipice now before you fall.

True, you may know something that others do not know, but what exactly does that mean? All it means is that you know something others may not yet. What is the great honor in that? Beloveds, do not pat yourself on the back too soon. Do not pat yourself on the back at all.

Everyone knows something.

The one who sweeps the floors in a corporation may know more about what is going on in the company than the CEO.

Look, everyone on Earth wears a disguise, you and everyone else. One of you is disguised as the CEO, and another is disguised as the janitor. Both are good actors. Both play their parts well. Both are best supporting actors. Let each bow down to the other, or no one bow. Tip your hat to all who come before you.  Disguises come off, and you will stand together as My One Holy Child. Surely you know that. Surely you know that plaudits of the world accompany you for only a split second. You are neither superior nor inferior to anyone.

Surely you know that the part you play is not you. Your true Identity far exceeds the stamped card the world gives you. Be not demeaned nor elated according to the part you play. This applies no matter what arena in the world you play in. No one is Top Dog.

I am asking you not to become conceited nor discouraged. Conceit and dismay are both uncalled for and do not hold you in good stead.

So, now, if you have been standing on a pedestal, get down off it. You don’t need the pedestal. Did you think you did? You need nothing, but if you did need, you would merit more than any pedestal the world builds.

When your heart feels hardened, put your hand over your heart. When you place your hand knowingly on your heart to melt the hardness, you will begin to feel the hardness melting. Yes, put your hand over your heart with pure intention, and your hand and your intention will do your bidding.

Whatever the situation, you do want to have the tightness in your heart lessened. It is going to leave anyway. Whatever event seemingly hardened your heart would fade eventually anyway, so make it sooner. You don't want cramping in your heart, your beautiful heart that I intended to stay open. My instructions that came with your heart were to keep it open and warm and palpable.

You look to justify the hardening of your heart. You justify well. Yet what does it come down to, beloveds? Does the situation really matter in life? If you had to write down three dire situations, would this one right now that causes you such heartache, would it be on your list of three? Unlikely. The hurt will recede as so many other incidents have done and have been forgotten.

If this current event does not merit your misgivings, why dissect it then? Simply let it go. It's not worth a tuppence of your heart.

There may be those who have even hardened their hearts to Me over events far greater than the little scenario you are excruciating over now. Far greater, and, yet, even so, that restriction of your heart has no merit. You, perhaps, may have asked Me to stem the tide, and your will is not done. Dear ones, it is possible that the tide followed its own natural bent before you even asked, for time cannot be marked in Heaven. Only Eternity in Heaven.

Walmart has rollbacks, but even Walmart can only change a price ticket today. It can't go back and change the ticket on a day that has already rolled by. It is necessary in life that you roll with the punches. You can do that now where time is measured on Earth.

Miracles abound, and yet patterns in the relative world have been set in motion. You do not really want Me to be in the mainstream of the relative world, buoyed by waves. It is not that My mind has been made up, and yet you wouldn't want Me to be changing My mind all the time, not even for you, for what else might be left in the wake of what you want?

Of course, you want your loved ones to live forever, and, of course, they do, yet not in the body that you have become accustomed to.

You didn't want to lose your job, and yet something was wound and unwound, and you are out of work. Despite the darkness and havoc you see, there is more to it. Don't be put off when I say that you are growing and there yet may be something good for you in this. You say you are sure there couldn't possibly be, and I say, "Do not put a shroud over your head. Take it off, and look from a different point of view. Columbus would not have discovered America unless he set out to look for something."

Even the situation against the grain of your heart that may be going on now, even this minor squall in your heart, you can look at it differently and accept its blessing and stride forward with peace in your heart and good will for all.

Life often takes care of itself. You don’t have to run around worrying and solving problems. Worries are rampant. Let go of worrying, and see what happens.

It is not really time that solves difficulties nor is it really space that solves difficulties, and yet it is wise for you to allow difficulties time and space to obviate themselves.

There is a sense in which you have to stop holding on to life and the way you think it’s supposed to be. Maybe it is supposed to be just what it is right now. Tomorrow it will be a little more or a little less than it is today, or it will be something else. Tomorrow or the next day will make a different grand entrance.

My children are careworn. You carry a heavy load of concern. Be not so careworn. Let go of some of your cares.

If you can count your concerns on one hand, you have too many concerns. Concerns weigh you down, and one worry attracts another. Big worries give birth to little worries. Worry becomes like a berry bush laden with worries.

What is so enticing about worries? Must you keep them? What if you let all your worries go? You would be worriless. And that worries you. What would you be without cares and concerns and worry? What would you do in life without worries? You are so accustomed to them, as if they belong to you, as if you have to have them. Worries are not your children. You don’t have to keep them.

Imagine a special file folder where you toss your worries and then lose the folder. Have you not in the past lost rings and important papers that were valuable to you? Somehow you have managed without them. If you can lose what is valuable to you, can you not then lose that which is detrimental to you and not worth anything?

Do you not lose socks in the laundry? Then put your worries in an old sock.

Tear up your worries. Put them in the trash, and take the trash out. Or light a match to them. Or stamp them out like a finished cigarette under your foot. Kick them away. “Get outa here, you old worries. I’ve had enough of you. Out.”

Then spend no more time looking for other worries to replace those you tossed or lost or forgot about. 

Make room in your heart for better than worries.

Worries and happiness aren’t exactly compatible. Worries take up too much room. They crowd out happiness.

Become more familiar with happiness. Welcome it. Set the table of your life with happiness. It is not all right for worries to pull the tablecloth of happiness right out from under you.

What is a worry anyway, and why do you persist in having worries, one after another? When I said that your cup spilleth over, I didn’t mean that it should be filled with worries.

Put a nickel in the bank for every worry you have forgotten about, and you will be a rich man. What you have been doing is letting worries eat you alive. They have dominated too many moments of your life. They have taken a lion’s share.

You throw old make-up away. Now throw away used worries. No longer collect worries. Do not harbor them. Worries exist because you harbor them. Worries are like mutterings. You don’t have to have them. You don’t have to give them the time of day and certainly not a place in your heart. Worries are not love. Worries are ropes that tie you in knots. I am untying the knots now.

Gratitude is a well that springs up within you. It is recognition of all that I bestow upon you. No matter from which hand good reaches you, it comes from Me.

I do not need the credit. I do not need your thanks. But you need to be true and give your thanks in the rightful place.

What matters is that you do not put other gods before Me. All men on earth act for Me, and any gift they give is from Me. They pass it on. But your allegiance must go to Me before any man because you are now a dealer in Truth. You need no intermediary. Although everyone in the world is an intermediary, your reliance belongs with Me, the Author of all intermediaries.

There is a tiny thread of falsity in gratitude to man, for there is a knowing in your heart Whose hand to kiss, and now you can only be true to the knowing of your heart, and also true to the heart of the ones you give gratitude to. They sense that your gratitude belongs not with them. They too know that it is from Me that all blessings come. They know they are incidental. They are instruments. They are acting at My behest. They are not instrumental.

I am the reservoir of gratitude.

You do not thank rain for falling on a dry field. You appreciate the rain, but you know that the rain did not send itself. You are grateful that rain came, and you know that the rain came from above. You know from where showers of blessings come.

Gratitude is different from love. Gratitude to other Humans is a bowing down, and you bow down to no man. I am talking about in your heart.

There is no disparity in love. Love shines, and you shine it back. Gratitude to man has a certain subservience, and you are not subservient to any man.

When trouble comes, you walk on. You do not spend your energy shaking your fist at it. Just so, when great good comes, you tip your hat and walk on.

Gratefulness to man can become stagnant. You have experienced that. It is not wonderful to be the giver of gratitude nor the receiver of it. I can accommodate your gratitude. No one else can. And you are a dealer in Truth now. Let the bubbling of your love fall everywhere, and your thanks to Me.

The best you can say to another is: Thank God for you. The best another can say to you is: Thank God for you.

Love and truth swell you. Gratitude does not.

Step right up to Me and give Me your thanks, for that is where they belong. That is the truth of it.

If you find a penny on the street, it is I Who left it there for you. No other. This is not a mystery. This is the basis of life. It is the same when you find a diamond or rubies on the street.

Any treasure on earth is from Me. I sent it to you.

And your gratitude for the treasure goes to Me. That keeps your back straight. That keeps you on track.

The giver and the receiver are One. The receiver gives a gift in receiving. One side of the gift is not greater than another. It is yourself you have brought back. It is I you serve, and it is I you thank.

The good that comes to you is your due. There is more good that has come to you than you know.

Be a great giver and a great receiver, for they are the same. You give only to yourself, and you receive only yourself, and for that power, you thank God Who made you in His image as a great receiver and great giver.

Heavenletter #3972 Published on: October 10, 2011

You have held onto bubbles that burst, and so it seems that life has disappointed you. Bubbles burst. That is the nature of bubbles. You just can't hold onto them. Why be so attached to bubbles on solid Earth?  Enjoy the bubbles, and let them go their way while you come to Me.

You wouldn't trade Eternity for a bursting bubble, would you? And, yet, it seems that you do. It seems that you have. You count on that which cannot be counted on. Such is life in the world. It is a soap opera. Those soap opera people have one disappointment after another. Will they ever learn?

Have big dreams. Have dreams as big as you can make them. But the same as you don't have to have the apple at the top of a tree, you don't have to have it. You can have an apple closer at hand. Or choose a star in the sky. It will be there for you whenever you look up.

Life in the world does not have to be your piece of cake. Nevertheless, you can make the most of what you are served. You make the most by going forward and leaving the snows of yesteryear behind you. Where are they now anyway?

In the sentient world, today's newspaper quickly becomes yesterday's. Why are you so surprised? What is lasting in the world of impermanence?

And is the worth of something how long it lasts? It lasts while it lasts. What else can be said for it? Life in the world seems to be a landscape of rolling hills wherever you look. The level ground does not last forever. The world offers much, but not everything according to your will.

Can you not love life anyway? Can you not let it be a ship, and you give it its sails? The wind blows in the direction it blows, and then the wind changes direction. Must the change in direction influence your joy so, or your unhappiness so? Be happy when the winds of time take you where you want to go, and be happy when the winds change direction.

Life in the world is not a framed photo that stays in place where everyone remains in position and never moves. You really would not like to be locked in place. Life in the world is about movement. It is not about staying still. You cannot stay in kindergarten forever. Life is sliding along as We speak.

Let that be all right with you, for, all the while, you are stationed in My heart.

Let heartbreak go now. You don't need it. You don't need to hold onto it. The past is not to be held onto. You do not lay down the laws of life. Nothing has to be what it was. It simply has to be what it is. It doesn't have to be what it isn't. Face front.

What you hold onto is gossamer. You cannot hold onto it. You have to let it go. There are tides to life, and you cannot stem them. What does this not apply to? Time is not true, and, yet, time marches on, and you are not excepted. That is, your body is no exception. Events in your life are no exception.

And yet you, yourself, are eternal, and joy can be eternal. Why not love the life that is yours as it rounds the corner?

The good days are now. With or without what you wanted and had counted on, the good days are now. Today is a good day. What more do you need than this day that is before you? Hold this day high.

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.

When you feel doubt in Me, note that you have picked it up somewhere. You have appended it. You have latched on to it. Doubt doesn't grip you. You grip it.

Like anxiety, you think it strikes you from an outside force. But doubt strikes you from inside your mind. Some logical conclusion makes you aware of doubt.

For instance, the cruelties in the world make you doubt My existence OR My existence as God Almighty. You think perhaps there is another power that really rules the universe, one contrary to the concept of goodness. Yet I say again and again that all that exists is you and I, and We are the power and the glory. If We are the power and the glory, then We are not the cruelty. We are not the selfishness. We are not the hurts in the world.

Yet, you question. If God as love exists, then why does He — and how can He — allow suffering to be rampant on earth? Where is the God of mercy you crave to set wrongs right?

No wonder you have conceived of a God of punishment. No wonder you have bound righteousness and punishment together in one sheaf. But I am not a judger, and I ask you not to be either. There is not merit in it.

Your belief in retaliation is an imposition upon creation. You are not an avenger. Nor am I. How We balance the world is to dispense unimpassioned love. If there is unkindness in the world, We right it with a bigger vision. You can call it kindness. Give kindness to your throng, not cracks of the whip.

You strew rose petals, not shame. You sing songs, not dirges. You do not make someone confess. You do not lash anyone with words. You do not point out the error of their ways nor call it sin.

Turn your heart and mind to the goodness that is also rampant in the world. And which is rampant in you. Incur goodness with your attention.

If you have a tear in your dress, and you keep pulling at it, you make the tear greater.

If there is a pothole that trips you up, if you jump up and down on it to trample it back, you make that which you don't like in the first place bigger. Futile is your jumping up and down on inequities.

If you have the strength of heart to fill up the pothole, that is better. But if your heart cannot in truth do that, then lift your thoughts. Find another path for your attention to walk on.

This is not pretending that potholes do not exist. This is shifting your attention to the rest of the road, shifting your attention from what is absent to what is present.

If you bemoan the lack of innocence in the world, then seek out innocence. If you bemoan cruelty in the world, be the opposite. If you bemoan the lack of right living in the world, then live right. Be that which you desire more of in the world. Do not emulate that which you do not want. You cannot arbitrate others to be what you want them to be or do, but you can conduct yourself.

Do not complain any longer about the inadequacy of the world. Get off your high horse. Champion the goodness. Remember good manners. Do not be ungrateful for what I have given you. Because another makes sport of creation, it does not mean it's all right for you. When others pull the world down, lift it up. Where there is darkness, open the blinds. Let the sun in. Do it as your offering to Me.

Anxiety comes because there is something you have not attended to. The focus of your anxiety may not be what you really need to attend to. What you have attended to may be a diversion.

Anxiety may seem to come unannounced, but you have paved the way for it. You have strewn bits of your life like apple cores here and there, without regard for what you are doing and where you are going. You leave a trail so you can keep to you where you have been, and the pay-off for that is anxiety. Anxiety is something out of the past.

You think you don't like it — anxiety — yet you maintain it.

You like to think that anxiety is an unexpected visitor who just happens to drop by. But, all the while, you have invited and made ready for it. You have been too modest to claim credit for your anxiety.

Anxiety is an unsettledness that you like to think you abhor, but yet you call it to you.

What is it that you don't want to think about? What is it that you prefer to keep at bay, and for what you would rather incur wisps of old anxious thoughts instead?

You chew the fingernails of your life with fitful fretting anxiety.

Replace anxiety with love for yourself.

Let go of remorse. Let go of counting all the things that you didn't do right or all the wrong things that might befall in the future. Do not hold anxiety-ridden thoughts to you. Let them go. They are old stories. You are on to new ones now.

Anxiety is a recurrence of something old, and now you say goodbye to it. Your anxiety-ridden thoughts are not more powerful than you. They are, after all, your thoughts. Don't pull anxious thoughts into your heart.

The cure for anxiety is to withdraw from it. You don't need to push it out. You simply absent yourself from it. Step over it.

It is the old you who has anxiety. The new you has greater vision. No longer need you be caught into the net of anxiety.

Move yourself forward. Climb a different hill. Relieve anxiety by rising. You are not the prisoner of it.

You need not rely on drugs to dispel it. You give such power to chemicals in a mere pill or capsule. Your thoughts outweigh chemicals. You are not your physiology. You are not even your psychology, for you are beyond the names given to any aspect of you.

Your anxiety may not be your own. It may be an energy of the world out there misplaced in you.

In any case, you can know, wherever it comes from, anxiety is misplaced energy. It is stifled energy.

It is time to clear out the drawers of your mind. Clear out old thinking. You have been storing it in the event it might be needed in the future. Your old thinking was never needed. It was just a way to keep you out of the present.

Presentness has to be better than your old thoughts.

You have new energy now, and so your thinking needs to catch up.

There is good right in front of you now. It is waiting for you to pick it up.

Anxiety is inaction. It comes from staying in the same place. Now it is time for you to rise. Anxiety serves no purpose for you. Leave it behind. You have already left it behind. Now stop looking back for it.

There is that angle of thought that all illness comes from the mind. There is much truth in that, yet, in terms of day to day life, it is not so clear nor must it be, beloveds. There is more to illness than meets the eye. There is more to everything than meets the eye.

I have told you to disengage yourself from thinking about cause. There is the sense in which there is no cause. Consider, if there is no past, there can be no cause. When there is no prior, how can there be an after? There is simply whatever is right now.

In terms of relative life, certainly one thing seems to lead to another. In relative life you see cause and effect. If you put a lighted match to a cigarette, the cigarette will burn. If you put red nail polish on your nails, your nails will be red. If you work at a job, you get paid. On that premise, if you don't work, you don't get paid. If you climb a tree and fall, if you hadn't climbed the tree, you wouldn't have fallen from it, and so on. The proof of cause in the realm of relative life is endless.

In the larger realms of life such as love and health and life itself, I advise you to stay away from seeking cause. Is that not looking back to the past? If you perceive illness, now seek health. If your love life falls apart, move on. Pointing to cause becomes blame. Blame comes from judgment. Stay away from judgment. Judge not yourself nor another. Do not come to conclusions. By and large, there is no attributable cause. Or if there is a cause, it is life. If you were not in a body, you would not have an illness of the body.

When it comes to health, there are so many contributing factors, and yet nothing tells the whole story. Why this person? Why does one person have hearty health, and another person does not? It is not so simple.

Your mind is not the only mind that affects you. There is the mind of man. There is mass consciousness. When the world becomes as it will become, disease will not exist. There will be no place for it. No one will think of illness. When illness is erased from the mind of man, illness will be erased from the face of the Earth.

What do you think I have been saying when I say that your thoughts affect even those 5,000 miles away? Everyone's thoughts contribute. Some contribute health, and some contribute illness.

Have I not told you to change your thoughts? Think of what you think! No longer think that germs cause illness. Do you understand me? Believe in Me, beloveds, more than you believe in germs. Put your faith where you want it to be. Indeed, have as much faith in health as you have in illness. Think of health and forget about illness. Let Me see you dance around the Maypole.

Lean toward happy emotions. Everyone must be aware that anger is not great for health. Everyone must be aware that joy and love are very good for health. Gravitate toward what you desire. And when you find yourself angry, forgive yourself and find something else to look at.

Think for yourself, beloved. Believe in yourself enough to think your own thoughts. And when your own thoughts are not useful, then find useful thoughts. Deep down inside yourself, you will find them. And I will whisper in your ear, and you will think in new ways.

Sometimes after a big disagreement, when the dust settles, you see that the issue wasn't important the way you thought it was. You may even look back and see that it wasn't important at all. It was really all about your ego fuming. You took whatever it was, a remark, an action, personally. You took it as inflammatory.

Think of what taking something personally means. It means you take words or actions as directed to you.

It may not have been nice what was said or done, and yet no matter how many times you have heard not to take something personally, once again you did take whatever it was personally. You bought into someone else's anguish or fury or question and made it your own. Even if they were really trying to assert themselves over you, you bought into their need to overtake you, and you got burned. Of course, you burned yourself, you understand. You didn't have to walk into the fire.

It was someone else's personal fire, and you decided to put it out. Of course, more likely, you fanned the flames.

Long after, perhaps not until the person who offended you leaves his or her body, your anger melts. It somehow gets all washed away, and you wonder why you had the anger or thought you had to have it. You can see now that there was a lot of fuss that didn't have to be. It was all lack of acceptance, theirs and yours. Perhaps it was your parents who upset you. They didn't view you as you would have liked to be viewed, and this was appalling to you. Yet, beloveds, you could have paid attention to your parents' love rather than their falling short. Through it all, whatever it was you saw, you see it differently now. Whatever you felt at the time, you feel differently now. You know better now.

But don't wait for death or illness or seriousness of any kind before you look at things differently. Certainly most of the time, perhaps even always, the real culprit is not what someone said or did. The real culprit is yourself. Why were you so eager to take offense? Why were you so ready to fly off the handle? Confess now, you were ready and waiting to take offense. You were armed to defend your sensitive ego. You were gung-ho. Didn't you know it was better to let ego go and not protect or defend ego ever again? That means your ego. Let yours go, and then you won't respond to someone else's either.

Beloveds, active ego will always get the better of you so long as you keep it around.

Perhaps you got upset because someone did not seem to think well of you. Did you think they would feel better about you when you got uppity and your anger flared? When did you ever successfully set someone straight? Most likely, all you did was light a match under them just like the match you felt they lit under you.

If you would really like to get rid of angry retorts once and forever, why don't you? Why must ego and anger snap their fingers at you, and you respond by running to them? You are not bigger than they are yet, so why get into it with them? When you are bigger than ego and anger, you won't stop for them. You won't get hot under the collar.

When a gnat bites you, you don't go into an uproar. You don't run to a therapist because of it. You are able to take gnats in stride and not take their bites personally. Others' remarks are gnat bites, beloveds. Gnat bites aren't about you. You just happen to be there. You can remove yourself and not get into a gnat match.

When you start to feel guilty, it is a sign that your selfishness and ego have crept in. Your selfishness and ego are indeed the harbingers of your guilt.

You are vital in the universe, but do not think that your so-called sins or omissions are the warp and the woof of it. They are incidental.

When you feel guilty, you are most assuredly thinking of yourself, and in your vanity, you make a small picture of yourself. You call attention to yourself. Your sense of guilt doesn't say you are responsible. It says, "Woe is me! I am not as perfect as I thought I was. I have fumbled the ball!"

You are so involved in yourself that your fumbling the ball makes you feel bad, and that feeling bad you identify as guilt.

Now, identify guilt as ego, pure and simple. Guilt is self-flagellation, and that is always ego.

Remorse is not honorable. Remorse is a time-stalker.

When you feel guilty, start to feel guilty about feeling guilty and get up and hit the ball again. Fumble if you must. But fumbling is better than stewing. Stew no more. Get out of the past, even if the past was only yesterday or a moment ago.

Guilt is a disguise. It wears a guise of being repentant, but it is really egotistic. You think repentance is heroic, and you like to milk it for all its worth. It is worth little. It is being locked in the past. It is not in My list of virtues.

Acknowledge that you would see and do differently next time, and then forget about it. Pick yourself up. Do not grovel on the ground with guilt.

Pick guilt off you like a giant tick. Fling it away. Burn it. But get it off you. Kick it away. Tell it to not bother you again.

All learning is from the past.

Think of what I just said.

Vow to be smarter and wiser and better all you want, but what you really want and really must have is openness. Each situation has its valor. You cannot know ahead of time. You cannot figure it out. That is only delay. Figuring out and delay are not life. They are only figuring out and delay.

The best you can be is open.

Ask Me as you begin your day to help you be open. Openness is meeting life with Me in your heart.

Openness isn't weak. Openness isn't wishy-washy. Openness is belief in yourself and belief in Me.

Past experiences are past experiences. Going by the past as a rule book is control. Control trips you up. Control makes you stiff. What do you think arthritis is?

And where does control come from but from fear? You fear that if you do not corral life and the people in it, that you will be trampled.

Guilt is a great control mechanism. It is a valve that doesn't work.

Erase the concept of guilt. Guilt is belief in error. It is a personification of judgment. Guilt is really cowardly, and it makes promises it may not keep. It is much more heroic to not feel guilty and to embrace life and yourself. You are not faulty. The sum of you is not fault. You have a faulty picture of yourself. It is a faulty picture to make of any child of Mine.

Choose guilt or choose life.

Choose past or choose present.

Choose defeat or choose lift-off.

Choose to walk along scuffing your shoes or choose to fly with the angels.

Emulate the angels.

They are not so serious about the past.

They are lightly in the present. They are light in the present.

And you are My light on Earth. Sense of guilt puts blinders on your light. I set you, My light on Earth, to shine Me before all the world to see.

Guilt darkens. It believes in the myth of error. It holds error dear.

Hold truth dear. Be My disciple who flings cloaks of guilt away and lifts My light high. The higher you lift My light, the higher your arm reaches. Reach high, not low.

Lift yourself up and come to Me right now.

You were not invented. You were created. You were created with My full awareness. You blossomed before My very eyes. How beautiful is My creation. I created a beautiful Earth, and I created a beautiful you to play on it. It may not seem like it, yet Earth is all about play. How seriously the play is taken. How real-seeming the stakes. How you hold on to them. How desperate you are about your goals. Nevertheless, your outcome is secured, for you return to Me in a trice.

Life is not about all that you think it is about. All does not depend upon what you think it depends on. The little skirmishes are an aside. You have had a fantasy from which you will wake up. Wake up now.

Life has been life or death for you. It has held such significance for you. Of such importance was the game you played, the spelling test you took, the scraping your knee, what your mother thought, what your father did for a living, and how you configured the world. All these are naught. They fade.

There are no storms, and yet you hold on to storms. There is no success, and there is no failure. The world ascribes validity to success or less success, yet every play in the game is what it is, and, therefore successful. Life is not about all that you have thought it is about. How sad you are to find out that you followed incorrect rules. It is the game that counts, not the individual plays.

It is like your life is a collage, a collage of people and memories, and how exquisite your collage is. What a work of art. How intricately everything fits. How remarkably. How individual each play, and, at the same time, how universal. Magnificent are the stitches you make on this mural of life you contribute to. You believe in outcomes.

There is one outcome. You come to Me. That is the denouement. The scorecards are a disguise yet a disguise well-believed in. You are a player in a fantasy. You are a player upon whom Truth dawns. How seriously you have taken life. What a drama you have laid out before you. And it all, all of it, is a mirage that you have sworn is true. You drank the water, you bathed in it. How real-seeming the physical world is and all your deportment on it. How close the day-to-day details. How far away the Truth. You take the world as real, and the Truth you put aside for another day. There is no tragedy, beloveds. There is a dance of life, and sometimes this dance becomes hurly-burly. You get caught up in it. You don't know how to step out of it.

You have a great foundation, and often overlook it. The three little pigs in the story used brick, wood, and straw. The big bad wolf blew them all down except for the brick, yet, even the brick does not last forever, nor is it meant to. Heart and soul live forever. Place your bets.

That which is lasting lasts. That which is temporary is temporary and does not last. You are not temporary. You are forever. Your life now is one scene in the play. The play itself is long-lasting. It is eternal. You are the fruit of My vine. You are the crop that is grown in the fields of Earth, and you grow and you return to Heaven as you grow to awareness of Who you are and Where you are even when you believe you are somewhere else. Even when you believe you are somewhere else, even while you are on another stage center front, you are in Heaven.

So often you say, "My God," or, "Oh, My God!" More often I say, "My children, oh, My children!" It brings great tenderness to Me to say your name. And it brings great tenderness to Me to hear you say Mine. Especially when you speak to Me and look into My eyes — then I am most charmed.

Whatever sweetness you feel between us, more is Mine. Each experience with you is sweetness for Me. I think you are My ambrosia, and I will to be yours.

Fill My heart with joy. I am enamored of you. And when love comes to love, We are enjoined, and We enjoy Our exchange of love. Not that we trade love. We just give it, and then more becomes Ours.

This passing of love, back and forth, is the rhythm of life. That is the flow of the ocean. That is the rising of the sun. Waves of love lap back and forth, and each wave is sweet. Neither back nor forth is greater than any other moment of love itself.

That rhythm was the rising and setting of My son Jesus.

He came into the world as love. He passed out of it as love. And in between his birth and death he was the simplicity of love for all to behold. Behold My son who chose love over fear, truth over ego, life over death. We can say with great accuracy that he lived My light on earth.

In thought today, the world rolls over for him. He touches hearts. He touches yours. What a wand of My light and love was he.

You feel a dismay rather than a gladness when I tell you that you are the same, for you feel far away from your greatness, even from the possibility of it. But greatness is not show. It is not production. Greatness is what already is. You need nothing but to dare to shine your light that I bestowed upon you. Before you were born, you were gifted with light. You were filled with it. Now let your light escape. Let it do what light likes to do.

And then you are lightened. Tremendously lightened. You unburden yourself of light! Light kept in is not happy. Light, like you, is happy when it does what light does. And you, you are happy when you rise to your truth, or My truth, whichever way you prefer to look at it. They are the same.

My truth and your truth are no different. Truth is its own.

And you are My Own. You are My own child of love that I gave to the world so that it might be gladdened.

Look upon the gladness that Christ gave. He gave from Me. Of himself, he could do nothing. Of himself, he could give nothing. It is not his individuality that touches you. It is his gift of loving Me and giving Me that touches you. That is what makes your defenses crumble. He who had no defenses brandished My strength and My truth before the world. He was My innocent son and he gave his inheritance to you.

He willed, as I will, that you have it. He touched his wand of light upon your shoulder. He dubbed you his brother equal to him.

When you feel your love for Christ, your layered image of him, you begin to love yourself. You peel away at what you are. What you are has seemed foreign to you and unlikely. But, listen, it is time for you to begin to know who you are. My son is My son. There is no getting around it. You have all the gifts that I give. I gave them to you. Take that personally. True, I gave them to everyone, and that includes you.

Be delighted, not dismayed, that you are greatness. You have to know it before you can rise to it. Begin to know. Begin to express. Begin.

How is it that the name of Christ evokes so much love? How is it that he is so dear to your heart?

Within his name is his vibration, the same vibration that is in your love for him. You reflect his love for you. He loves you the same way.

And he can love you so much because he knows your truth.

Can you let it be possible that you are worthy? Do not measure your worth, and then you, like Christ, will not measure others.

Christ does not question his worth. Therefore, he doesn't question yours. He looks into your eyes and sees himself standing there.

Heavenletter #662 Published on: August 12, 2002

A word that you may well drop from your vocabulary is the word "why". Of course, it is not the word so much as the concept. Why this, why that? Why did this happen and not that? Why to me? As if there is a cause you must identify and give a swift kick to.

Why does not matter. You have been looking for cause and effect all your life, trying to figure life out and extricate yourself from it. What does why have to do with it?

There is only is-ness.

Looking for reasons all the time is tantamount to counting numbers for no reason at all. It is a kind of rote. How many ersatz reasons can you count? And you lull yourself off from the present. And you only wind yourself up in strings. You do not untangle. You tangle more.

Too much time looking for cause and effect.

Unless sequence of cause and effect is obvious, forget about it. You do not dwell on the matters that are already clear to you. You already know that striking a match will light it. But you dwell on those matters whose sequence you cannot possibly discern. There is not a straight line for you to follow. Furthermore, it is closer to the truth to say there is no cause. No cause, only occurrence.

If your car runs out of gas today, you know it didn't have gas in it. That is what you know. Perhaps you can determine that there is a leak in the tank. More likely you simply ran out of gas. Beyond that, asking yourself why you didn't fill up the tank yesterday, or why were you careless, why did you forget, why did you risk it, or why don't you know better… all of this is fruitless. To ask anyone else why is also fruitless. Pick the best of reasons, and it still doesn't move you forward.

Try this one thing today: It is a Thou shalt not. Thou shalt not try to figure out why something happened or didn't happen.

The word to substitute for "why" is "now".

Now is a more useful word. Or, when something happens, even just say Oh, and then go on. This applies to why the things that you like happen as well as the things you don't. Or say Hmmm and go on.

Looking for reasons why is dwelling on the past.

Looking for reasons why is skirting the issue.

Now, on the other hand, reminds you where you are and what is. Now is the pool you swim in. Now is your fortune. Now is your wisdom, and now is your grace.

Why do I say these things to you? Why is immaterial. What I say and what you hear matter. Take what I say to heart and not why I say them. Do you see now how looking for reasons is a form of eluding yourself from the present?

Give up figuring out. Whatever occurred has already been figured out. It occurred, didn't it?

There is no reason for you to seek for why. We are talking about life, not a recipe to follow. Maybe you leave an ingredient out of a cake you bake, and next time you will remember. Maybe the temperature of the oven was too high or too low, and next time you will do better. But life is now, and you are already better. Meet life as it comes to you, and go on. Do not try to keep all the traces from the past. Get on with the present.

Remember what you are here for. You are not here for gossip. You are not here to inflate your ego. You are not here for others, and you are not here for yourself. You are here on Earth for Me. Consider Me the North Star over your shoulder. Look up at Me, and you will not dispense your life in pettiness.

Often you think pettiness is important. Sometimes you like to swim in it. Sometimes you call pettiness problems. You know you make much of them. That is the pettiness.

Life really is not about problems. You certainly think so, or have thought so. You have thought the sum of your life is your problems and your solving them. There is no them.

Problems are in your thinking. When you think something is big, it's big. That's the long and the short of it.

You think life is a series of problems for you to solve. Or you think of it as lessons. You even call it the school of hard knocks.

All appears as you think it does.

I do not tell you to bury your nose in the sand. But I tell you that you can have your attention on greater than problems.

Problems — that which you see as problems — fascinate you. You even like to watch other people's problems on TV.

What is gossip but attention on someone else's problem that you somehow relish?

Hands off other people's problems! You are not the solver of them. You are not the savior of other people. You can help other people, but you are not to delude yourself that you are a savior of them.

Everyone's life is his own. It belongs to the person who lives it.

You could solve someone else's problem, and they would still have it. They have to do a double take on their life. Their problem exists within them. It is not on the outside. It is not the situation, though you certainly convince yourselves that it is.

When a friend comes to you with a problem, don't take it on as yours. Be professional. Be like a lawyer who listens. Then he says a few words. He does not let the purveyor of the problem attach to him, nor does he attach himself to the perceived problem. And it is the person he talks to, not the problem. He doesn't tell the problem to go away. He does not shake his finger at it. But in his presence, some of the person's sense of problem disappears.

So do not you attach to your friends' problems. Don't make them yours. You have enough that you call your own.

You can waste your life swept up in problems.

Notice some of the things you talk about. Notice where your attention goes.

Consider your real purpose, and get on with it.

There are subdivisions of purpose. Take care of them, but keep coming back to your main purpose.

You are here in life for something greater than solving problems.

In fact, eliminate the word "problem" from your vocabulary. Don't even call what you see as your problems as opportunities or challenges because you kid no one, least of all yourself.

When a rock blocks your way, you climb over it or go around it, or perhaps you go a different way. It is only a rock. It happens to be there where it is. It didn't set a trap for you. It is an innocent rock that happens to be in your way.

Keep your eye on where you are going, and keep climbing. The thing is to get past it.

There is One for you to ask for help, and there is One Who gives the help.

Listen to the words you commonly use, and take note of them. Throw some out. Never use them again.

Problems are problems so long as you think they are. You do not need help. You have help. You are not powerless. You are powerful. The King's child has great power, but he has to know it, and he has to use it.

Do not enjoy your problems so much, and do not enjoy talking about them so much. Hand them over, and go about your business for Me.