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.