God said:

Up and down go your moods. You are high, and you are low. It is as though you are torn from pillar to post. In one day, your world can turn upside down and every which way and back again.

The resilience required of you is astronomical.

You realize, of course, that it is you who requires of yourself such astronomical resilience. You set the tone of your life. How you have wished it could be otherwise. How you have craved peace, and, then, something befalls, and you are agitated. You seem to prefer to have the tone of your day and life set from outside events rather than from within you.

No matter how hard you have tried to be calm, cool, and collected, trying hasn’t done the trick. How you have tried. Such success does not come from insistence, yet it will come.

One day you will not be so shaken by life’s inconsistency. You won’t be so riddled because you will not see what is happening as appalling to your well-being. You will reach this lovely place effortlessly and not by dint of will.

It is more like you drive up to a park, and there you are. You come to peace, or, perhaps, peace comes to you there. You find that you are no longer ruffled. Gratefully, you are beside the cooling waters. You come to peace because you come to it. You come to it because you are out of the turmoil that used to shake you up. Now you are unshaken. Now you reach that long sought-after equanimity. You’re here.

God said:

Unless you are moving forward, you are simply holding on or perhaps going backwards. Past practice may consume your seeing and thinking and responding. You relive the past in the present. Pretty much you tend to play out the present as, once upon a time, you did the past.

You tend to hit the same obstacles. You flounder as you floundered before. Life presents itself to you the way it used to. It brings out the same things within you that it used to do. Beloveds, it is not meant to be this way.

Hit the road, Jack. Hit the road.

You are meant to see differently and then grow until you burst all boundaries.

Imagine all that you learned in the first year of your life. A bushel. It’s phenomenal.

Now that you are adult, your life is to continue to grow. You’re not done yet. To grow means to expand. To grow means to learn. To grow means to grow up. To grow means to change. Even when growing means you have to be sadder and wiser, grow. Grow in the direction you want to grow in.

You cannot stay the same. You can’t stand still. Not even dead matter stays the same. But you are alive. You can hang on to a rung of a ladder or you can climb up a rung.

When you’ve come this far, keep climbing.

This is how to gain independence. I won’t say going out on a limb, though you may see this as letting go of the limb you presently hold onto. Beloveds, there is no status quo. Move ahead or slip back. Go higher or fall back.

There is an expression: “Knock some sense into your head.”

Give yourself a break. You may tend to be hard on yourself, too hard. You may tend to be a tyrant to yourself. To your expendable self, I hear you crack your whip and say:

“More more. Deliver more. Even if you have exceeded all my expectations, I will you to do better. And, then, when you do better, I will whip you to go even faster in order to prove something unprovable. What a hard taskmaster am I. I am insatiable. I will work you to the bone. I assign myself to illegal servitude.

“Maybe I am trying to prove to God that I am the hardest worker of all. Maybe I know only effort and strain. Maybe I think I’m not worth anything else unless I give and give. Maybe I think that to rest on the Sabbath is not for me. I certainly don’t seem to allow myself to both work and relax while I’m at it. I wouldn’t treat a horse the way I treat myself. I’m not even half so generous to myself as I would be to a horse.

“I would whisper sweet nothings in his ear. I would feed him the very best of the best, and I would make sure he has rest and does not work too hard.

“So what am I to myself? What kind of servitude have I sentenced myself to? What am I trying to run away from? What keeps me back from setting myself free? When is enough? When will I have earned my freedom?

“Why would I compel myself to overdo, as if whatever I do or how much I do cannot be enough? What have I done to myself, and why would I? Why do I set my expectations so impossibly high?

This Heavenletter does not apply to everyone. Nor does it apply only to others and not to you. It is for some. Perhaps many.

Now that you are grown up, no longer make a fuss when you don’t get your own way. Your own way is not due you across the board.

It is right and natural for a baby to kick and scream, but not you. Nor do you walk away in a huff. You may think you have to defend your rights, and so you may offer ultimatums. This does not make you big, for you are not thinking big. You are thinking small. If you have to be catered to, you are thinking small.

I have to suggest to those of you who are My dramatic children, if you must have drama and make ordinary life huge, then go on the stage! You will have a good career there. You can stomp your foot. You can kick up a storm. You can put everyone else in their place, that is, the place you assign to them. You may feel you are ruling the world.

If you feel this way, you are not ruling the world. You are not even ruling yourself. Whatever the debate is about, it was never about you.

Your honor is not at stake. Your pride is at stake. Ego is at stake. You want to win. You will even bully in order to win. No one wins a prize for being rude or unkind. Certainly, there is not a contest going on as to who has the greatest arrogance.

Know this: You are already important to the world. You are affecting the world right now. Of course, right now you may be limiting the world. It is for you to expand the world. Shine your light and hold your fire.

Sometimes you do not quite understand what I write. That’s okay. I do not ask that you understand everything I write. It is enough that you read what I write.

You can, in life, hear some beautiful music in the background, perhaps an opera in another language. You do not know the name of the music. You don’t know who composed it. You may not even know one word of what the words mean, yet, you hear the music. The music may run through you later again and again. Somewhere deep within, you are getting it. This is how it is with Heavenletters.

Be assured that it is perfectly fine in life not to understand everything. In fact, it may be better so. It is not such a great thing to think you know everything and can repeat it perfectly. Not knowing everything keeps you humble and innocent. This protects you from arrogance and the possible thought that you know more than the person in front of you.

I assure you, no matter how great and wise you may be, you don’t know everything. The more you may protest that you know it all, you may be sure you are missing some salient points. And you will learn, and you will grow in humility. Humility is a fine thing to grow in. I recommend it.

I never asked you to be a hot-shot!

The youngest brother in fairy tales is the innocent one who doesn’t know much. Yet, who is it that winds up with the princess and the King’s treasury?

Know enough, beloveds, to know that you don’t know everything. Even the mighty fall. The mightier you think you are, the more you have to learn, and, probably, further to fall.