If joy is your nature, and your heart is heavy, then you can know that you are away from your nature. It is unnatural for you to be unhappy and anxious. That is why it is so uncomfortable for you. If anguish were a natural thing, it would not be so disturbing.

You can bless even your anguish, however. It is signaling you to return to your nature of love. It is yourself you are not loving. That must be the case or you would not punish yourself so. Perhaps you consider yourself unworthy of joy. Perhaps you consider yourself worthy of woe.

Your beautiful heart is not meant to ache. It is meant to love.

Relieve your heart of burdens you place on it. Let no one else's displeasure enter your heart and become your own. Do not sin against yourself. Do not accept heartache as your due. It is not your due. It is your pain. You have let something extraneous enter your heart. If you have let it enter, you can also take it out.

Take out the unwanted from your heart and bury it somewhere where it cannot hurt anyone. In your mind, find a sand dune in which you can bury it. Whatever has kept you down, pull it out like a snake from your heart. You have stuffed too much waste there. Certainly it is a waste of your beautiful heart to submerge it in dross. Remove all sludge from your heart so you can know the truth and beauty of the beat of your heart.

Then your heart will become a clear mountain stream. Love will flow from your heart endlessly. Picture your heart flowing in love, bubbling love like laughter. Assuage your heart with love. Love your heart of love.

Sometimes your heart has been like an empty bucket dashed on the surface waves of life. All the while, your heart is destined to be full of love, a heart buoyed by the sea, a heart floating, not a heart daunted and overturned by the tide. Your heart was not meant to be at the mercy of momentary waves. Your heart certainly is not meant to be at the mercy of your thoughts.

If you did not think so much about how you feel, would you not feel better? When you think of how you feel, too often you dredge up overworked thoughts. If you did not persist in labeling how you feel, might you not feel differently? Why ring a bell that relegates you to less than joy?

You say you are depressed, and then you feel more depressed. You have convicted yourself of gloom. Depression is a name given to a temporary condition. The name elongates that which it represents.

Rename that which you call depression. Call it precursor to joy. Call it a jumpstart on joy. Call it a turning point. Call it the hovering of love. Call it a passing chore. Call it a visitor who has stayed too long and must go on its way. Do not be so hospitable to that which you do not want. Why would anyone prefer long-drawn-out anxiety over freedom from it?

Perhaps your feeling blue has become a project for you to occupy yourself with. Perhaps you have invested so much in it that it is hard for you to let go of it. It is really not precious.

At best, anxiety, by whatever name it is called, is an intruder. It is definitely not something that belongs to you. Do not be so polite to it. Toss it out on its ear.

Be more deferential to joy than grief. Greet joy generously. Run to meet it.