You, My beleaguered and heart-sore children, often ask Me for freedom and then beckon dependency to you with all your might.

Once and for all, give up overwhelming dependency upon words and actions from other people in the world. Be a free agent of your Life. Events and other people's responses in the world do not have to bounce you up and down. The world can be your happiness, yet your happiness is not dependent upon the world. Your happiness is dependent upon you. Have more confidence in yourself and Me.

If you believe in the idea that I, God, will provide, then lean back and let go of what seems to be your well-documented desperate reliance on smiles from the world. I smile at you. My eyes look into yours. You and I are all set to flourish.

I am telling you to give yourself freedom and not burden yourself with overblown needs. Get up from the ashes of disappointment, Cinderella.

Life sometimes seems to be biting. Despite all your gratitude for Life, you engage in one-upmanship. One-upmanship is equivalent to ego gratification. Do you really need your ego? Do you really require endless plaudits from the world?

Sometimes you feel chastened by Me. Perhaps every time your beautiful heart gets wounded, the worst is that you may feel that I have let you down. You feel that I use Life in the World and some of the people in it to give you a good whack when you wish I would not allow any such thing.

Hear Me now. Shrug your shoulders. Life is above the world. Say this to yourself:

"My Life is above the world. I am not mired in the world. The Tone of My Life is not dependent upon the slings and arrows of the world. The Tone of My Life is not dependent upon anything but the Love In My Heart. I am to remember Love and not my personal ego. Enough of ego. I am sick and tired of my ego. I don't want to carry the burden of ego even once more.

"My personal ego is a poor excuse for disappointment and retreating from Life. It is not for me to enforce Life. I am to receive Life. I don't have to be bruised. I don't have to take on being bruised. I understand this, God, yet I allow myself to be a punching bag. Sometimes I feel that I must wear that trite sign that says: 'Kick me."

Beloveds, there is that. Now get yourself together. Pick yourself up. Consider yourself a mail room. A mail room is certainly impartial to the mail that it receives. Mail is mail. And within you is where mail is sorted.

Mail may be thrown at you. You don't have to keep all of this random mail. You are the one who rates the mail you receive. It may seem that much of the mail that comes to you can't really be made for you. It came to you. It may have been addressed to you, you don't have to make much of it.

False advertising comes to you. Anything that makes you feel unworthy and unloved isn't the Core of Your Being. It isn't the mail that comes to you that causes your grief, beloveds. It is your own self-image that causes you grief.

You feel there is a great hole in you. Depend upon yourself to hold you up. Assert your True Self. Fill that hole now with joy. Be as generous with joy to yourself as you are to others. Give joy boldly. Accept joy. Rise a step. Smile at the world. Let it in. And when Life in the World is not joyous for you, move past it. This is what letting go means – releasing the past.

No longer are you to be woe-begotten. Accept your blessings. Accept them as your due, and drop the rest of your mail into a wastebasket.

What you are throwing away is your acceptance of ego-battering. Be done. Let ego play no more jokes on you.