When your heart is sagging, you are lagging in that you are not keeping up with your heart. You are putting it down. You are depressing it.

Your heart is always raring to go. Unleash it. Stop pressing it down.

You have been afraid to let your heart take off. You keep gauging the food given to your heart, and you find it is not enough. Let your heart forage for itself. Instead of telling your heart, "Giddyap," what it wants to hear, you have been telling your heart: "Better to hold back. Better to pace yourself. You never want to give out more love than you are given. Never. Hold on to what you have. Be sparing with it."

But what if your heart is a steed who rides up the mountains and across the seas? What if your heart is a bridge so that others can cross any distance? What if your heart is meant to be a spender and not a withholder? Why would you harden a softened heart? Why would you do this under the false colors of protecting your heart?

Beloveds, you are protecting your ego.

Yes, your identity is love but not the love coming to you. Your identity is the love you give. Sometimes keeping silent is the love you give. Sometimes you don't have to be on the stage. You can be the stagehand who quietly lights the stage. You can even be the backdrop. You certainly don't have to be the star. Yet, you have thought so. You have thought you have to be the center of the stage. Don't foist onto your beautiful heart what belongs to ego. It's not your heart that wants all the attention. It is your little self whose name is ego.

You allow yourself to be the wicked stepmother who looks into her mirror and asks herself daily, "Who is the fairest of all in all the land?" In your case, you ask, "Who is the fairest in my little world?"

When there is not enough attention on you, you may pout. You pout because you feel something is amiss that you don't have all the attention you deserve. I am not disputing your merit. Yes, you do deserve all the attention in the world, and, yet, that is not the game in play. The game is not Solitaire. The name of the game is Love, and love is not a competition.

You haven't thought of yourself as competitive, yet what would you call it now that you take a good look in the mirror of yourself? You have been competing with everyone, and you have been competing with yourself. You certainly never thought of yourself as the wicked stepmother in the fairy tale. That was someone else, and, yet, you were the one looking into the mirror of a fairy tale.

The wicked stepmother was very needy, wasn't she? She was so needy that she needs to be the fairest of all. She was so needy that she had to be admired. She equated admiration with love, and, so, it appears, do you. Beloveds, being the center of attention is a poor substitute for love. You deserve to be a quiet giver of love by not having to be the fairest or the best of anything in the world. You are a bearer of love. That means you carry it. You are a means of love. Be a shining star that is happy simply to shine wherever you are and whatever number in the list of attractions you happen to be. Do not think this is sacrifice unless you believe giving up ego is sacrifice. You don't have to be the candle. It's fine to be the candle-holder.