My children look very much to the surface. How something turns out intrigues you. Yet what happens deeper than the surface is what matters. Your intention is key. Your feeling level is key.
When you say something turns out well or it turns out badly, you are looking at the surface. You see that you win or you lose. You see gain and loss. You see trust broken. Trust cannot be broken, or it is not trust. If you feel hurt or neglected or betrayed by a friend, your trust belongs to you. Have trust that what someone else does or doesn't do need not affect you. It affects you only by the importance you assign to it.
I am going to tell you something. Results, perceived results, are not so important. The bell rings or it doesn't. You make a touchdown, or you don't. Someone or something lets you down, or someone or something lifts you up. What matters is your heart. Your heart is the crux of things. Not peripheral events. No, not at all.
You do not follow the crowd. You do not have to. You do not have to think the way the world thinks. To the world, someone whose picture makes the front cover of a magazine becomes important. Someone whose picture does not make the front page is unimportant. The world certainly keeps records and looks for evidence. That is not life, beloveds. That is not living life. That is mere bookkeeping.
Perhaps you are a hero. You do great deeds. No one sees. No one takes your picture. But what is the profit in having your picture taken one way or the other? The picture does not affect your deed. The picture does not make you brave, nor does lack of a picture make you less brave. Notice from the world is only notice from the world.
Attention on you is nice. It feels good. I might ask, however, where does your attention go? Look not quite so much to the surface, beloveds. The surface is skimmed. We're talking about that which is not skimmed.
Money in your pocket is very nice. The amount of money in your pocket is not your worth, however, and abundance is far more than the clink of coins. Your joy in work is meritorious. How you spend your money is meritorious. Your good feeling is meritorious. Keep the good feeling with or without wads of bills in your pocket. Keep the good feeling with or without a pocket.
Results are very limited and limiting. Results would make you a bouncing ball, a will o' the wisp, a leaf in the wind, scatter you across the face of the Earth, make you vulnerable and give you a sense of powerlessness. Dependent upon the world for favor, you are vulnerable, and you are powerless, or that's how it feels.
The truth is that you are powerful. It's just that your power comes not from the world. If your power comes not from the world, then it must come from somewhere else. It comes from within, and within expands all the way to Heaven where the power originates. Certainly, you have the power to look beneath the surface. Looking at the surface is only one way of looking at things. It is not the only way.
The world is like a barker at a circus. The world is like the preview of a movie. The world is only the outside. If you want the real show, you have to go inside.