It is often a dilemma for you, how to honor yourself and another at the same time. You want to say Yes to another, and then later you may be sorry you said Yes, for you may later feel that, in so doing, you said No to yourself. How do you know when to put yourself first before another, and when to help out another? You struggle to know when to give, and when to hold back.
Frankly, you have not seen enough of others' honoring you. You haven't seen much of it at all.
You crave to be unselfish, and you crave not to be taken advantage of. You may regret having obliged someone else, and you may regret even more perhaps when you did not help someone else. Whichever way you turn, you may feel caught in a cross-brace. You sincerely want to serve, and too often when you do or you don't, you berate yourself either way, and so you come to the point where you berate others in your mind as well. You can't seem to get it right.
You dearly don't want to be hard-hearted, and you don't want to be too soft-hearted and then sorry later. You don't want to be misbegotten, and you don't want to be a misanthrope, and you don't want to be a fool.
I would say to you, beloveds, the main thing is not to be down-hearted. Yet you don't know how to keep your heart up when someone lets you down. This is what you really have to learn. This is called non-attachment, beloveds. Don't mind so much what others do or do not. Their responses don't really have much to do with you or even anything at all.
Find a way not to be even thinking this way. Don't count on a return. When you invest dollars, you count on a return of your investment at the same time as you know that investments do not always pay off. What is the best thing you can do when there is not a return, or not much of a return on your investment of heart or money? Why, shrug your shoulders, forget about it, and move on. Your choices are not to depend on someone else's choices.
Do not make the mistake of looking over your shoulder. If you apply what happened yesterday to today, you are behind the times. Never mind what someone else did or didn't do. Never mind whether someone else said thank you or not. Don't brace yourself based on what someone said or didn't say yesterday. Mind what you do and what you appreciate today.
You want to be beneficent, You want to help your fellowman, and yet sometimes, in doing so, you feel like a drudge. Someone may not return to say thank you or even acknowledge your presence. And this grinds in your heart.
What you have to do, My darlings, is to let go. Let go of the idea that anyone has to say thank you or acknowledge you. Do not beat yourself up because someone is not what you would want them to be.
If you belabor the issue of another's response or non-response, you show your accuracy in arithmetic, and, in so doing, you make yourself unhappy. Keep up that counting and adding and subtracting, and you will become bitter. That will make your heart brittle, beloveds. You will be so careful that you do not overspend your heart that you will become a miser of your heart.
Never mind who neglected you yesterday. Today, do not neglect yourself. Today, give your heart splendidly. Where else does your happiness lie?
Beloveds, wherein lies your victory? When someone does not seem to value your goodness, what have you lost? Be good-hearted. Don't lose it. Whatever you do, don't lose your good-heartedness. Serve life, Me, and yourself well.