The trouble with you is that you think you have limits. The trouble with you, then, is how you think. Change your thinking, and, wow, the world is a different place, and you stride differently in the world.
You are quick to think how others must change. You know right down to the minute exactly what others must do. You don’t understand what is the matter with them, how they can do what they do and possibly think they are right! Often others make no sense at all. What is the matter with them?
You are not always so quick to think of the avenues in life that are for you to remake. What ten thoughts will you have today that you could extend or rethink? There is perhaps a tendency to think that you are holier than thou. You are so sure you are right. Half the time it doesn’t even occur to you that your thinking may be limited even at the same time you don’t really believe in yourself. You have come so far, and you truly have. And yet you are not home yet.
Often you ask yourself: “How can so and so think like that? What is he thinking of?” There is even a song that sings: “Why can’t she be more like me?”
At the same time as you may limit yourself, you think you are at the summit. Of course, it is true that you have come a long way. And now you will come further as you open your heart and you open your mind. Be open-minded. Be open-hearted. Your way is not the only way. Your way may not be a way at all except that you fell into it and it sort of suited you. It is comfortable. You like it. You may also like very much feeling that you are above others.
But here’s what you want to do: You want to rise above yourself.
Yesterday, despite your reservations, you stood on top of the world, and you looked down at the masses and thought like the little boy who pulled out a plum, “What a good boy am I!”
It is true that you are good, yet you cannot sit on your laurels. You are going to be better yet, a whole lot better yet. And the only way you can do that is to be open to change. You may still feel sure that you are at the top of the mark. You see that others have to grow. Beloveds, you are to grow as well. You can’t grow without changing. Did you think you could? You are not yet Buddha sitting under a banyan tree.
You can love yourself. It is good to love yourself. You can still love yourself and change. I am not talking about change enforced on you from the outside. I am talking about your changing your mind because you have opened your heart and mind, and now you see from a wide-angled lens. You can’t pretend to see from a vaster perspective. You can only see what you see when you see it. Right now you can be open to seeing in ways you have seldom or never seen before.
Now you can admit that you are not always right. You cannot say you are never mistaken. You cannot say you have reached your full growth. You can be wonderful and good and woolly and wise, and still you have room to grow, and grow you will because you want to reach your full stature, and you want to stand tall, and you want to be all I want you to be in thought, in love, and in deed, altogether a beautiful example of what I have wrought.