Let your thoughts not always be centered on yourself. There are many reasons for this. One reason is that by having your thoughts centered on you, you don’t find happiness. Another reason is that, with your thoughts centered on yourself, by virtue of focusing on yourself, you have less compassion for others. Oh, yes, plenty of compassion on yourself.
Compassion is a way to undercut resentment. Thinking within the small range of yourself is guaranteed to incur resentment. You leave too much out. You are meant for greater than thinking about your little self. Thinking about yourself makes you picky, disgruntled, annoyed, overrun by little thoughts, piqued, unlighted. Too often thinking about yourself first is stultifying, unrewarding, self-provoking.
You are not the only one who has a hard time. You are not the only one who makes errors, is late, doesn’t show up, forgets, gets tied up. Have a heart for someone else.
The Great Ones were not engrossed in thinking of themselves. Their whole attention was not centered on themselves. Nor did they efface themselves. They were so close to My Will that they had no perceived need to put themselves first no matter what. They had lives. They gave up nothing. They lived their lives close to Me.
You may say that Christ gave up his life. Everyone does that, beloveds, sooner or later. It is not such a great sacrifice to let your body go and your soul come to Me in the full sunshine of love. Life and love take their course. One way or another, the soul goes on with or without the body. The body is a mere chattel. Can a great body compare to a Great Soul?
To die is not a punishment. Nor is to live a punishment. Undo the word punishment. Strike it from your vocabulary. Privilege is a better word. Strike the word suffering from your vocabulary as well. Strike it from your vocabulary, and you may well be ousting suffering from your life. You won’t be bound to be adding self-suffering to your life.
The Great Ones were not attached, you understand. That means they were free. Of their own free will, they followed My Will.
It is a very practical matter to let go of focus on yourself. It is not that you become unselfish. You just are not being self-centered. It gets tiring to be self-centered. Self-centeredness is short-sightedness. It simply doesn’t work well. It is tunnel-vision. Happiness does not lie in always thinking of yourself before you think of others. Unhappiness lies in always thinking about yourself before others. Me, me, me is a weary song.
I am giving you a great secret for living a full life. You want a technique? I am giving you one. Only, the thing is, this compassion for others comes naturally from your state of consciousness. At the same time, a little awareness, a little shove from yourself can get you self-started.
Please remember that compassion is not the same as feeling sorry for someone. Don’t do that. Compassion is having an understanding of what life in the world seems like. If someone broke his leg, you would not blame him for limping along. In terms of what I am speaking, just about everyone has a broken leg. Do you understand Me? You are not sorry for them. You do not think: “Poor thing, he has a broken leg.” You simply understand that there are reasons why he does not walk as fast as you. Simply by your understanding, you lift him up. You do not have to speak of your awareness. You are simply at that place where you see farther. You are at that place where you do not judge. You have seen by now that your judgments too often are mistaken. You didn’t take enough into account. Now you take more into account. You know you’re not the only one living on Earth.