You are brave to be a human being. It takes courage. It takes willingness, and it takes heart. Courage means heart. No one would have courage without heart.
Sometimes you feel like a vagrant on Earth, as if you have no home anywhere on this vast Earth. On Earth, you have to make decisions oftentimes in the dark. On Earth, you are learning to make decisions from your heart and not so much from your intellect. Intellect may size up what you should want or should have, but does your heart want it?
At the same time, I have to emphasize the difference between whim and heart. Discern the difference between what your heart wants and what ego urges. Just because you want something doesn’t mean that your want comes from your heart. To be good to yourself does not mean to indulge.
Do you see what I mean when I say how brave you are to visit Earth? Ego is ready to pounce on you at any moment. Ego needs are great, and yet they are false.
You may deeply desire another piece of pie. Is that heart or whim? Or is it ego? Now who is to decide or judge what is true heart or true whim or ravaging ego. It is all fuzzy.
You want that beautiful dress you saw in the store window. You crave it. To have that dress means a lot to you. You don’t have the money for it, yet you have a tremendous yen for it. You may convince yourself that you need that dress, that your happiness depends on it. You buy the dress on a credit card. And then you may never wear it. It may not fit you, and yet you had to have it. You may have no occasion to wear it, and yet you had to have it. The dress represented a dream you wanted fulfilled, and, yet, the purchase of the dress did not make your dream come true. There was perhaps a masked ego need for that dress. Ego will never satisfy you. Ego is a false prophet.
Probably everyone on Earth has bought dreams only to be disappointed. All the advertisements urge you to buy a dream. Sellers urge you to buy their wares and they make promises that no purchase, no matter how wonderful, can fulfill. Your longing is always for something deeper than what any product can give you.
I do not say that you never fulfill a whim. Just don’t make it your way of life. Don’t always buy your own stories.
The dream may be to be Homecoming Queen, and you become Homecoming Queen. The actuality does not have the substance you hoped it would. There is something more fulfilling to long for.
Self-centered needs are often ego needs. You carry a dissatisfaction and you are looking to have that dissatisfaction assuaged. You are sure that your happiness depends upon filling an ego need covered up in glowing colors.
You have misled yourself. Just don’t mislead yourself all the time. Be an advocate for knowing more clearly what’s what.
Once in a while, misleading is a good thing, for it tells you what is folly. Learn from the experience then, and do not repeat it. Ah, but how repetitive you have been in life. How many times, beloved? You may not even have had a moment’s joy from a folly.
When all your clothes do not fit in your closet, you may think the only solution is to have a bigger closet! It may not occur to you to give away some of what is bulging in your closet. You paid good money for those clothes you collect and can’t seem to let go of.
Let go of old ways of thinking. Make way for new thinking.