Dear Hearts, you long to be free of obstacles. You must know by now that obstacles are a thought in your mind. Sometimes you feel that nothing seems to work right for you. You try to find a paper, and you cannot find it. It is true that you cannot find the paper, yet it is you who decides that looking for the paper must be considered an obstacle. You demand the paper to appear, and when it doesn’t, it has defied you. And so you feel frustrated, all because you decided the loss of the paper is an obstacle. Of course, it is an obstacle to your preconceived idea. What if, instead of an obstacle, you see that the missing paper is pointing you in a direction?
When Edison perfected electricity, he did not consider his innumerable trials and errors catastrophes. He knew all the errors were stepping stones. Why don’t you know that? Is there some reason why the things that don’t work the way you want them to have to be considered catastrophic? You don’t have to blow them out of proportion. Change your perspective.
Beloveds, what is human life but trial and error? Have you been waiting for everything to work perfectly for you?
You also don’t need to feel that you are up against a stone wall. You demand a lot, from yourself, from others, and from life. You may have set standards that demand too much of you. If your life has to be perfect in your eyes, you will indeed experience frustration. You say you don’t like to feel frustrated, so why do you experience it so much and so often? Haven’t you had enough? Is it possible that you can be done with frustration and just go along, whistling as you work?
Too often you set yourself up, beloveds. You become your own patsy. Is it not so that you run up against the same obstacles time and time again? You bang your head against the same brick wall. How many times are you going to allow yourself to be unhanded by the contingencies of life? Beloveds, because something irritating exists, doesn’t mean you have to be irritated, or aggravated or fit to be tied. It is you who ties yourself. You choose to see one way rather than another.
Sometimes you are like the spoiled child who wants everything his own way. Inside, you stamp your foot and cry tears of frustration. That is nothing to be proud of, beloveds.
Be easier to please. Make a difference to yourself in your own life. Do not impose upon yourself. Let life go its way, and you go yours. Keep trying, but do not try so hard. Build it into your precepts that you may not find a paper you are looking for. Build it in that the computer may not cooperate, that someone may not deliver, or deliver late. You are not condoning inefficiency. You are not expecting it. At the same time, you don’t need to be stunned by it.
It is like with the weather. The clouds take over one day. It rains. You do not shake your fist at the rain. You do not feel so virtuous that you accuse the rain of foul play. Accuse nothing, beloveds. Get on with your life good-naturedly. Be an asset to yourself.
Do you see how all the blocks are within yourself? You block yourself when you take inconvenience so seriously. The details of life are not always perfect. Who said they have to be? Why, I think you may have thought so. And now you will take down the ramparts you have hoisted. Remove the barriers within yourself, beloveds, and, so, you will be free of them.