You have opinions about life, and some of your opinions are bright and sparkling, and some are not so bright and sparkling. You may say that the dark aspects of life are true. They are true as you see them, and it’s true that dark elements of life, as you see them, pull you down.

It is equally true that the bright elements lift you up, and you become light as a feather. Which would you rather be? Heavy as a boulder, or light as a feather? Which would you choose? Which choice will more easily lift you to Heaven? Every day, perhaps many times a day, you are choosing a rock or a feather. Upon what do you base your choice? You say it is reality.

You may say there are more rocks in the world than feathers.

I wonder why you feel duty-bound to stick up for the heaviness and make light of the lightness of feathers. You may say, “True, feathers exist, but rocks are more grounded. Rocks are more solid. Feathers aren’t quite as substantial. They won’t hold you up.”

And so your opinions become weighted down in what you call reality.

Facts and True Reality are not one and the same. Collect factuality, if you like, and where does it get you? Let’s be factual then. Rocks keep you down. That which you call reality holds you down, keeps you down, keeps you immersed where you may well not want to be. In choosing what you may call reality, you do a good job of keeping yourself where you are. Would it be a good test of Reality to leave off where you are and start anew somewhere else?

When you are in a jam, don’t you want to get out of it?

If you prefer to stay in a jam, that’s your free choice. If you do prefer to move out of the spot where you are now, there are other thoughts to embrace that will take you on a journey. Not a flight of fancy, beloveds, but a journey.

Let Me ask you: If you are given a choice of being immobile or going on a journey to visit a new land, what would keep you making the same choice as you have been, and what would keep you from making a new choice? Do you really, for the sake of some obscure reality, want to run the same course again?

Here is your chance to sail on the High Seas. Would you refuse it?

It’s true. You are not given a map. You are not given a guarantee. You are given a choice.

If you complain about the present route you are taking and you choose the same route again, what are you doing? What are you choosing?

True, all that glitters is not gold. By the same token, what makes you think that you are indentured to iron? Gold is as real as iron.

True, there is no safe bet.

Has it possibly occurred to you that safety may not be the issue? Keeping yourself as you have been may be familiar, but familiarity and safety are not necessarily the same. There are no guarantees as you would like guarantees to be. There is opportunity, however. Staying at home in a rocking chair in a corner is not always your best choice.

What I am saying is to give life a chance to take other courses. Like a river, allow life to flow. Swim in the waters of life and don’t be afraid to. Swimmers learn to swim. They learn to give up their fear so that they can swim. Standing on shore offers its joy. Swimming in the ocean offers unrealized joys.