What if you could see a literal golden ladder to Heaven, would you not climb it? And if fog and mist surrounded the ladder, would you not climb it still, one foot after the other even in the dark? What choice would you have but to climb the golden ladder? Who would deign to back off after climbing so far? Who would miss a step in the rung of the golden ladder to Heaven? Who would consider leaping down? Who would falter? Who would refuse to climb? Why would anyone who is aware of what they're climbing on and where they're climbing to have a moment's hesitation? Who wouldn't climb the golden ladder and pull all others along with them?

Is there something better you have to do?

Consider your life a climb on this golden ladder. Consider the ladder sturdy. Gusty winds do not shake it. No hand can rattle it. No matter how many are on it, it can't tip over. No matter how many are on it, there is room for all. No one pushes another aside. No one steps over another. It is so beautiful to know you are on this ladder. In modern times, My golden ladder might be called an escalator. Certainly life escalates you. It raises you higher.

Even when you think life has pulled you down, you haven't lost any footing. Indeed, you are on a higher rung. Don't look down. Look up. Remember your destination.

Yet, if I were to turn the ladder upside-down, would you then conceive Heaven as down and Earth above? Would you fall to Heaven and never mind the climbing? What if I were to tell you that there is no direction altogether, and that you already are where you are climbing to?

But I will leave the ladder in place.

What I would like to upturn is your thoughts. You have dug them deep and weighted them down so they would stay as they are. Consider your thoughts then as bulbs you have planted in the soil, not to stay as they are but to shoot up and blossom as iris or some other beautiful names. Your thoughts are not meant to be entrenched. Your thoughts are to grow. You must burst out of the bounds of your past thoughts and surpass collective thoughts.

For life to be new, your thoughts must be. It is said that there is nothing new under the Sun, but there are new thoughts under the Sun. Old thoughts are cuffs that bind you. New thoughts are keys that free you.

Your thinking has been amiss. Is this surprising?

Your thoughts have too often held onto what was never there. All the while, your thoughts are meant to leap over tall buildings and reach the stars. You know that, don't you? What messages do you send to the stars who so faithfully shine down on you? Would you not return the starlight to them?

Keep the door of your thoughts ajar. Let some air in. Let your thoughts be mobile. Old thoughts are like fists that you bang down.

You may agree that the past is to be left behind, yet you drag old thoughts like carcasses along with you. Where did old thoughts come from but the past? You have been weighted down with them.

As you climb the golden ladder of love to Heaven, you leave olden behind and choose golden instead.

Every tear you have shed is its own kind of gold. Tears shed the past. That is what they do. They wring it out of you. Let the past be gone then. Let your foot reach the next rung, and the next, and before you know it, you will have risen, for what do I tell you but to arise?