The world opens its eyes in the morning. The sun peeks over the horizon, adding new light to the world, and the world wakes up. The world begins its day. There is no remedy for it. You also must wake up. Whatever your day, you wake up to it.

The force of the sun impels you to get up. The force of My love impels you to awaken to Me. Did you think you had a choice in the matter? Did you think it was up to you to choose enlightenment? I chose it for you long ago, and you are just beginning to wake up. Enlightenment dawns on you. It dawns on you every day. I am your Enlightenment. Your enlightenment is a question of your waking up to yourself.

Waking up is natural. The sun rises over the horizon each day, and you rise over your understanding of yourself, not yourself as the little creature on Earth who paces and smokes a cigarette, but the Great Soul that you are made of, for am I not the ingredient of you?

And yet you spend much of your day feeling apart from Me, feeling stranded in an alien land, abandoned on an island not of your making. You are here to recognize yourself and to make something of this island you find yourself on. If there were only Earth, if there only individuals roaming Earth, you would indeed have cause to feel bereft. But you are one in a million, you are one in ten billion, you are the Oneness of the Universe. Individual life is but a smattering of you. It is not worth this much thinking about.

There is a larger world than Earth, and there is a larger world than what you are caught up in. You are near-sighted. You look through a microscope when you need telescopic lenses. You need to see bigger. You need to expand your awareness beyond the details of life. The details wear you down. The big picture enlivens you. Wouldn’t you rather be enlivened than worn down?

Therefore, widen your vision. There is indeed a stairway to Heaven, and you are on it. You know you are on a step. Look beyond the step you stand on. Enough exclamations about the step you are on. Look where you are going. Look where you are going to. You are climbing up. You are rising. You are beginning to rise to the fount of Heaven. Long have I been waiting for you to catch up with yourself, to see beyond where your feet are planted, to see all the way to Me, to the center of My heart. I am the vine you climb. I am the top of the Christmas tree. I am a hop skip and jump away from the Sun. Do you see how close I am to you?

Do you see how you presume you are lost when you stand at My gate? Do you see how you presume you are adrift when you are the gate? You are the Gate to the Palace. Open yourself. Walk through yourself and you will find that you are smack in the middle of the Palace. You were always on the inside of the gate, never the outside. The gate was within you. The gate is within you, and at any moment, you can simply walk through. When you do, the whole configuration of the world changes. The world changes simply because you walk through the gate of yourself. Come, enter the Palace now.