Beloved, when you do not live up to your own integrity, when you offend a friend with disavowal of the truth of love, when you discover yourself to be less of a friend than you would ever believe yourself to be, when you needlessly hurt a friend’s heart – you would never ever do that, yet you did – then you wonder whether this was truly a slip of the tongue.

Is it possible that your belying your friendship could actually be a subterranean solution? Were you playing a game of “Let’s Pretend” that all is well when all is not well?

If you had not been so distraught, might this relationship have ended sooner and more honestly, and now you wouldn’t bear the sense of faithfulness you carry?

You mean to be true to yourself. On this occasion, you weren’t true to yourself or to your loved one and not even to Me, which is the same as to say you were being untrue to yourself.

You never meant to be untrue to anyone, and, yet, somehow, you fell right into it.

Yes, being straightforward in life is not always as easy as you thought it would be. Somehow you got entangled as though you were someone without a shred of loyalty.

You had an occasion to learn this lesson once before. You were sorry yet didn’t learn the lesson the first time, and you’re not sure about the second time either. Oh, no, that you would fall such a distance from your heart – you cannot believe this.

You recall a children’s rhyme which goes:

“Did you ever tell a lie? Yes, you did. I know you did. You broke your mother's teapot lid.”

When you were a child, you understood the rightness of owning up to the truth of the broken teapot lid to your mother. You knew you owed the truth to your mother, yet you were not, even at the least, true to yourself.

The hurt of your own heart now is enormous.

Back then in your childhood, you had a clear picture of your position. Denying your own truthfulness is the scourge that breaks your heart in two.

You were not honoring your true feelings of love. You had not been true to yourself. You denied your love. How deeply you rue your hasty denial of love as did Peter in the Bible, who publicly denied his loyalty to Christ. Oh, the misrepresentation. Oh, the heartache. Oh, the shame.

In regard to Peter, you wonder if you, as an individual, are possibly meant to feel the depth of Peter’s guilt, and somehow that your hurt is to expiate him from the intensity of his guilt.

Which of My children can really say he is innocent? In one sense, everyone is responsible to everyone else for everyone and everything. In another sense, everyone is innocent.

Perhaps your name is superimposed onto Peter’s name so you can belatedly carry some of his burden. Is this possible? Who knows the extent that the unworthy sense of guilt is to be shared and reduced?

If you were asked, in retrospect, to relieve Peter’s agonizing pain, would you say a vehement no? Would you really? Would you say that his error or his weakness belongs to him alone and not to you whatsoever?

You and your brother are already One. Guilt is already yours to remove from the face of the Earth. What a waste of time guilt is. Beloved, don’t put your attention on guilt. Guilt, be gone.

By the same token, is it not in your good grace to cast stones upon any so-called other. There is no other. There is One.