It is better not to mind what anyone says. Do you understand Me? It is a waste of your energy. No matter what someone says, he is talking about himself. You see this with others more easily than you see this with yourself, yet it is so. What you frown at is you, beloveds. No matter how wrong what someone said may be, you are the one looking at it, and you are prolonging it when it's better to drop it.

Routine is good. Breaking from routine is also good. Steadfastness is good, and flexibility is good. All is good.

When you can see that all is well, you will have a greater view of life. Nothing will have to be one way and not another. You will relax.

What we are talking about is not judging. This concept of not judging is touted a lot and applied infrequently.

Little by little, what I say every day is beginning to sink in and become a part of you. Oh, yes, offense-producing annoying situations and people still arise. How can this happen, yet it does. And you may still feel strongly that you want to retaliate in kind. You may want to tell off some people. You may want to tell them how rude and inconsiderate and unintelligent they are. You are sure of it, and yet you pause, and yet you refrain and you find mulling within you a greater consideration and understanding, and, yes, even compassion. You find you don't want to set them straight anymore.

Beloveds, why are you surprised when wonderful things happen? Are you perhaps conditioned to expect the negative and to be dazzled by the good, which, after all, is only being returned to you? Surprise has the connotation of delightful, so be delighted when all the love in the universe that is already yours appears before you. There is blessing in knowing what belongs to you. All good belongs to you. My blessings belong to you. It is not owed you. It has already been given.

Be on an even keel. Excitement isn't needed. Evenness is. When you know Who you are in the depths of your heart, you have all the excitement you need, except then it isn't excitement but enlightenment. When the food is already finished cooking, you don't have to stir it anymore.

Sometimes you wear yourself out with excitement. It is as if you ride a roller coaster daily, or take a pill that electrifies you, or you speed in your car.

Difficulties seem to all come from the outside. Your pen doesn't work. The computer isn't behaving. Customer service puts you on hold and you wait and wait. The weather does not always cooperate and so on.

Must you go from one extreme to another? Must you go from high excitement to low despair? Must you? It is like you let yourself be whipped from side to side by the winds of change. But you are not a ball to be batted back and forth. You are a Child of God, and I am your ballast.

You are not tossed from hand to hand. Why then are you so perturbed and disturbed by what someone says or what occurs? Why must every gust of wind or wave of the ocean shake you so? They must not. You are not so vulnerable as you make out.

Quite naturally you want good things in life to happen, and you are delighted when they do, when they come to you as gifts, perhaps as surprise falling from the sky. By the same token, you are crestfallen when great surprises of joy do not arise and seeming impediments wrap themselves around you instead. You see what you welcome as tributes to yourself, and those which you do not welcome as scoldings. Is that not so? You may live life according to a sense of reward and punishment.

Just when you think you've surmounted the littlenesses in life, you find yourself irate over something. You thought you were past all that, and here you go again, deeply annoyed at someone else's thoughtlessness and their way of dealing with life. Yet why must you, a bystander, be so affected?