Whatever you feel you need, you are to give it. If you crave understanding, then be understanding. If you crave peace, give it. If you crave companionship, be a companion. If people are not interested in you, then you must become interested in them. If you want your phone to ring, call someone.

Everything that occurs, everything you feel, is calling your attention. It is telling you to pay attention to something that is going on. Consider that everything that disturbs your peace of mind is a call for help. It may be someone else’s. You tend to think that every finger in the universe is pointed to you, but it may be that you are being prodded to wake up and attend to someone else. Someone else is an aspect of yourself, of course.

A simple formula, one that does not require analysis, is to give what you want to receive. You would not pretend understanding when you do not understand, but you can stay near, and your presence and willingness may lead to understanding. You do not need to know the supposed cause in order to understand what someone else is going through. You may be sure they are going through something.

If you feel isolated, it can only be that you have isolated yourself. If you have taken to a deserted island, by definition, no one but you is there. You have to go somewhere else, or you have to invite people in.

For every vortex, there is also an issuing out. A stone thrown in a pool eddies. A diver displaces the water. One thing leads to another. Where are you being led? You are not meant to be the flotsam and jetsam that go wherever they are blown. You have some say. Even when you are floating on the river, you can paddle the waters. You don’t have to go around in circles. You don’t have to go down the rainspout.

You have self-determination, beloveds.

You are alive in the world. There is place for you. And you have a role to play. You can decide your role at any moment you choose to. You can play the ingénue. You can play the villain with a twirling moustache. You can play the hero with a swelled chest. You can play the ascetic. You can play the rake. You can switch parts. You can be the counselor, and you can be the counseled. There is not one without the other.

What does it mean that you can be anything you want to be? Is that not the meaning of free will? Even if you are indentured, you can be free. The world is not to set an indelible line around you. No one can tell you what your thoughts must be. What you make of something is what you make of it. You make of it what you will. You are not chained to a way of thinking. You can change your mind any time you decide to. You can tell your mind what to think. Even if you have always danced to the tune in your head or to someone else’s, you can change the music you dance to.

Who is responsible for you, beloveds, if you are not?

You do not want to leave your life for someone else to decide how it will be.

Yes, you react. And you are also an actor. You can write your own lines. You can listen to what everyone else says, and then you can find your own thoughts. You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to disagree. You just have to find out where you are and what you think and what means what to you. Exit the maze.