When you let go of the so-called past, present, or future, you have let go of a lodged idea. When you let go, you feel tremendous ease. When you let go, you have surrendered. You haven't given up anything but a preconceived idea. That's what surrender is. You surrender your demands, and you accept peace.

When you get irritated you are irritated because you do not have all the control you would like. You want silence, and there is noise. You want to be undisturbed, and you are disturbed. You want to reach somewhere fast, and traffic has another idea. You want to take a nap, and the phone doesn't stop ringing. You feel foiled by the vicissitudes of life. Somewhere you got the idea that everything has to be in accord with your wishes. And you feel like a raging despot when they don't.

If everyone came from confidence rather than lack, the whole configuration of the world would be different.

If no one feared they would be robbed, would there be robbery?

If no one worried that they would not be paid, would there be debt?

If there were not sense of lack, would seeming lack exist?

Are the robber and the robbed vibrating at the same vibration? Does the one with ten locks on his front door call the robber to him? Is the robber answering a request when he robs?

Do the ones who dun for payment attract those who do not pay?

Limitless are the recesses of your mind when it listens to your heart. When the mind listens to something else, someone else's thought or an amassed world thought, it is not using its head. It may exercise a particular skill but unless your heart is in it, the mind repeats or recites an exercise that keeps you in place.

Thrust your heart forward. Honor it. Accept it. It is a leader of you. I entrusted Myself to your heart, not to your mind. The mind is a receptor of the heart. It cannot bypass the heart and still find what the heart desires.

The mind thinks.

When you feel in the grips of something, in the grips of pain, perhaps, or in the grips of fear, or even in the grips of love, you have propelled yourself there and gripped that place, that occasion, that person. You attached yourself there. How crass of Me to say you are attached to even your pain, but attachment is its own pain. Attachment is false. Attachment is a conception you have, and — listen to this — it is never based on truth.

Attaching is its own art. You are skilled. You insert yourself. You embed yourself. You hold on for dear life.

You all say that you want freedom, and yet you keep attaching to what is around you.

In order to be free, you have to release your attachments. You do not have to give all your worldly possessions away, but you must release their hold on you.

Free means to not be bound.

In order for you not to be bound, you release all that you have been bound to. Of course, you have not really been bound. You just thought so, and that has been enough to keep you bound. Binding is mental.

Even surrounded by prison walls, you are free.

Even in a prison, you can let go of attachments.

It's a good thing when you don't know what to do, when you don't know what to say or what to write. It is good because then you offer openness. When you know, or know for sure, you offer closedness. And closedness is control. Openness is not.

Of course, openness has to be true. An appearance of openness while you are sure inside that you know the answer is not openness but a manipulation of it.

Innocence is unknowing. Innocence is openness. Innocence is the greatest knowledge of all. It is a clean slate. It is openness. It is freedom.

It is not controlling.

Think of Me as God on Earth. Think of Me as God on Earth more than you think of Me as God in Heaven. Wherever I am is Heaven. Wherever you are is Heaven as well, if you only but knew. What if I were to tell you that the only Reality is Heaven? All else is false. All else is folly.

You were put on Earth to find Heaven. That is your simple task. Don't make it hard. Make it easy.

First, release judgment as a concept. All that you judge comes to pass in your own life. Judging is a kind of marriage. Your sneering is an invitation to that which you judge. It is as if you say:

Today is a good day for you to notice your tremendous growth. You have grown by leaps and bounds. You have done somersaults in life. You are far ahead from where you were a year ago — or even a moment ago. Think for one minute of all you have learned. You know it is true, that you have learned, and all that you have learned, you have gained. So think of all you have gained.

Count your riches in learning. And what is it you learn? You learn yourself.

When you attach another to yourself, you have attached yourself to them. Attachment is a clinging, and when you cling to something else, you are clung to it. You give up something of yourself when you attach to something or someone. It is never worth it. Attachment is never cost-effective. You give too much or take too much, and you lose yourself.