When your heart is hurt, it is always ego. You and your feelings were not considered important enough to be considered -- or pleased or taken into account at all. How fragile is your heart when you depend upon others for your worth. People do not always consider themselves worthy. Why would you think they would esteem you?

Esteem yourself. Let go of your ideas of how others should treat you. Let go. Let go of hurt and anguish. Bless others, and bless yourself.

Let others make their mistakes. Goodness knows, you make enough mistakes of your own. But do not make too much of mistakes, yours or others.

You know right now that it is a mistake for you to feel affronted by others’ thoughtlessness. Their thoughtlessness did not cut your heart in two. You cut your heart in two. This is your own failing, beloved, to think that someone’s lack of consideration has say over how you feel. This is not a happy place for you to be in, to think that your well-being depends upon what others say and do, no matter how thoughtless, even heartless they may be. Your well-being is not dependent upon outer circumstances. Outer circumstances are just that. They are like bystanders, and really don’t have much to do with you. Bystanders are not the making nor unmaking of you. You, on the other hand, have a lot to do with you. You do not have to let others rule your heart. Your heart is yours, and your heart is Mine.

When you feel hurt or enraged, you have discounted yourself. That is the crux of it. You have bought hook, line, and sinker what you take as others’ regard for you. You don’t do this because you think well of yourself. You do this because you do not think well enough of yourself. Otherwise, you would not denigrate yourself with hurt feelings. It can only be ego that says: “They shouldn’t do this to me. They have no right.”

They are doing nothing to you. You just happen to be there. It is like you are in a crowd, and someone jostles you and doesn’t say excuse me. It is no more than that. Go on your way, and don’t look back. Don’t keep thinking about it.

The world is not out to get you. It will, however, point out your weak spots to you. It will point out where you think you are weak. That is your true weakness, beloveds.

This is not the first time your heart has been hurt. But it can be the last, for you are the one who hurts your heart. Your mind says that something has to be otherwise when it doesn’t have to be anything at all. You don’t have to take life so hard. You don’t have to make so much of it.

If you feel disgraced, that is something you assigned to yourself. No one else did. When you feel graced, that is a generous moment you gave yourself. Grace and disgrace are two sides of a coin that you toss. And then there is the Grace of God, and I give it to you now. Surmount your hurt feelings. Let them go. They are no use to you. They are no use to anyone. Hurt feelings muddy up the waters.

If you are fishing by the banks of a river, and where you sit is rocky and uncomfortable, you do not feel mistreated. You do not feel you are less because of the discomfort. You do not take it personally. You are not dismayed. You take it in your stride, or you sit somewhere else.

Life presents you with the same options, beloved. It is your choice as to how you will respond.