Calmness is next to Godliness. Aspire to be calm. Calmness means to take life in your stride. Whatever transpires, keep walking forward.

You do not need a quota of upset. You can do without any. You are not a soldier walking along in life with a sword. You are not ready to vanquish perceived enemies.

As it is, you see affronts to your ego. I was going to say to your honor, yet We can be frank and say ego. From your vantage, life did something wrong. You feel that if life venerated you, it would not have done this whatever it was.

When you feel that life did not soothe you, then you must soothe yourself. Better yet, do not incur the need for soothing. Have equanimity in the first place.

Life is not meant to knock you down. Life is not meant to be precarious. Life is meant to be what it is.

How you take life is another story. Sometimes you take life by the neck and shake it. You say to it: “How could you? How could you do this? How could you let this befall? You had no right.”

Life goes by its own rules, not yours. Your rules are protests. Better to tip your hat at life, and keep going. Life does not knock you down. You knock yourself down. Do not get into fisticuffs with life. Life has every right to be life. Life is not persecuting you. Perhaps you are persecuting life. You may lash at it right and left. You may stamp your foot at life. “How could you do this to me?”

Life isn’t doing anything to you. Life is as life does. Do not be belligerent to life. If life is the waiter who brings you a dish you wouldn’t choose, be gracious. Maybe a mistake wasn’t made.

At the same time as life seems to bring you something you didn’t order, there is that aspect where you bring life to yourself. You went to a buffet table, and somehow you served yourself. You filled your own plate. You wouldn’t do that, you say. You would never serve yourself what you don’t like, and, yet, it is very possible that you did. You cannot figure it out because no one would order what befalls you, and, yet, perhaps the error is yours. Perhaps you sent out a thought, and it boomeranged back to you. Perhaps a curse you gave someone landed on you. And, yet, none of this is to figure out. You cannot always use world’s logic. You cannot always make sense of the cards life deals you. You may have picked a card. You never would. Yet perhaps somewhere in the distant past, you had marked that card as yours.

Whether you understand life’s holdings or not, it is now for you to move on. You cannot continue to protest in the same spot. You have to take a step. You have to let go of it. The only way to undo what life seemed to hand you is to keep walking. Pull your shoulders back and walk on. Climb a step. Create something new. Create new thoughts.

If you knew, deeply knew, that you are My beloved child, for how long would you rant and rail? For how long would you shake your fist? How long would it take you to love what is already past behind you and walk on and leave upset and quandary behind you? We walk together. Whatever may befall, We walk together. Do not punish yourself for what has befallen. The age of self-punishment is over. Get up. Arise.