Gloria to God:

Many things don't bother me as much as they once did. And yet, there are still things that seem to get to me, like an unkind word. I can say to myself that it doesn't matter what someone else thinks or says, and yet I do care. I care what someone thinks or says.

God:

Let's talk about caring from several angles.

How honorable it seems to be to care. To be a caring person. To deal with everything as if it matters. Hasn't it been an ideal to be a caring person? Weren't you taught to be a caring person. Wasn't that what you learned life was about? Good people care. Not-so-good people don't care.

Not-so-good people, as defined, don't care whether something is right or wrong, whether an item belongs to you or them, whether they are being pushy or nice and so on.

It is not surprising that you want to be a good caring person. Haven't you been taught that caring for others is your reason for being? I wonder who has taught you that, and how well you learned.

The trouble with being a "caring person" is that it denies yourself at the same time as it aggrandizes yourself. It makes you stronger and weaker at the same time. You may come to need the needer's needing.

A caring person is sensitive to the needs of others. I would not tell you to be insensitive to another's needs, but I tell you not to take on another's needs and make them your own.

In truth, you cannot take on another's need. You can just add to your own. Should you take on their pain? Their worries? Their fears? How does that benefit either? They still have theirs, and now you have theirs as well.

I do not tell you to be indifferent or uncaring. I tell you to be neutral. If someone is hungry, feed them. If someone is thirsty, give them drink. Do not feel that you owe. Do not feel that you must not take on their state as your debt.

When someone is angry, is it caring for you to become angry too? It was their choice to become angry. Must it be yours as well?

If someone weeps, why weep you?

If someone is in pain, must you wince?

Offer aid but not your investment in it.

Do not identify yourself as a Caring Person. That is not who you are. Put not your allegiance to any world identity. You are not Caring Person any more than you are Baker or Candlestick-Maker.

Do not define the identity of another either. Do not define another as the Needy or the Wealthy or the Sick or the Well. Do not put yourself on one side of the desk and another on the other. Do not look in the window from outside nor look out from inside. There is no separating pane of glass.

There is a certain conceit in thinking that you are the Savior to another. You do not need to add on worth to yourself in the doing for others, for that is judgment you take upon yourself. Doing for others does not have to be your flag in life. Do your good on earth by doing My Will, not as Sacrificer to My Will, not as ennobler to one in need, but by doing what you want to do in allegiance to Me, not allegiance to your worthiness to yourself or to the world or to another. Take the role I cast you, but do not give yourself a title.

Do not puff yourself up with good deeds. Look to Me. Be not thinking: "Goody, I do God's Will. I am a doer of God's Will."

Do My Will, and think: "Thy Will be done."

Now We come to caring about what other people say or think as seen in hurt feelings. When you care so, you are trying to control. You are trying to control another's actions or words or judgments. You think, "They shouldn't have said that. That was obnoxious, untrue, unfair. That was stupid, uncalled for, unworthy." Your caring much about what another says to you is the same as anger. Hurt feelings are the same as anger, dear one.

And where does anger come from but the need to change something? You want the other person to undo their words. You want them to take them back. You want them to change. You want something from them. Do you see how that is control?

You do not need to take another's words or point of view as anything at all but what the person was feeling at that particular moment. Their feelings, your feelings are not such momentous things. They are nothing really.

Let the people live their life, and you live yours. Do not take it upon yourself to educate the other. Do not talk back to them in your mind and correct them. Do not try to reform them. Give them their freedom, and take yours. Let them go their way, and you go yours.

Put them in My light and leave them there. Walk into your own space filled with My light. I am yours. You are Mine. Tell Me, what else matters so much as to take you away from My light and your thoughts of Me and your joy in Me?