Gloria to God:

Dear Father in Heaven, I am a little tired of myself this morning. I wish I were not always so concerned with my feelings and who said what. I'm tired of being thin-skinned. I would like to be more.

God:

More than you are?

Gloria:

Yes!

God:

How can you be more than you are?

Gloria:

I want to spend less time thinking about myself. I am tired of myself, God. I want to be a bigger person than I am.

God:

What you are saying is that you want to be more closely aligned with Me and less concerned with details of life?

Gloria:

Yes. My life is made of a lot of Heaven, dear God, but I fluctuate between Heaven and picky unimportant stuff. I don't mind living in the relative, but I seem to deal with the small issues overmuch.

If my thoughts were more on You, would I care about the little stuff and my personal feelings so much? See, here I am in this question, concerned with how I feel. Can't I ever have bigger questions?

God:

Your attention is often on the specific, and that is the power of your individual attention. Some people are physicists and theoretical mathematicians. Should the sweeper of sidewalks regret that he is not a philosopher?

Gloria:

No. But if the sweeper keeps thinking about his personal feelings about everything he sweeps and anguishing over every scrap and takes it personally….

God:

You are saying that if the sweeper puts all his attention on the ground, he is missing the sky and higher things.

I say, as he sweeps, his mind and heart can be regarding Heaven and the vastness of man rather than what man litters the ground with.

You are asking how to get out of pettiness then?

Gloria:

Yes.

God:

Move your mind over. Your attention is really on dissatisfaction a lot, how life does not live up to your expectations, and how you do not. Turn that thinking around. How does life more than live up to your expectations? In what ways do you live up to yours? How does your life exceed what you have dreamed of?

If your thinking is bogged down, unbog it.

For you, read poetry again. Read more inspirational books. Maybe you are watching too much TV which pulls your thoughts down rather than up.

Read more of the great minds. Get back to reading A Course in Miracles.

Human life swings from Divine to mundane, from mundane to Divine. That is human life, even though you remember that the Divine also exists within the mundane.

But as you swing from Divine to apparent mundane, in what spirit do you do that? What music accompanies you? You choose the accompaniment. You choose the music that goes along while you climb trees, swing from high to low, wake or sleep.

Even the greatest music is not all crescendo. Some music is like a hand lapping water like an oar. Some music is still water. Have a tune accompany you that sings:

"God is here. I do not have to think much about my personal frailties and insignificance when I hear God's song. It is enough that I go along picking up papers or asking personal questions so long as I remember that what I do is not who I am.

"I am not a Mother Teresa. I am a Gloria who just wants to widen her porthole to the world and to herself.

"If I desire to be greater and do greater things, then I consider each moment of my life as a diamond. How do I treat my diamond moment? How do I spend it? I am tired of spending my diamond as though it were a trinket. I want to spend my diamond as a diamond.

"I want my diamond spent on things greater than my personal self. I want my diamond of time to be spent more closely with God and His vision.

"I am tired of my own personal vision. I can see it is too narrow. I want to leave the category I have put myself in and walk through a greater door.

"I trust to God that He will help me find this greater doorway and bolster me so that I am not afraid to walk through it.

"I am a human being who walks on earth. I can tiptoe, I can take small steps, I can climb hills, I can climb mountains, I can jump and leap. I do not have to stay where I am. I do not have to stand still. I can explore horizons.

"If I choose a wider swath, I will have it, even if I cannot see it now. If I choose a ladder to Heaven, I will climb it. If I choose to sail the High Seas, I will find a ship to sail on.

"Whatever I desire is mine. If I desire a greater opportunity, it will appear. If I desire greater vision, I will have it.

"God grants desires.

"Now I desire more than my own personal gratification. I want to leave my ego like shoes at the threshold, and so I will. And so I will.

"If I want my attention on greater expressions of God, I will put it there.

"If I want my life for greater good, it will be so.

"I am not confined to my confines.

"I am a free being of God. If I were incarcerated in a 4' x 4' cell, I would still be free. I do not understand this now, but I accept my freedom and ask that my attention be on goodness and grandness and not on my small self.

"I don't want to be selfish anymore. I want greater alignment with God, and I want to be all God wants me to be.

"If God wants me to ask my small personal questions, I will continue to do so with His music in my ears.

"I am thankful for who I am and what I do, and I will seek God's answers to my questions in my life and present existence.

"I am thankful to have questions and to listen to the answers.

"I am thankful that God put me on earth, and I thank God for all of His blessings, including the blessing of myself.

"Today I am ready to look for instructions and find them wherever God has put them for me. I await God's Will with joy, for I will find my own will there with His. And so I begin my day."