To some degree, suffering is a crutch. Sometimes you have become dependent on it. The surroundings are familiar. Even though the castle is available to you, the cell you have been living in is so familiar that it feels like home. You might feel like a stranger in the castle.

Or emotional hurt is like the old bathrobe you are comfortable in. Or like the old couch your mother handed down to you. Why part with what is so familiar to you?

You have been accustomed to looking out the same window and seeing the same sights. If you looked out a different window, you would see different sights. Your whole view would be different.

In order for you to move into the castle, your whole perception has to change. And, of course, once you make the move, your whole perception will be changed in any case. You have to make a change, and then all manner of goodness will befall you. How could it be otherwise?

The castle has beautiful appointments. Every room is beautiful. Every window you look out of reveals beauty heaped on beauty. There is only beauty to see. All you had to do was to move to the castle. You had to let go of familiar surroundings. You had to let go of familiar thoughts in order to move in.

In some way, taking offense has been comforting to you. It is like a fix you are used to. You get your insult today, proving how you are mistreated, proving how the world is, proving that you are underestimated, and what a shame that is. Somehow, as weird as it may seem, you go to your cell door and wait for your daily slap or two.

Begin to know your value. And even when you don't yet know, make preparations to move into the palace. Think of how it will be. Think of what it will be like to live here. You would be so happy that no offense could enter. You would take nothing as an offense. If tea were served to you not quite hot enough, you wouldn't be perturbed. Joy would become the highlight of your day. Joy would become your stock in trade. You would be too immersed in living in the castle to construe anything as a barb to be taken to heart.

The castle sits high on a hill, and from that vantage you will see life as an engagement of your heart in happy things. You will see the beautiful trees in bloom. And when their blossoms and leaves fall and branches break, you will be glad for their having bestowed their beauty upon you.

If a friend appears unkind, you will not notice. And, if you do, you will be extra kind to the friend. You will forget everything but joy and friendship. You will have such a kinship with the world that you will bask in it. You will be like the child who can't wait to get up in the morning. You will run to meet your day and everyone in it, for you will be living in a castle, after all.

The castle would have room for everyone to enter. You would have place to accommodate everyone. There would be no close quarters. No one's presence would be in the way. Everyone could dance, and there would be no getting in the way.

By now you understand the castle is your heart where you make room for all, and you make room for joy. All you had to do was empty your heart of past associations, past grief, past holdings. Then you will find yourself in the castle. You always were. But you had been in one small room of it, a room so cluttered that you couldn't see where you were. Now you divest yourself of the past, and the sun shines today, and you see, perhaps for the first time, where you are.