Life in the world is no joke, and yet it is time for you to have some laughs. Life cannot be so serious as you take it. Even if it were, you have to take life more lightly. When you are so serious about life, when it is so utterly important, you put restraints on life and yourself. You order yourself around. You make demands of life that it's really better for you to let go of.

The Truth of you is love. Anything that is not the Truth of you is less. You are an unlimited Being of Truth. Limits you set upon yourself or others are not true. They are false. When you sell yourself short, you are being untrue to yourself. You are being false to yourself. You betray the Truth of yourself. When you set limits upon others, you are betraying their Truth.

If you say you are hopeless or incapable, you are telling lies about yourself.

Come to Me like butterflies. Let Me be the nectar you drink. Come to Me like butterflies. Fly around Me. Alight on Me. Come as one, or come as many. The thing is to come to Me. Flock around me. Surround Me with your love. Can you imagine My joy in butterflies? Multiply My joy.

Can you imagine My joy in you? Would you deny Me even one moment of joy? Would you deny Me anything I ask? Would you deny Me you?

I am under your spell, and I hold you in My thrall.

Who leads and who follows? Who is in front when no one is behind?

Will you laugh more? Will you have as your intention today to laugh? Find a surprise of joy today, and laugh. Find many surprises of joy, and laugh.

Laughter comes because you have been taken out of ordinary thought. Laughing doesn't come from logic. A break in your usual thinking surprises you and makes you laugh. A leap of thought, and laughter arises.

Surprise and laughter are wonderful gifts. Getting out of your ordinary thoughts is a wonderful event. Finding a different interpretation is a great blessing. Laughter gets you out of your rut of perception.

Expect joy. You have had enough of expecting gloom. The attention you put on warding off untoward events is extraordinary. Sometimes it seems that your guiding star is catastrophe. Often you act as if you are down to the wire when you are in actuality flying high.

Consider all the energy you put into worry. You say you are being realistic. I say you are frittering life away when you worry. Worry doesn't buffer life. It avoids life. It is its own little frenzy. There is no point to it, beloveds. What does worry do that joy can't do better?

Is there a point to sadness? What is the gain of it? Is it not a modicum of feeling sorry for yourself? You may feel sadness is foisted on you, but do you not pick out a cause for it, just as you would pick out a lollipop? Sometimes you think all you can be is to be sad.

But sadness isn't wise and wonderful. Nor does it go deep as you like to think it does. In fact, it is shallow.

There are many roads you can take. Sadness is only one of them. You do not have to amble down that road. You can turn around or cross the street. Sadness does not possess you. You have held it.

Beloveds, will you choose happiness today and in so doing extend your happiness? Your happiness goes so far as to reach Me. It overjoys Me, your happiness. It makes a wide grin on My face, as it were.

I would you to be happy. I would you to take joy in life in general and yours in particular.

When you feel ache in your heart, did someone else put it there? Do you really think that's possible? Outside events and people influence you, certainly, but must they to the extent they do? Must your life rise and fall according to what someone says to you or what comes in the mail? Must every event in life put a stamp on you, as if you were no more than a package at the post office?

You believe that joy is momentary, for that is often your experience in the world. Joy is here one day and gone the next. But joy is your platform. Discomfort, bewilderment, and other feelings run across the platform of your joy, calling your attention to them, but they exist only on a field of joy. Without joy, there would be no place for less than joy to walk.

What if you believed that joy is the bed you sleep in. What if you believed that your feet walk on joy. What if you believed that anything else but joy is only a muddy boot. Mud washes off, and beneath the mud lies a perfect boot.

If I saw as you do see, I would have given up a long time ago! Have not you perhaps given up a long time ago? Have you not sometimes said, "To heck with life! I'm tired of it. I have had enough. I don't like the world the way it is. I am tired of my mere survival. I want to exceed survival. I want to enjoy life."