All the troubles in the world are fleeting. They are fleeting because the world is fleeting.

Your life is like a novel. It is all fiction. Better not to take fiction so seriously. When you read a novel, you are interested in it, and then you forget about it. Another novel presents itself, and another and another. And they all are forgotten, and they all amount to nothing.

The characters in the novel of your life are characters. The role they play is not permanent, any more than yours is. More and more you recognize the fantasy that life on Earth is.

Whether you laugh or cry, it is short-lived. A scene seemed to pass before your eyes. It was in Technicolor. And then you see it was in black and white, and then you see that it never was. It was just a cut from a movie reel.

But how precious this fictive life is. How precious your story. How vital. And, all the while, it is nothing at all. The tide washes it all away. It even washes the memories aside. And there is not even tide. The waves are gone.

Yet in the setting you find yourself in, with the cast of characters, and with you as the protagonist, you throw yourself into the scene, and you believe it is really happening, and you believe it’s very important, and your emotions run high. You drive in high gear and you race down the speedway of life. All the while, nothing is happening, nothing at all.

But you ARE. You very much are. You exist. The heart and soul of you exist. It has always been so. It has never been otherwise. But all the rest is a stage fashioned as a background for you. It is a mural on the wall. You loom large. In fact, you cover the whole universe. You can pick the Earth up in your hands. You are bigger than the Earth. There is no circumference to you.

Why, then, does your heart ache over a trifle? Nothing can betray you. Nothing can make a dent in you. But, ah, sometimes you think the fragile body that you reside in is the extent of you. You think you are imprisoned there. You don’t yet know that you can cross the universe in one stride. You do not yet know the solidity of you. You think you are temporal while all else seems permanent to you. Pain seems permanent. Longing seems permanent. But joy you think is fleeting. You think love is fleeting. You think goodness is fleeting. But that which you do not like fills your life and you are sure that that it is permanent. You take suffering as the cloth life is made of. Joy is the cloth, and suffering a mere thread, a piece of lint, nothing you can really put your finger on at all.

Yet suffering, the same as fear, consumes a great deal of your attention. You pay homage to it. You count on it. You have great faith in the reality of suffering. Have as much faith in joy.

Keep joy close to you. Banish suffering to the outskirts. Do not admit it into your heart. Your heart is much too big for suffering, yet there is no room for it. Suffering rubs your heart raw. It has no business in your heart.

So, what does not exist you see as true. What does exist you do not see. You accept false as true, and perhaps Truth as false. Accept the Truth of you now. You are Eternal Being. You are My Eternal Being.