Victory before dawn is a lovely expression. The truth, however, is that there is only dawn. Newness is always dawning. And the concept of victory presupposes that there is something to win or lose. What can be won when all is already abundantly yours. Is not victory a form of control — your vanquishing life, or something like that? Yet what is there to triumph over? Your imagination, I suppose.

You are in a good place right now. I hold you in good stead.

Adversity and adversary are trumped-up charges. They are only a point of view, albeit held by many. But numbers do not make the adverse holy. You need not give tribute to the adverse. Give tribute to the positive. Give tribute to the positive in you. Give tribute to a mind that sees differences and a heart that does not brace itself against them. Do you really think that the negative is mightier than the goodness of your heart? Even the negative you have taken in to your own heart does not hold a candle to the goodness within.

Would that you would stop fighting, and fighting so much. You fight time. You fight death. And you fight life. You duel with them. You do battle with them. You put your shoulder to them and you shove them back.

You even fight love. You try to suppress it. Certainly, if love in your heart does battle with itself, you have suppressed it. You try to make decisions for the love in your heart when love, all the while, is decisionless. Love has nothing to decide. Rivers do not make decisions. They flow where they flow. Hearts are like rivers. Flow sweetly, hearts.

The only thing that blocks your heart is fear. You have made that non-entity fear into a mighty warrior. You have exalted it. Have you not let it run your life? Fear is your allergy to life. It blocks your breath.

It is your mind that builds blocks of fear, and then tries to topple them down. Fear does build, doesn't it? But you don't need to fight fear either. Love yourself enough to cease your allegiance and obeisance to it. There is no need to put fear ahead of you and then to follow it.

Have you not stored fear in your heart and treated it as a mighty hunter? You have caged it in your own heart and looked to outsmart it, when it has already outsmarted you. You don't have to overcome it. You just have to see it for what it is, this fear stuck in your heart. It did not originate there.

You have adopted fear as a mode of life. It became your banner. No matter how you disguise it or it disguises itself, you have fallen under its spell. It has hypnotized you. It has become your warrior, your sentry, your outlook, your bodyguard. Robber fear has become its own alarm system.

Dismiss it. Give it its severance and send it off. Let it go back to the forests it came from. Dissipate its hold on you. When all is said and done, what on earth does fear have to do with you? You are going to abandon it some day. You are going to put an end to it. You know that, don't you? Why not now? Fear is not immortal. Love is.

Let love be your lodestar.

Picture your heart right now as a bright shining star in your chest. Notice how the light radiates. The light from your heart reaches further and further. The light of your heart fills your whole body with light. The light emanates through the room you are in. Your whole house. The light from your heart emanates into your street, your town, your state, your country. The love in your heart crosses oceans. It reaches other continents. It reaches the stars and is at home with them. The light from your heart reaches Heaven and pulls down the pure light of Heaven and shimmers it across the universe to the center of the earth, and the world is lit from within.