Gloria to God:

Dear Father Who art in Heaven, I seem to sail along on top of the world and then, suddenly, or not so suddenly, the bottom seems to fall out, and I find myself feeling glum, without energy and stamina. Today I am feeling that everything is uphill. I know the answer is to put my attention back onto You — and keep it there!

God:

You certainly don't want to put your attention on the glumness!

Remind yourself not to take life so seriously. Glumness comes and goes, and you can just watch it go its course. You don't need it for any reason, do you?

Gloria:

No!

God:

Sometimes you put on an outfit that doesn't please you, and you take it off and put on something else.

This glumness is the same as an outfit you have put on. Nothing more. Take it off. It really doesn't belong to you. It is not of you. It is something appended. Something appended can be removed.

Consider the glumness as a passing pimple. It doesn't stay forever. And while it is there, it is not worth your worshipping it with so much thought.

Consider the state of glumness even as a friend. Glumness walks near you for a while and reminds you of the state of joy. Joy does not remind you of glumness. Perhaps you need to give glumness another name, and you will see it as it is.

Call it a waiting room. A looking-around room. A turning-around room. A microscope room.

From it you move to the telescope room where your vision is expanded, where you see the stars and wonder what is far-reaching beyond them.

The telescope room is a step away from the microscope room.

Do you have to go through the microscope room? If you find yourself there, you do. Somehow you found yourself there, and now you can find yourself out of there.

Consider your life as a passage through rooms. The rooms are not all the same.

Consider your life as a tour of an art museum. Each room in the museum has a different name.

Consider life a ship that passes different ports.

It is certain that you do not stay in one port, or one room, or one scene, or one act in a play.

There is always movement and change, and one step in the adventure may seem harder than another, but it passes, or you pass it, and you are on another step.

Consider yourself a whirling dervish. You whirl. But you do not whirl all the time. Sometimes you stop whirling even though whirling is what you enjoy most.

You must take a pause.

You ride an elevator, and you get off. Maybe you have to wait for another elevator. And sometimes you take the stairs.

Sometimes you ride in a cable car, and you go up hill and you go down.

Sometimes you transfer to a bus, and you wait at a stop.

Whatever your mode of travel, whatever room you are passing through, whatever mood you surround yourself with, whatever event is happening, you are the same inviolable child of Mine.

The one who walks into a room and the one who walks out of it may be superficially changed, older, sadder, wiser, happier, faster, slower, heartened, disheartened, but you are that pure light that nothing alters.

I am inalterable.

Nothing changes but the wind or the pictures that you look at, but the one who looks is pure of heart, the one who looks is a being of love and joy, and the surface amenities can only seem to affect you.

You used the word "seem" at the beginning today. You can only seem to be glum. You can feel glum. But you are not glumness. I never would have created you glumness. I created you in My image, and in My image, you are.

Gloria:

Well, God, you cut me down to size as you raise me up to greater heights!

God:

I make a minor adjustment in your thinking. What has changed but your perception? Your perception, your view, is ever-changing, but you are not.

You are permanent love, sometimes seemingly sullied, sometimes seemingly washed, but, in truth, nothing makes a dent in the truth of you. Nothing changes you. You can look in different places, that's all.

You can enter Heaven as easily as you enter an art museum. In fact, it is easier. It takes no effort at all. You don't need a ticket, and you don't need to take a cab. You don't need to do anything but locate yourself.

And that is what life helps you to do. It helps you identify yourself.

But you do not identify yourself outside you. Identify yourself within.

When you were feeling glum, you were looking outside. Now that you are feeling better, you are looking inside. You look inside, not with a microscope, but with a telescope.

Gloria:

Can a person find themselves in the stars, God?

God:

If they know how to see.