Your heart is an eternal flame of love, for what am I but that? And what is your heart but the same as Mine? The difference is that I know Myself as I am, and you do not know yourself as you are. You tend to think you are a poor imitation of God, yet you are the Real Thing only you are encased in a human body, and you have a mind that is reasonable and thinks. Your mind’s assessment of your heart is off-base. The mind can assimilate only so far. So steeped in reason is your mind that it does not know how to go beyond the perimeters. The mind can only see so far. The human heart, on the other hand, can see everywhere, yet, of course, sometimes the reasonable mind disciplines your heart.

Love requires no reason nor does love require reasoning. The heart loves because it loves. That is all the heart needs to know. Only in the temporary world can the light of love go on and go off. It can go on and off because your heart has been regimented by your mind and, therefore, sometimes cut off.

You have tried to love where your heart does not. You have tried not to love where your heart has loved. Oh, leave your heart alone. Let your heart love. Anything less than love is a form of judgment, beloveds.

Not that it is an easy task for you to turn off the appraisals that your mind makes. Your mind takes most of its reasoning from the world at large. The mind looks up its reference points and, upon past decisions, like a judge in court who makes pronouncements, your mind pounds the gavel. Your mind may sentence you to the absence of love because of laws it has laid down.

The mind, as I have said before, asks too many questions. The questions are beside the point. The mind asks: “Is this love object worthy of your love? Does your love object return your love? What do you have to gain from this love object? Is this love object worth your heart in gold?”

A loving teacher at school does not ask: “Is this misbehaving child worthy of my caring for him?” The answer is: “Yes, of course.”

I have often suggested that you not be result-oriented. The effect of your loving a child may not be evident. You may never know how much your caring about that child meant to him. You may not know how many times he remembers a kind word or two you had for him. You may never know. What you can know is that you did right by that child, and the only right is love.

The love I speak of is not maudlin. It is not lovey-dovey. You may have shown your love for the child by keeping him after school. The thing is that you gave something of yourself to that child.

We can consider the love I speak of like a line of poetry that you memorized, and, somehow, you never forget those words. They keep coming back to you, and they continue to fill your heart. They inspired you, and now they stay with you and nourish you heart and soul. How fortunate is the heart that has been nourished. How fortunate is the heart that has nourished.

And so now you give some of your heart to everyone. You may inspire by example. The thing is that, in your ordinary life, you are to be like a breath of fresh air to everyone you meet, friend, stranger, foe. You do not have to be caught up in the past. Now you hold on to love and not so much pictures from the past that cause resentment or anything that is not love in the light of your heart.