In one sense, you begin every day as if you were a stranger to life, and you take every passing event or word as monumental, as if you were stunned at what appears, as if you have no inkling, no experience in life and its myriad offerings, as if this were the first time you ever had experienced a fall in the stock market.

I use the term stock market as a metaphor, beloveds. One little drop in one area, and you feel doom, as if you had never met life in the relative world before, as if you were new to it, as if an axe has fallen, as if it cut off your very connection to life, as if you were devastated by one little branch. All that happened is that, in your walk through the woods of life, a branch simply snapped as you were passing through. Innocent is the branch, and innocent are you. And yet you make a big thing of it. Time and time again, you make a big thing of what life displays. You take it personally. Every snap of a branch knocks you to your knees, and you evaluate yourself as wanting. There must be some fault of yours here, at the very least in your understanding.

Somewhere you have the idea that you are supposed to understand everything, as if every branch that snaps had your name on it. The woods is the woods is the woods. A branch is a branch. Branches snap. You do not have to be stricken. Branches snapping is an everyday occurrence in the woods. You can be a little more casual about this. When you walk through the woods, events may surprise you, but they do not diminish you. Events of themselves are nothing. They just are what they are. They have surprisingly little to do with you, and yet you tend to take the whole brunt on yourself.

Every misstep in the woods is not on your head. Every pitfall is merely a pitfall. It is not a trap set. There is no villain rubbing his hands and jumping in delight at your upset. Perhaps you can be a little more academic of what befalls in life. Just as you do not have to admire your reflection in the water of the lake, you do not have to berate yourself when the eddies seem to change your view of yourself and darken it. Do not berate yourself, and do not think that life is berating you. There is a certain meeting in the woods, no more, no less.

What occurs may seem like everything to you, but need it be? What exactly does your life depend on? Everyone’s good graces? Who is disappointed in you more than you are in yourself? It is your own disappointment that you cannot bear. No one disillusioned you. You disillusioned yourself. You tear yourself apart. For what reason would you do that?

I do not do that. I put you together in the first place. I would never tear you apart. I would not put asunder that which I have created. And so you take everything too seriously, and you take yourself too seriously. Take My love seriously instead.

I did not just set you on Earth and dissolve all connection with you. We are as much connected as ever whatever befalls. In terms of Our Oneness, nothing has befallen. Life on Earth does not come between Us. Nothing interferes with Our Oneness, not even you. Whatever you are going through, it is only something you are going through. You will get through it. And, at some point, you will even begin to see that there was nothing you had to get through. It was all mutterings on your walk through the apparent woods.