To thine own heart, you have been false. Unless there is joy overflowing in your heart, you have been false to it. You have tried to denature your heart. You would have it be an instrument other than it is. You are timid with your heart. Otherwise, why would you protect it so?

You have made of your heart a dam, and you regulate it. Your heart is not meant to be regulated or relegated to sequences and rations. Your heart is meant to be full-fledged. You have been holding your heart back, even if only by a thread. Let your heart give birth to love now.

Be open-hearted. Wave your heart around the universe so that the universe may absorb love. Love flows through your heart, in and out. Your heart is awash in love, love awash in itself. Like white on white, love is embedded in love, many-layered love, tilted at many angles, indistinguishable love, infinite love, tremendous love knowing nothing but its blazing self.

I would ease that persistent ache in your heart. I did not put it there, but I would ease it. I soothe your heart now. I take My fingers and massage your trodden heart. I take your entrenched worries away and replace them with the vibration of love. Worry irritates your heart. Worry makes your heart turn to vinegar. Love makes your heart rife with sweet cream. The soft cream seams itself into every crevice and soothes and soothes. I press My love to your heart now.

A strong heart is not tough. A strong heart is generous. Tight hearts are pinched, and therefore weakened. Never think you must harden your heart in order to make it strong.

A tender heart does not get broken as you may have thought. You don't need to gird up your heart. Remember the resilient willow tree that bends and bows with the winds.

Your heart is not meant to dry up. How can your heart flow in love when it is wizened and dry? Refreshen your heart. Tears were meant to moisten your heart, not to dry it up.

What can be contrary to what I say? What I say is in your heart. I am the Truth of your heart. Do you really believe I can be mistaken?

Make no mistake, I created you love. Any diversion from love is only a diversion. It is an aside. Diversion from love is like idle conversation between acts of a play. It is not the play. It is a filler. It is only talk.

When did life become taken so seriously? What if life is all play and nothing but play? Then drama and tragedy are but diversion from the reality of life. If you feel distant from joy, what have you let divert you from it?

Today is a good day for you to notice your tremendous growth. You have grown by leaps and bounds. You have done somersaults in life. You are far ahead from where you were a year ago — or even a moment ago. Think for one minute of all you have learned. You know it is true, that you have learned, and all that you have learned, you have gained. So think of all you have gained.

Count your riches in learning. And what is it you learn? You learn yourself.

If you already know everything, what can you learn?

Take a step forward, and know nothing. Then you will learn everything.

You try to match what you think you already know with what I say, and then you keep or discard accordingly.

Be open. That's how things get in. Closed, what can enter? You close yourself in to a small territory. Abandon territory. Open the gates. I am not talking about exposing yourself to the world. I am talking about opening to Truth, and I am that Truth. Expand your boundaries of thought. Let in a possibility.

There is great love within you that has been repressed. When you hold your fist tight, what gift can your hand give or receive? A fist is a closed hand. And your heart became a fist. Somewhere along the way, your heart closed unto itself rather than opening like the rose of its nature.

You cannot make a rose bloom. You cannot take the petals and force them open. But you can encourage the rose to unfurl and to reveal itself. You can let go of your resistance to the rose's blooming.

Your heart is a rose afraid to stand up straight and to open itself to the sun and the rain.

When you despair, you have lied to yourself. You have said things will not change. You have told yourself that you will always feel dreary and have reason to. You have said that a suffering emotion will always grip you. But emotions are changing things. And so is your life.

Yet hope is a little thing. It is too little for you. Hope is very maybe-ish. It is a whimper of truth. It hardly passes for itself.

Awareness of truth is another story.

Happiness exists always. It is your natural state. Anything else you feel is an interruption, a distraction, interference, static on the line. Let it sink in once and for all that you are meant for happiness.

Why are you surprised when happiness comes? Take it as your due. Why accept unhappiness and struggle and frustration as your due? Happiness has your name on it. These other things do not. They were mis-addressed to you. You picked up a spam message, beloved, and thought it was really for you.