Your openness in life allows more good things to reach you. When you close doors to keep out what you don't want, you also keep out the bearers of glad tidings. When you are open, the good rushes to you, and less room remains for the negative to enter. Barriers are barriers. They are impartial. If a door is locked, it is locked. If a door is barricaded, it is a barricade. Make not a fortress of your heart.

Go a little further in life. Keep conversations open. Get past what might distress you. When you have disagreements with someone, fine-tune your listening. At the end of the disagreement is a rainbow of agreement. You and your so-called opponent are not so far apart. Perhaps you are friends after all.

When grief comes to you, it feels like a blow, as if you have been hit, attacked, brutalized, booby-trapped, stopped. Life is not supposed to be like this, you say. This is not supposed to happen, you say. This great boulder should not have fallen on you, you say.

It blocks your intended way for a while. It may block out the sun until you lift your head again. But boulders do not need to block your heart.

Bear down on life with openness. Keep your heart open. No closure with your heart. No rust in your heart. No squeaky doors. If the doors to your heart need to be oiled, then I send you the oil of love to fix the hinges. I send you the love anyway, but I make a point here.

You who are made of My love need not have creaky joints or a hardened heart. One who is as loved as you is not fragile. You do not need to grow calluses to protect you from life. Obstacles are not to be taken into your heart. That is not what your heart is for.

All your barriers do no good anyway. Obstacles are not to be solved; barriers within you are to be dissolved.

It is said that time heals. What happens is that some of your rough edges get worn off, and you recognize what is for what it is, not a personal attack on you, not abandonment from Me, no lessening of love from Me. After a while, you see no choice but to take the knife out of your heart and let yourself be. You begin to engage your heart with other things. You finally give yourself permission to let suffering go.

Flowers can grow even in crannies. Where can your heart not grow? Of course, it is not really that your heart grows. The openness of your heart grows. The door of your heart opens wider so more love can come in and more love can go out. Nothing barred. Heart open. Open-heartedness.

Whatever happens in life, whatever disappointments, whatever heartaches, the sun still shines afterwards as before. You are in shadow only so long as you stay there.

Suffering does not make you more loyal than joy. Letting go of the past is not disloyal. Letting go is not hanging on. If you hang on to the past, you must have a reason to. I would like you to consider that there is no good reason to. Try as you may, you cannot make the past into the present. You cannot re-ignite the past. The past wants you to be done with it. And I want you to be done with it. Come with Me into the present. All sorrows are past. Leave them.