When you feel down, you can know you have been thinking desultory thoughts. What have you been thinking about? That will tell you the mood you are in.

What then is the cure? Think other thoughts.

What do you think is so terrible that you have done or another has done to you? It is all insignificant. Ego alone has made it important, even dire.

Could you right now nod your head and let a little laughter out?

Why would you hold discomfort to you? Why make it precious? Why turn it from side to side and investigate all its underpinnings?

Either you or someone else — or both — did something foolish. It's not the first time. It's not the last. So what? What has happened really? You had some kind of realization. That's all that has happened. Have another kind of realization.

Realize that you are not an accumulation of your embarrassments. Then, why accumulate them? All your petty humiliations don't merit being kept nor reviewed. They will not always occupy a high place in your attention. With or without your say, other thoughts will replace them. Replace them now. You are a conscious Human being, and you have some say over your thoughts and therefore your life.

There is one conclusion that I draw. Whatever the circumstances, when you feel upset, you feel unloved. If not by someone else, certainly by yourself.

What does it mean — to be a fool? It means you learned something. Take it as a blessing and move on.

Maybe you didn't want to learn what you learned, but you learned it. And now you graduate. You are in a more advanced class now. You have been promoted.

There was a time when you didn't understand something and when you began to understand, you got out of proportion with it. You made too much of something that did not merit it or you did not make enough of something that merited it. What other failing can you have?

In either case, you regret. You regret your loss of reputation with yourself. You defame yourself. You punish yourself for no good reason. And if you somehow think you have good reason, then expiate yourself now.

There is nothing to forgive someone else for, and there is nothing to forgive yourself for. If you think there is, forgive yourself for thinking that and forgive another for not being better than you.

You are free, and others are free.

You are not bound by past error. Nor is anyone else. So why tie yourself up in it.

If you are downcast right now, look up. When it is said that things are looking up, it is you who begins to look up. Why wait? Do it now.

You are a high being. That is your caste. Anything else is a misnomer. And you have been calling yourself many names.

You are no more a fool than you are not a fool.

You make false appraisals and call them fact. You did thus and so, and you say, "Therefore…" Erase the therefore. Erase half your thoughts, and you will be well ahead.

Reduce negative thoughts and increase positive ones. You already know that. Now do it. As soon as you have a negative thought, turn it around. Opposites of illusion coexist. If you have one illusion, its counterpart also exists.

There is really only one illusion. Anything but that you are love is illusion. You are not what you did. You are not what your thoughts have been.

Come to other realizations. Realize. Realize yourself. You can do it and do it now. You are not confined. You are out of the bounds of error.