Strong opinions are often held as fact. Sometimes others' strong opinion and assumptions shake you and make you shrink. They don't sway your heart of truth, but they don't leave room for your truth to raise its head either.

A louder voice is not stronger. It is just louder. An opinion voiced loudly is only an opinion expressed a decibel louder.

Truth is more silent. Truth is silent in its strength.

Stay true to yourself. And make sure that you are not one who gives opinions as pronouncements.

Do you begin to see how being is giving?

When you just are, you can only give.

When you are thinking or owning or in fear, you can only withhold.

When you think about giving or not giving, there has been a stop in your giving, or a pause in it.

Yet what you feel, you give. If you are in fear at a given moment, you give fear.

When you are at peace, you give peace.

This reliance on the opinions of others is a big thing in your lives. Listen to others, but go by Me and yourself. When you allow others' opinions to rule you, you have abdicated yourself.

Opinions are only opinions. They are not edicts.

What do you gain when you follow the opinion of another and live up to it? What favor is gained? And what do you think you have lost when you do not? What is so important to you to be in the good graces of another? Is it important enough to deny the truth of yourself?

When you are in competition with one another, you are on a see-saw. Today you're up and tomorrow you're down. If you compare your life to another's, if you compare a moment of yours to another's, you are on a see-saw. Life is not about better or less. It is not about gaining or losing. It is not about winning or not winning.