This Heavenletter is not meant for everyone. It is meant for some. Perhaps you will recognize yourself here. But perhaps this message is not for you. But it is for some of you.
There is suffering. There is your own, and there is other's. Other's sufferings belong to them. "Belong" is not the right word because suffering does not belong to anyone. It is an add-on. But in any case, do not make anyone else's pain yours. Do not take it on. You do no one a service to take it on. You do a disservice.
That does not mean to be insensitive or indifferent to another's pain. Just don't make it yours. Don't take it on. You can be a good compassionate person without absorbing another's pain. You do not reduce theirs. You double it because now you have made it yours as well.
Help the starving, but that doesn't mean to starve yourself. Help the sick, but don't absorb their illness.
When you take on another's emotional pain, you try to solve it for them when it is theirs to solve. You meddle. You interfere in their growth. You try to rearrange their life. You tell them what to do and how to do it. You take over.
They may like it, and you may like it, but sooner or later, you have to face the music. You boobytrapped yourself. You've gone too far. Suddenly, you find yourself responsible and yet you are not. Instead of their moving on in their life, they are embedded into yours. You want someone else to move on, but they have to make their own moves. Move on in yours.
The tentacles of another's pain do not a friendship make.
Be a true friend and honor another's ability to surmount whatever they face. Often what they face is their past. You cannot make it up to them. They have to get out of their past, and you are not helping them with commiseration and tongue-clucking and madly dashing to their side.
Because someone had a miserable childhood, are you in debt to them? Because someone has welts on their back, must you cut into your back as well? Must you glue their pain to yours? You cannot be the savior of another.
But sometimes you would rather face another's problems than your own.
Sometimes some of you, by no means all, denounce your own life. You make another individual your life, your vocation, your hobby, as it were. And you have forgotten to honor your own life and your place in the cosmos.
You are not here to do a makeover on someone else. You are not here to salvage their life at the expense of your own.
Christ did not take on the pain of others. He saw beyond their pain, and so must you too. He did not erase pain. He saw with My eyes the truth that existed. He saw health and blazing light. He magnified the light in another. He lent credence to their light and not their infirmity. Christ did not take on anyone's burden. He honored them, and so he helped them.
You truly help another when it is your pleasure. You do not help another when it is your pain.
Love is not painful. Giving is not painful. If loving and giving cause you pain, then what you are doing is less than love and less than giving. Giving too much is not giving. It is denying.
You are here to find your way to joy.
Expand your vision.
Saints did not suffer. They were not at the mercy of another's pain.
Love your neighbor as yourself, yes. Start loving yourself.