You do not want to store up your feelings until they burst.
Sometimes you have to represent yourself. Not always, but sometimes, once in a while, you have to make sure your point of view is heard, else you lose respect for yourself. It is not always ego that says you must be heard. Actually, it is not so much that you must be heard or that what you say must be heeded as it is that you must speak up.
The thing is people love it when you do! You love it when people are open and honest with you, non-threatening and honest and forthright. You don’t need to dance around the room. You can go right up to the microphone and say: “This is the song I would like played.”
I understand that you don’t want to be selfish, yet you can treat yourself as well as you treat others. Selfish and subservient are two different things. Perhaps it has been selfish to keep your real feelings hidden. Perhaps you have not been honoring those you have been interacting with. Hiding is selfish. It may even make you feel superior. It may make you feel: “See how much others don’t understand. It is as plain as the nose on their face, and they don’t have a clue. They are not even thinking about me.”
Beloveds, do not give veiled clues. Perhaps it is your responsibility to keep others informed. Do not take yourself for granted. Grant yourself to others. Grant them your feelings. Your feelings may not always be all-important, but they have importance.
You can put up with too much. Sometimes you are perhaps too considerate. You do not have to leave it to others to recognize you. You can wave and say: “Here I am!” It is considerate when you reveal yourself to others. It is inconsiderate when you don’t.
Certainly you don’t have to spend a whole lot of energy in making yourself understood. Just know that when you are understood, you are giving added value to another.
Perhaps when you respect yourself and your needs enough, you will not have to say anything. Then it will be known. It will not have to be advertised. Your awareness will advertise you. This is not showmanship. It is just aligning yourself with your inherent value. It is aligning yourself with Me.
It is not that you go around tooting your own horn, but, as you yourself recognize what you have kept buried — when you recognize what you are feeling, then, beloveds, bounce it off the world.
No one is more entitled that you are. And no one is less entitled. Attune yourself to awareness of others and where they are coming from. What are their unexpressed needs? What is their vantage of the world? What blocks them from perceiving you? Do not feel you are responsible for their blindness. You don’t have to kowtow to it, but you can recognize it and feel compassion more than you feel impatience.
When someone doesn’t perceive you, doesn’t understand what you mean, doesn’t see beyond themselves, you do not have to feel threatened. It is their loss, beloveds, when they ignore your place in the cosmos. Then see if you can recognize theirs more. See if you can skip away from feeling overlooked and rise to a platform of greater understanding.
Some day soon everyone will understand everyone else. There may not be agreement, but there will be understanding supreme, beloved awareness, and generosity to all.
Meanwhile, beloveds, express yourself as simply and clearly and as generously with love as a mighty sage might do.