Beloveds, I know that the trail you follow on Earth is not always easy. I understand where you are and what you feel. Yet I do not commiserate with you because that would keep you softly cushioned where you are, steeping in your plight. I serve higher than your present plight. I seek to lift you from your present embroilment even while it still seems to exist around you.

Again and again We come back to the fact that your thoughts have to change, and you are the one to change them. I do not say this is easy. I say it has to be done, the same way a surgeon might tell you that you need an operation. Whatever his compassion may be, he still has to cut into you. All the sympathy in the world is not likely to heal your situation, so sympathy is not the first order of the day.

Even if you have never had sympathy or even understanding, still it is not the first order of the day. It is you who must have understanding.

If you have fallen into a pit, you have to climb out. Someone may come along to give you a hand, yet you don’t wait forever. A helping hand can only help so much, for, when you are out of the pit, it is you who has to move forward. You are the one who has to seek your own fortune.

Sometimes you feel you are faced with an intolerable situation. You feel you cannot stand it another moment. I tell you that intolerable situations are like mushrooms, and they keep popping up.

The way to solve intolerable situations is to change your thoughts. Whatever the situation, you have choices. If your boss is driving you to the end of your rope, you have choices. You can quit. You can find another job and perhaps yet another boss who will drive you to distraction. Or you can get beyond the present situation even while you are in it. A tweak in your thinking will do wonders.

Changing your thinking can be like a beautiful light rain that comes to moisten a dry terrain.

Your thoughts are like vitamins you take. Take the right bottle. Take the pill that is going to nourish you.

Sometimes dark thoughts visit you in the night. They seem to invade you. You want to be honest and not deny your thoughts. At the same time, you don’t have to keep them. Consider the dark thoughts that visit you like bedbugs. Get up, shake them out of the sheets, and put on fresh ones. Thoughts are replaceable, and you don’t have to keep them. Keep only the thoughts that give you value. Why repeat the dark thoughts? You have heard them enough. Why be so loyal to those thoughts that would betray you?

Who is the master of your thoughts? Your thoughts or you? Who has the brain? Your thoughts or you? Who serves whom? Do you serve your thoughts, or do your thoughts serve you?

Give Me your dark thoughts. Turn them over to Me. You would not give Me wilted flowers, but I ask that you give Me your wilted thoughts. Give Me the ones you don’t want. Given to Me, you can dispense with them. Let your thoughts slip through your fingers. They will not offend Me. I know what to do with worthless old thoughts. I will make a bonfire of them. Your thoughts were never much anyway. You thought they weighed a ton, but they were just fattened with their own sense of importance.

Now, beloved, unwanted thoughts are at an end. They have come out from hiding, and now they are disbursed. Did you really want to keep them?