Do you see how a tall tree grows? It is not copying another tree. It is not trying to be a tall tree. It is only being itself, layer by layer. It is like, as the tree grows, it exhales in total relaxation. There is no effort. The tree is not trying to attain, achieve, perform or anything at all except to just be the tree he is.

You see where I am going here. My children go through all sorts of somersaults trying to attain to something. Trees just attain their full growth without exertion. They are not running a race with other trees or even with themselves.

When all the answers to all the questions in the Universe are within you, how necessary is it to seek knowledge from outside you? When you have more than enough money in your pocket, you don't run out to the bank to get change. When you have plenty of butter in your refrigerator, you don't run out to the store to buy more. You don't go out to find that with which you are already fully stocked.

In terms of knowledge, your mind does not remember what I bequeathed to you. Your body has not forgotten. Your body and heart know more than your mind can contemplate let alone fathom.

You have grown up with the idea that you are in need of repair, and so you look for something to fix you. You look for something outside you to fix you or to affix to you in the hopes that it will make you better in this way or that. You look for a remedy in a medicine cabinet or from a person who has a title of one kind or another, and so you bow to the world outside you. You look to the world for healing, and you renege on your own power, which is the power of God within you. You give yourself over to someone more confident in himself than you are in yourself.

Ask your own heart for advice and ask not so much advice from others. You have been taught to look to others. I am teaching you to look to yourself. There is a sage within you. Call upon the sageness of your own heart.

Truly, when you ask others for advice frequently, you are playing an ask-for-advice game. Do you really think that others have more sense than you? I think deep down you know better.

This is not to say that you cannot learn from others. Keep your ears open, but be your own advisor. Take counsel of yourself.

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?