Sometimes you have a sinking feeling in your heart, a let-down bewildered feeling in your heart, and you don't even know where it comes from. You have nothing to tie it to. It is as if the feeling arose from itself, like a weed that suddenly appears on the landscape.

Perhaps this feeling that you may call anxiety is the opposite of what you think. Perhaps you have moved into a new room, and you are not yet comfortable in this new room. Or perhaps you are in your old room, yet a chair was removed. At first, you're not quite sure where to sit down.

Talk is cheap. Listening is rare. True listening is rarer. Listen with your heart. Listen to the sounds being made. Listen to the tone.

Everyone who speaks hopes to say something that will reveal themselves to themselves. Some do not even listen to themselves and what they are saying and what they are meaning to say. Some do not know what they are saying at all.

Listen so that you may understand, and create a bridge of understanding upon which you both may walk.

The listener may be more essential than the speaker.

Quite naturally you want good things in life to happen, and you are delighted when they do, when they come to you as gifts, perhaps as surprise falling from the sky. By the same token, you are crestfallen when great surprises of joy do not arise and seeming impediments wrap themselves around you instead. You see what you welcome as tributes to yourself, and those which you do not welcome as scoldings. Is that not so? You may live life according to a sense of reward and punishment.

Put aside your theories, and let life be what it is when it is. Naturally, you like to make summations of life, as though you have a grip on it. But the progression of life as it is lived on earth eludes you. Life is much more than any theory or definition. Just as soon as you decide that life is one thing, right before your very eyes, it turns into another.

As you grow each day, your view of life changes along with you.

It is as if you ride in a car in life. Life takes you somewhere. How you came to be in the particular car you ride in, you don't know. You just know you are riding, and the car takes you with it. You are going somewhere.

Life has a life of its own.

Even when you are the driver, the car does not always steer as you intend. You have your energy, and the car has its. Sometimes you agree, and sometimes you do not. Even so you are in for the ride of your life. You might as well sit back and enjoy it.

Consider all the contrasts in life as platforms you jump from. All that befalls propels you forward. You leap from one view to another. With each leap, you stand at a higher place, even though this higher place may perhaps be imperceptible to you. There really is no stopping in life, for all of life is progressive motion. This includes the situations you would rather not have. There is only motion forward. You have come a long way. That is more than consolation. It is growth.

Sometimes you feel as though you are coming apart. What you are feeling is your untying of the constrictive past. The imagined bonds are loosening. You are letting go of a deluge of the past, and now you feel some empty spaces that the illusive past — which never was and is no more — seemed to batten down. Rejoice, you are coming apart from the past.

Sometimes you feel as though you are falling through space. In actuality, you are rising to yourself.

If you find yourself at a plateau, rest for a while. Be glad you have reached where you are and can stay a moment. You have been in a great hurry to rise, and now you can take a respite, sit down, smoke your pipe and enjoy where you are.

You have had many lessons in life, for life does teach you. No need to reflect on the lessons you have learned. Once learned, you don't need them. Certainly, once you have learned something, you don't need to study it.

Welcome a plateau like a park bench. The same way, don't mind when you have to get up from it.

What is it that you think you are missing from your life today? What is it that you think you need? What obstacle do you feel you face?

Regardless of all that weighs on you, here's what to do: Imagine that you already have what you think is missing. Whatever it is that you think you need, consider that you have it. Whatever obstacles you see, consider that they are behind you.

Let's face it, beloveds. I am coming to the fore in your life. This is not always an easy transition for you. You might think it would be. You have desired this. You have desired to serve Me.

Perhaps We can compare this to joining your country's army. You volunteer, and then in the midst of training, you might do some kicking and screaming. All to no avail, because you're in the army now. Your choice was made. You made it gladly, and yet you still have rough edges to be sanded down.