You fear that ideals are too far away from you. You think ideals are far-fetched. You think ugliness is real.

Think again.

You think your humanness is awkward or perhaps unmentionable. You disdain bodyness at the same time as you believe in bodies as the ultimate. You believe that your body is your existence. You think it is all of you, this container that you reside in. But who is the who that resides there?

I do not talk to your body, although your body will listen to what you hear. I talk to the heart of you that longs to hear the truth of itself. You have had enough of folly. You have had enough of nothingness. Now you are ready for something.

You have grown weary of the draughts you drank. You have grown weary of old thinking and are ready to protest.

There is no need to protest. But there is need to accept. There is no substitute for truth. The truth that lives in you longs to issue forth. It is like an oil strike discovered in the ground. The oil was always there, yet had to be tapped, had to be allowed to surface, had to be allowed to bubble up and flow and be discovered and be used.

The truth that resides in your heart is discoverable. It belongs to no one, and yet it belongs to everyone. Your heart is a receiver. A receiver relays. What a receiver receives does not just stop there. It does not end with the receiver. A receiver is also a giver. And you must spill truth.

That is what you are here for.

Truth goes very deep. That does not matter because, no matter from what depths, truth rises. What can stop it? It was always known but covered up.

What a thud there has been in your heart when you covered up truth. A vague awareness caught in your throat, and, alas, you knew what you had done. You denied the truth of your heart which is love, and you experienced the disaster of not following the truth of your heart.

The world goes on, but you denied your truth. You put it away. You patted it briefly and said, "Not now. Later. Some other time. When it is safe."

But truth will not stay buried. Ease your heart and listen to the truth it speaks to you.

The ache in your heart is from love within yourself that you turned away from yourself and so from others, but always from yourself first. You were embarrassed or reluctant to honor your truth because of the opinion of someone else who did not honor theirs. Perhaps you honored policy, that anonymous Tsar, who wielded your heart right and left, and so you let your dear heart be ravaged.

But no matter. Now you will listen to the love in your heart that issues kindness and merit, that lets itself out, lets itself be born, lets itself discover itself, and be free to be only what it is and not what it is not. No longer is your heart a false front, an actor playing a poor part on a poor stage.

Your heart bursts forth like the Polestar in the night sky. It shines, even if it is the only one, or the first one. It shines because it is its nature to shine. It is not its nature to withhold. Your heart has integrity, and it speaks truth.

Do not belie your heart. Follow it. Not someone else's, yours. Do not be dissuaded from truth. Truth goes out. It does not stay in. Truth is not for you alone. It is not something you keep or hide. You maintain it by letting it seek and reveal itself.

Do not think I mean you to indulge yourself. I mean that you are ready to indulge truth. The truth of your heart is not a momentary whim. It is not the pleasing of a passing desire or even desire. It is the listening to an impulse that will not be quieted, an impulse that says, "Go this way. Pick this up." An impulse that says, "Never mind. This must be performed. And you must perform it." The impulse of truth speaks to yourself, and you say, "I must stick to truth because I am the only one who can, who can stick to my truth. I will no longer countermand the truth that lies in my heart. I will not let my intellect second-guess it. I will not consent to weep later. I will consent to joy now."

Consent to the loveliness of truth. Consent to this moment now before you which, in terms of the world, will not return again, which, once ignored or omitted, cannot be put back or replayed or undone. But that was then. This is now, and now is what you have, and now is where I am.

Opportunity for following the truth of your heart knocks often, so never mind the times you pretended not to hear. Just get up and answer your heart's call now, for it is I Who knocks, for the truth of your heart is My reckoning and My Will, and it is yours to answer.

You do not follow your heart for gain to yourself. You do not follow your heart because it is gain to another. You follow your heart because you are the follower, and Truth is the leader. When you hear your name called, you look up. You do not deny it is your name. You do not look away and not answer.

You adhere to truth because that is what there is to respond to. Anything else is less and is static.

Truth tells you what is yours. Following truth is stepping up to bat when it is your turn, not someone else's.

Following your heart's truth is listening to the beat of the universe, not smallness of individual will, but the vastness of Mine. In the vastness of Mine, in the moment when your name is called, you may be called on for a little thing that yet is large because it is truth proclaimed.

Anything less than truth is cowardice.

Appeasing is not a meritorious thing to do. Appeasing is selling yourself and another short.

Appeasement can only be temporary. Appeasement is a temporary denial of truth.

Do not even try to do what is called appeasing the gods. That is asking for favors. Then what would love be but a barter? Love issues forth from the truth of the heart and does not bargain in the marketplace.

Find your truth and stay in it.