Everything is a step. Even ego is a step. Just don’t spend too long on it.

Ninety-eight percent or more of upset is ego-bred.

If you had not felt discounted, you wouldn’t have been so angry, and maybe a situation wouldn’t have arisen. Maybe you wouldn’t have been fired or walked out and quit. Maybe you would have seen something through. Or maybe you would have left anyway, but not flounced off, and you would have made friends as you left.

The step after ego is calmness. In calmness you don’t over-react. In calmness, you see more dispassionately. It is not for the sake of calmness that you are calm, but for the sake of sensibility.

What if, just what if, nothing bothered you? What if you weren’t susceptible to upset, did not have that emotional overtone that tells you something is not right, that you have been affronted, or inconvenienced unduly, that you are not important and must be made important in someone’s eyes whatever the cost. You have gone to great lengths to prove that you are not to be trifled with. In so doing, you trivialize yourself. You kick yourself down the stairs.

The way to rise is to rise. Trying to prove your worth is futile. You can’t even prove it to yourself, or it wouldn’t be so important to you. You wouldn’t look so much for justice unless you felt deprived. It is an injustice to yourself to always seek justice.

Beloveds, you are not going to even out the world with outward attempts. You do not prevent illness with hospitals. You do not eliminate crime with prisons. Robin Hood can steal from the rich to help the poor, but no amount of money makes a man rich.

We are talking about states of consciousness, yet you cannot look to the world for proof of your consciousness. A pauper may have great consciousness, and the prince may not. The surface of life hasn’t proved much if anything.

Christ was crucified. Socrates was poisoned. What a loss if you describe yourself only according to the world’s view of you.

You are branching out from the world, and you also branch out in your thoughts and your culpability. You are guilty of nothing. Innocence does not have to be proved, although you have been trying to prove it to yourself.

The world’s approbation is nice. Everyone would rather his neighbor smiled and didn’t frown, but the condition of those around you has nothing to do with you. You have to do with you. Your thoughts, and what they impose on your feelings, have to do with you.

Would that no one stepped on your toes. But, perhaps, beloveds, you can be more agile. Because someone is a clod is no reason for you to be. You can be a lady or a gentleman in all circumstances. That will see you far. That will be far closer to your true nature than all these other things you attempt.

It is a hard task to amend life. It is Herculean. It is a lot easier to amend yourself.

Amend your thoughts. Amend your reactions. Straighten your eyeglasses. If others’ glasses slip, it is not for you to move them on their nose. How obvious this awareness is, and how overlooked.

The spot you see in someone else’s eye is your own. And if it is not your own, it is your own to deal with then. You may be generous, but when someone is miserly, and it upsets you, you have to deal with your upset over their miserliness. You are your next step, beloveds. You are the Divine, and you are the Human. You are the hero, and you are the culprit. Choose. Choose to rescue situations, will you?