When your heart feels troubled, know that it is a fallacy. There is something you have misunderstood or simply have not understood well enough. There are no problems.

“What,” you say, “there are no problems? Walk in my shoes, God. I think You do not know what a hurting heart is these days. You don’t know the messes we get ourselves into.”

I repeat. There are no problems. Only you hold the concept of problem very dear to your heart, and that is a problem. You are convinced you suffer and that you suffer from great cause. It is you who won’t let the concept of problem go. You could be holding on to the love in your heart instead.

“What love, God?” you say. “My heart is burnt out. I do not feel loving. I seem to feel everything else but love. I feel plenty of turmoil. I am in pieces, not whole.”

You deceive yourself, beloveds. You are very good at deceiving yourself. You would hold on to pain as if it were the making of you. Love is the making of you. Hold on to love. It would stay with you. It would love to be in the upper echelons of your mind. Love does not want to be relegated to the back burner. It does not want problems and suffering to go before it. What about you? Is it possible that you actually prefer the contingencies of problem to the expansion of love? Is it possible? Is it possibly possible that you covet suffering as though it were a badge of honor?

You may feel more deserving of suffering than you feel deserving of love, and so you impose punishment on yourself. Suffering is not your right. Love is. If you are a victim, you have appointed yourself victim. Only victims suffer. Life is not meant to make a victim of you. Change that whole picture.

I appoint you hero. I appoint you to rise above whatever emotional squalor you feel you have been placed in.

Even death is not a problem. You may figure death is the greatest difficulty there is, yours or someone else’s. Or you may say: “Okay, God, I give You this much. Death is not the great problem I make of it. But what of someone who is paralyzed? How can You possibly tell me that is not a problem? It would be my agony.”

Beloveds, is your heart paralyzed? Even within boundaries, even within extreme boundaries, life is, love is. Avail yourself. Turn your attention away from yourself. Plant flowers in your mind, no matter what daily boundaries are to be transcended. The idea of suffering is a boundary. Suffering seems to be a cultural institution. “But, God, what of children left motherless? And mothers left childless?”

Do not think that I do not understand the aching Human heart. Do not think that I think life in the world is a piece of cake. I am saying that suffering does not have to be a way of life. I am suggesting that you lift your attention from suffering. I request that you raise yourself above personal pain into your heart of love. Surmount personal suffering. You are not here for yourself anyway. Surmount world suffering. Better to attend to world joy.

You can feel sorry for yourself forever. You can feel sorry for the world forever. Or you can get up from sorryness, and rise to a greater picture. You must, beloveds. You must alleviate yourself from the web of troubles.

The same sun shines on all. Suffering is not necessary. It is not true that you need suffering to know joy. Know joy, and you will not know suffering. Suffering is thinking too much about something. Gain other thoughts. Leave suffering and problems behind. They do not benefit you. They do not benefit the world. They benefit no one.

Let the sun shine on you. From dimness, go to the light.