Beloved, Beloved You, Child of Earth, you are truly a symphony of beauty as I made you. Now you play yourself on the keys of a beautifully polished grand piano. You may tend to play urgently, as if life itself could be endangered. This is more than one way of looking at life. There are many ways to look at life, not all of which do you a whole lot of good.

You may look at life as though you live in a jungle in pitch dark surrounded by wild animals waiting to get their chops on you. You know what fear is. You are well-versed in fear - expert in fact. It may be your own roaring you hear for all you know. Give yourself a vacation from fear. All is well except for the fear you hold tightly to you and replay and replay.

There are also cool waters for you to swim in. There are many streams and lakes you can laze in.

There is also, I, God, nearby the shore. Life is made up of many things. Life is vaster than you let on. Life is indeed a many-splendored thing. Behold life in this way.

What if life is actually on an even keel despite all your fears? Perhaps you produce dangers before you. This could happen, couldn't it? There are many possible dangers in the middle of a forest that could take place. Why keep thinking of them? Better to slow down the beat of your heart. Become life's friend.

What if dangers are like a deck of cards stacked up, and each card slides down one after the other in perfect synchronicity, and, yet, your sense of tension keeps building? Tension winds and rewinds itself. You have been proficient in tension and unpracticed in ease.

Let the wind out of your sails. Lean back. Let tension be sprung. "At ease" are words customarily said to soldiers. Don't see yourself as a soldier fraught on a battlefield. See yourself as someone who relishes life.

"Home again, home again, jiggety-jig!"

You are not a balloon to pop. Be intense in joy and nothing less. All aboard to joy. Life isn't intended to be a lifetime of fret, nor is life to be an indulgence. Find a way to let off steam beforehand. Make your life simple. Whistle as you work.

Start doing cartwheels. Life isn't mandated to be a crisis.

Laugh. Do not pound the pavement. Be as light as air.

Be in life as a bride in a white sparkly gown, walking down a circular staircase serenely arm in arm with her new husband to a round of applause from loved ones. Applaud yourself. Go from tense to elegant - why not?

Exercise at the gym and get unholy tension out of you, or start singing for all you are worth. Rest in Me. Do everything for Me. Ballroom dance even in your imagination.

Shake a leg. No longer build tension. No longer argue with yourself over what could happen.

Release tension in service to Me. Be done with nerves on edge. What do you want to keep nervousness for? Bring on peace and no longer consternation.

Crisis isn't to be your forte in life. Start over. Set your compass in a new direction. The purpose of life isn't to make you upset. Where did you ever get that idea?

Be effortless. Be young again. You know enough. Live life. Don't live life hard with speculation. Frolic in life like a playful goat.

Look, listen! Beloved, absolutely, swing on a star.

Beloved, come hand in hand with Me. This is to say: Be self-sufficient. You are not hapless. Be Godness first and foremost. Hold your head high. Fill your heart full of joy.

Life is to bolster you and absolutely not to cut you off. Be bursting with joy. All is possible. All is possible for you. All is possible for everyone. Life does not have to be difficult.

Pretend you are at the dentist, and open wide. Nor must you be spectacularly elated at every moment. Open your heart to all. Sure, be open-minded, yet it is more to the point to be open-hearted. Rely on your heart more than you rely on thinking.

Thinking can only go so far. A high IQ is nice. Sometimes you think too much and to distraction. A big heart is more to the point. Thinking can be overdone.

Your life depends upon the fullness of your heart. Open your heart wide, and happiness will well up. Happiness is yours to enjoy. The mind is not the whole story. Living stirs in the heart. The mind is in thinking. The mind is an add-on. You want to be the straight goods. Your heart is first and foremost.

At a baby's first smile, the baby isn't thinking ahead of time: "I will smile." The baby takes pure joy as it comes. The baby does not necessarily receive a directive to smile. The baby discovers the happiness a smile brings. Happiness isn't an afterthought. Living life precedes thought. Thinking may tend to be preoccupied with gain. Happiness comes on its own.

Happiness isn't profit-minded. Happiness is happiness, or it is not. Happiness isn't studied. Happiness is a natural event. It can only occur. Money doesn't bring happiness as you like to think. Happiness comes on its own.

It isn't a platitude to say that happiness appears from within your heart. Happiness isn't gilded from the outside. Happiness rises up. I do not think you can attribute numbers to happiness. You cannot assign happiness. Happiness doesn't come in specified sizes.

I do not know that happiness is a practice you can define. It is more that happiness sneaks up on you. Well, not really sneak up on you. Happiness wells up from inside. Welcome happiness, of course, and be arm in arm with it.

There are instances when and where you can be happy ...anyway. Happiness doesn't have to be caused by this or that. When happiness is caused by this or that, it may be short-lived. Happiness is your true state of being.

Think, if you must think, more along the lines of love's arrival from no matter where it comes when it does. You do not order happiness to you. Happiness comes when it comes. You may stumble on it. What gives you happiness today may not tomorrow. There isn't anything wrong with this.

You may stumble on what you see as happiness where you do not expect it, or it may be that your happiness finds you, and you notice the stirring of that which is called happiness, and you call it your own.

A great and humble artist may have to clean his own brushes and may have paint spills he has to clean up, or he may even be inspired to form an amazing new painting style from a careless spill. A mother will have plenty of spills and may find cleaning the spills brings her joy. It is for everyone to radiate joy.

Beloved, let’s not get so caught up in time that time strictly rules your life. When you fathom that time is not, time will not lead you around by the neck, and you will have all the timelessness in the world. Quite a contrast are time and timelessness. Quite a contradiction are the sparring of time and non-time. How differently life appears to be when time no longer binds you to the plow.

In Heaven, there are no opposites. Can you feel the joy? No opposites amount to Oneness at its best. What can be more simple than Oneness?

Ah, there would be no addition, no subtraction, no division, no counting on your fingers, not even any pointing out, nothing to keep track of, no sorting, no losing, no forgetting. When there is Oneness, what can be on your mind or on your plate? Money would not exist. No bills. No pressure. Who would long for time? You would already know that you have all the imagined time there is in the world.

Perhaps I am going too far, for in life, you could still have a wardrobe and lipsticks of various colors. You could have more than one book of merit in the library. You could have more than one child in the family and more than one pair of shoes and more than one closet to put your shoes in and more than two fingers with which to hold up your shoes.

You may well prefer a field of daisies or a field of buttercups and more than room enough in the Inn for one Christ or Buddha, etc. Yes, you may prefer more than one et cetera for the sake of it. You might desire something more to tap a tune with.

Definitely, you would prefer countless songs, even infinite melodies.

At the same time, the idea of Oneness thrills you, and the idea of multiplicity thrills you as well.

It has been said that you can’t have everything. What is that announcement based on? Why not everything? If you can have something or another, why then not everything your heart desires?

You would like more than one coat of many colors, and you may desire everything under the sun.

And what is this about time and tide waiting for no man? Is this a known fact? Who wouldn’t or who hasn’t waited for a true love for just about forever?

And, yet, where there is no time, there is no waiting for even a minute.

At the same time, who wouldn’t wait forever for a truly profound love? Who wouldn’t wait lifetimes for his or her own true love? You may already have.

You don’t mind filling up space to a point. This may be true for filling time as well, or why else would you keep tapping your foot? What is rhythm for? Where exactly does time get filled to the brim? Can time be stored, and where would time be stored? Time and space get filled to the brim, so it seems. Cannot time and tide wait for you in excelsius and not be bandied about?

What good is time to you? A habit? A place to store stolen goods as if they were your possession or a book to read over again and again and to be stuck in? No question is there that you have a yearning for more and more. Why have the yen without fulfillment? Yet why would you have to possess anything and everything under the sun?

Beloved, old habits and old ways of being belong to the past now. Where you have held onto old ways, now begin to dare to follow new ways. Don't cut yourself short. Turn every no you routinely attach to into a strong Yes. Let go of old ways of responding that you may be comfortable with. Grow to new heights.

Let go of the familiar. Say Yes and Yes and Yes. Remove the word no from your vocabulary. If you are asked to give a speech, now dare to say Yes. Otherwise, you may be shunting life away. Now say hello to a wide swath of life on the hoof.

If you are asked to be in a play, and you usually would say no, that's not how I do things. Perhaps you're clinging to a life raft. Now dare to say Yes in a resounding voice.

If you have always been a shrinking violet, now be a loud trumpet flower. Surprise yourself. You are not bound to choose to do what you have always chosen to do as in conformity to the past. Now rise faster and higher. You are not here on Earth to be as you have always been. Now, blossom. You may have been standing still rather than moving ahead. Make hay while the sun shines.

At every opportunity, begin to say Yes. Get off the couch. Do you really think the past was a stellar performance? You may not have great laurels to carry you forward. How much do you think you grow when you supposedly play it safe?

While you are alive in the present, say Yes to life. What do you gain in life by playing possum? How long has it been since you said a whole new Yes to life? Sing a new refrain. Be open to life. Open wide. "Yes, say, Yes, take my picture. Say, Yes, let's go to the movies."

Go forward with new life and not old hat.

Sure, say No to drugs. Say Yes to being alive. If you have been shy and retiring, has this been your lifelong ambition to somehow stay the same? What makes you exclusive? Be up front and expand your life. Even if you have lived in the same house for seventy years, you can leave the old neighborhood and go for a new house. In life, venture forth. Change means you are open to discovering something new which guarantees that you stay young. You don't want to be predictable. To be coy and steadfast isn't smart in life. You are not alive on Earth in order to stand still. Surprise yourself.

Do what is opportunity for you to do, even when it means you have to leap. Is there something wrong with leaping?

Have you been playing it safe? Be new, and rise above old age and the past. You are alive now.

No longer wait for later. Right now, you are alive. Don't be in a hurry to stay the same.

The next time someone asks you to dance, say Yes. The next time someone asks you to send your photo, send your photo. The next time someone wants to interview you on TV, say, Yes. Don't fall back on saying: "That's not how I do things." Dare to be new. Don't hold up life.

Under no circumstances are you to be demure and obstruct yourself from daring to be new. Wake up now, Beloved. This may be the best advice I ever give you. Be true to yourself. Let yourself be known. Do it. Be outspoken. You are still alive. Don't stay in hiding. Make your life new now.