If you did not ask yourself so many questions, if you did not weigh every thought and action so much, if you did not debate back and forth with yourself so much, you might even have peace. As it is, there is a tendency to disrupt yourself from peace.

You are the tennis ball that your thoughts bat back and forth. Whack, whack, whack.

You take a scholarly interest in your thoughts, and you have indecision. Once you make a decision, you bat that around a few more times, and then you have misgivings. If in your decision, you went left, you may ponder that you should have gone right. If you chose right, you ponder that too. You even ponder whether you should have gone in any direction at all.

You are a taskmaster. You who do not like to receive advice, certainly advise yourself enough. You give yourself mixed signals, and so the peace in your heart is disturbed. Could you not be more easy-going and less of a taskmaster?

You may even be worse than a taskmaster. You may have appointed yourself a merciless tyrant. You may be the world's most merciless tyrant in your approach to yourself and the world. You may be so hard to please that you are impossible to please. No matter what lengths you go to appease the tyrant in you, the tyrant of yourself imposes severe penalties. In one form or another, the penalties are that you cannot feel good about yourself. You may not even try any more to raise your head above the world, for you think, "What is the use?

And so you enter rivalry, and so you spread your ungainly feelings, and you pretend to yourself that you don't care anymore. You are so under the thumb of the merciless tyrant that you assume the role he has given you.

It is Truth I have given you. Not a role. You are a Being of Light. Your light does not go out. You can pull shades over your light, yet you can never dim it. You can wear Halloween costumes. You can even dress up as a ghost of yourself. If you do not recognize your pure Being, that is what you have done.

Or you may make a clown of yourself.

In any case, costumed, you become disloyal to yourself. You enter a parade and don't mind where it is going. You will go along with it. No matter how noisy the parade and the crowds, you will forego peace for it. You may even rabble-rouse.

Having given up on yourself, you may even choose disharmony over harmony, "Why not?" you may think. "If I cannot rise, I might as well not care. What can it matter to anyone in which way I fail? So then I will succeed in overturning the apple cart."

Beloveds, come back to veering in the direction of peace. You will find value in peace. You will find value in yourself in peace. You will find Me in peace. You do still want Me, don't you? You haven't given up on Me, have you? Even if you have, come take a spin with Me. Let's see what music We can make together.

It is not really that you give Me a chance. It is that you give yourself a chance. In truth, rather than a deserter, you may be a hero. You do not know all that you may be underneath the garments of disguise that you wear. Take off the disguises, one by one, little by little, or all at once!

I, of course, see through the disguises. You may still believe in them. Believe in you instead.