On Earth, it is not that this one is right and that one is wrong. Of course, that's what you think. More often that the other is wrong and you are right. You are both right from individuated point of view. And you are both mistaken. You are not asked to be right. You are not asked to prove your rightness or anyone else's wrongness. You are asked to be gentle with your brothers and sisters. You are meant to be generous with the family of man on Earth. And all are your family.

So long as you take offense, so long as you read attack into another's words, it is unlikely that you can be generous and gentle. You take a military stance. You feel you are protecting your life's space. I once spoke of your being a lady or gentleman in all your interactions. It is not good manners to take offense at what is said around you. I am not asking you to fake good manners. I am asking you to come from a higher place than you may presently come from.

In all actions and reactions, people are revealing themselves. They are not revealing you. When others reveal hostility, they are directing it to themselves. Ultimately, this is how it is. They are trying to get rid of the hostility they carry by putting it on you. By the same token, when you see their swords of anger as directed at you, even as they evidently are pointed at you, then you also are revealing yourself and your own lack of self-love. Words do hurt you. When someone's words hurt you, have you not taken their hot potato as yours? They cannot really pass it on to you. Only as you accept it and take it as your own, can they.

If someone sees you as a bad guy, and you take it to heart, you have some doubts about yourself that another has rubbed you the wrong way, and now you are inflamed at the other. You are the one to take offense into your heart. Who said you had to?

You are right in this: No one has the right to hurt you, on whatever level you are hurt on. And you have no right to take offense, even when offense is meant. Someone who was hurt identified you as the cause of his hurt. And you have done just the same, identified another as the cause of your hurt.

It is not that you are to become thick-skinned. It is that you are not to be thin-skinned. You are not to buy, even for a moment, others' appraisals of you. You are meant to rise above where they would place you. Even when others mean to lay you low, you don't need to accept their lack of faith in themselves and make it your own.

Remember that I am your foundation. Others' perceptions are not. Have you made others' opinions your foundation? Have you made others your steering wheel? Are you not your own free-wheeling person free to accept what you wish to accept and free to not be swayed by what you don't want to be swayed by?

Accept what I tell you and not so much what others may say to you.

The time for hurt and hard feelings is over.

What foolishness it is for you to occupy your heart and mind with hurt and hard feelings. When an arrow has landed in your heart, intentionally or not, pull it out. It is your heart. And your heart is made for love and nothing but love. You can do it. You have to do it. Do it now. Pull out the bits and pieces that may be blocking your love right now.