Blaze a path inside you which leads to love and joy.

MSIA teaches the awakening in love. Other groups may teach awakening through anguish, pain, self-denial, abnegation, or fear. We don't teach that. There would be little joy in that path, and the presence of joy is one of the best indicators that the Spirit is present - joy and love.

It is important to see that you must go on, regardless of your attitude. You have at least two choices of attitude. You can go on crying, or you can go on laughing. If you have the choice (and you do), you might just as well go on laughing. It's more joyful. Spirit is joyful. The nature of the Soul is joyful. The personality isn't always joyful, but it is part of the illusions of the physical level.

Use all the tools you have to live your life in the most effective and joyful way available to you.

You can't create love, nor can you create joy. These are expressions of the Soul. Even in the midst of aches and pains, emotional anguish, and negative thinking, there can be joy and love because those are of the Soul. The Soul's first name is Love, its middle name is Truth, and its last name is Everlasting. Love and Truth Everlasting.

Feelings of discouragement and despair come in when you are not realizing who you really are. You don't feel God within. You don't feel the Soul, the Spirit or the bliss of your inner consciousness. So you may do anything in order to feel something. You might even perpetrate pain upon yourself in order to feel something. You might strike out at other people so they will strike back so that you will feel. You might gorge yourself with food or drink or use drugs or what-have-you - all to get some feeling so you can say, "Maybe that's me." I can guarantee that's not you. You are not the food or the alcohol or the drugs; you are not your pain, your hurt, your confusion. You are not your feelings. What you are trying to define in terms of these levels does not reside there. If it did, you would have found it a long time ago. The joy, bliss and love that well up inside of you like a great fountain are from God, the God that resides both within you and outside of you.

Sharing your abundance joyfully is a form of glory in the human being. That glory attracts more things. So when one person becomes free of materiality, it can become like a positive infection. Instead of greed infecting honest people, honest people affect the greedy.

There are ways that bring joy and ways that do not. There are ways that bring loving contentment, and there are ways that bring loneliness and despair. It is everyone's choice to express however they feel comfortable. People usually discover for themselves the ways that bring fulfillment and joy.

When you are centered in divine love, there is no way you can be stripped of your joy. And when you have joy, you can give joy. That's the outward action of charity. When you can give joy, you can, again, receive joy. It's a marvelous cycle.

We get too caught up - far, far too caught up - in the way we look at things instead of having the wisdom to just look at it for what it is. Not as any cause to react or be upset, but just to consider what it is, to enjoy what upsets you. If that seems strange and outside of your realm, that you don't know what that means and you say, "I don't know how to enjoy what upsets me," then you have something to learn. Because it's really important to get to a place where you have the choice and know that you are free to enjoy everything. That's a God-given right inside of you. It doesn't mean that we in some way mock or ridicule. We're not talking about that kind of joy. We're talking about joy that's pure, that maintains its purity no matter what the circumstances are. So whatever it is, get to the joy of it. I'm sure that's going to provide for you a new opportunity.