Have you not been on enough tangents? 

You keep looking for a magic formula to convert you to holiness. 

Are you so dissatisfied with your self, 

the way you are dissatisfied when no dress pleases you 

and you keep trying on one after another, tossing each one aside, 

still not finding one just right?. 

Or you like a certain dress for a week or a month or a year 

until that one too is cast aside. 

You fill your closet with clothes you don’t wear, 

and you hope that the next dress you buy will do the trick and make you happy.

Just so you search for other paths to enlightenment. 

You must have hundreds by now that you’ve tried and cast aside.

 How many more must you hunt down?

How many times do you have to hear it? 

What you are seeking is not outside you. 

The grass is not always greener.

 The Kingdom is within you. 

You nod Yes, and still you look for another book, 

another master, 

another school that will enlighten you.

 You have been shopping, beloveds, 

as if enlightenment were to be found in a department store.

It is your consciousness you are looking for. 

Where would it be but within you? 

Put on all the trappings you want.

 Read all the books you want. 

You can never read them all. 

Quote all the words you want.

 Show off your learnedness.

 Are you perhaps running away from yourself?

That which you seek is within you. 

Search outside all you want. 

Mine for gold all over the world, 

and still the gold of your heart lies within your heart and soul 

within your own Being.

Certainly there are great works and great schools that can light you up.

 They stimulate the God Within. 

They wake you up to it. 

But, beloveds,

 you are not looking for something new. 

You are looking for something that existed before the beginning of time, 

before books, 

before schools, 

before hearsay.

 Hearsay does not give you the answer. 

If it has, 

you have not listened to it.

Find your own Truth, beloved. 

Know where, in the final analysis, it is to be found. 

You are to follow your own heart.

 And your own heart does not have to go hither and yon. 

Let your heart be faithful to Me.

Someone sitting alone under a single palm tree 

may know Me better than all those sitting under ample trees in an oasis.

There is no one on Earth who can dig you out of the hole you have dug yourself in.

 They can advise, 

they can recommend. 

They may even know. 

But you are the only one who can climb up. 

Other hands may pull you, 

but they can pull you only so far.

 If you really want to rise as far as you say you do, 

then look at the stars and grasp the knowledge they would hand you.

 Accept, once and for all, that the way to find Me is to find Me. 

The way to discover Me is to discover Me. 

You can hear rumors of Me, but you find Me by finding Me.

 You can hear of where I have been, and all the wonders I have performed, 

yet you have to see for yourself.

Many point the way, beloveds. 

But you have to pick yourself up and travel.

 Actually, there is no travel involved. 

The traveling is in your mind. 

There is no distance between you and Me. 

This is what you have to find out, 

and you have to find it out for yourself.

All that the Great Ones have seen, 

you can see. 

All that the Great Ones have done, 

you can do.

They did not jump around all over the place, beloveds,

 nor need you.