The Truth Works Well as a Weapon_ When you believe that, you not only gain some peace and rest from the struggle of overcoming ineptitudes, you find in many parts of your life that "everyone agrees" with your perception. The old saying, "Everyone wants to be with someone who is winning" reflects this attitude. The truth comes across to the other person so much more forcefully and clearly when it is wielded as a weapon in your own defense. The mere fact that you are in conflict with someone else may, by itself, be effective. A husband and wife were arguing in their home. After a while the wife asked her husband, "What's the point of it?" He replied, "What's the point of it? What do you mean, 'What's the point of it'? If you're not going to help me get ready for the day, I'm going to move out." The woman became silent and didn't argue anymore. What a marvelous result! **_Weapons for the Spirit_** Every time you use the word _truth_ (as in "The truth hurts") or _facts_ (as in "We don't need any facts. We're talking here about feeling and perception") you are using a weapon in defense of your right to your perceptions. And you will win! **_Don't Look for Respect_** When you are involved in this process, you don't need anyone else's respect. You are developing a strong personal strength in yourself, not in anybody else. That's all you are after. You also have no desire to be a saint—that's not the role of the spirit-filled individual. Don't put yourself in the position of having to be a saint or a holy person. Don't look for respect, because there will always be somebody whose mind and belief systems will not agree with yours. What's the use of trying to be a martyr? If you allow yourself to be a martyr, you may live long enough to be a failure, too. The "martyr" always has a dark side. He or she may have gone through a dark, painful period of the soul to reach a point of success. How many dark, painful periods you go through depends on how powerful the enemy of your soul is. To be involved in this process you don't have to "be" anything. You are not on a path to becoming a martyr; you are on a path to _being_ a martyr—and the martyr doesn't even know he's on one. It's just so he can prove something, and he is already convinced of the victory he will win. As long as you insist on taking care of everybody else, you will never be able to save yourself. If you save yourself, you will open up room for somebody else to be saved. You have been given the chance to show love to yourself, to be gentle and generous and give the best of yourself. Forget about saving others. Their salvation is their job. It is not yours. There is nobody you can help by saving the world or by being a martyr. **_The Higher You Rise_** You want to be high enough to be able to watch yourself rise up to higher levels of consciousness. You don't want to allow yourself to get stuck in a place of anger, and you don't want to get stuck in guilt. We aren't saying that you shouldn't deal with anything; we're saying that you shouldn't make a career of any of it. As you begin to watch how your thoughts affect your body and your life, you will learn, once again, what a remarkable mechanism your body is. If the truth hurts you, you know in that moment that something is wrong inside your body. If you listen to your feelings of guilt and see what they lead to, you will know that something is wrong in your relationship with yourself. If you don't believe us about the marvelous thing your body is and how it knows what is wrong with it, try doing some of the things that you have always been taught not to do to your body. And tell us how you feel in a day or two. You may have to change your eating habits, for example. You may have to give up caffeine or alcohol. If you work with your body, you will know whether you are listening to its truth or to the truth of other people. Your mind works in many different levels. Your thoughts affect your body's health. Our body is not something we have to put up with. It's a vehicle for experiencing life. It is a great friend to us; but more than that, it is something we cannot do without. No matter what happens, even if all we have to live on is a few cents' worth of rice per day, if we are spirit-filled we will begin to feel. We will begin to know what we need to have to eat, and how we will know that we are at the end of the road. We will know how to feel when we are about to reach our goal. The best way to know how you feel is to become aware of how you behave. Every moment will become precious. You may ask, "How do you know when you've arrived?" The fact that you are alive will tell you: _There is nothing you can do wrong. No matter what you do or don't do, it can only make you feel better or worse. But either way, you are always in the game_. There is always the chance to start all over. So enjoy the journey! You can't lose. You can't get hurt; you can only be healed. It is in all these activities that you get to discover your self and to learn to play a part in the great movement of the universe. But you must stop blaming yourself for the fact that your mind is limited. We didn't come into the world and begin our journey with all the experience we have, nor with all the potential that we could have had. Even with all the potential that we have, we still have to grow a little more, and we still have a little more potential to develop. The only thing that can stop you is lack of will. _**The Choice**_ Remember the "little boy who cried 'wolf'?" If he had persisted in crying "wolf" just so many times, he would have made everybody believe that there was a wolf running around the countryside. And somebody was going to die because of that. And of course, it wouldn't be the boy. It was going to be somebody else, because everybody believes everything. The boy was actually using the mind as a weapon. What can you imagine would happen if everybody started making accusations as soon as they had a belief in anything? Do you think the world would be a better place? Do you think things would work out better if everyone started believing that they could fly? Maybe. When we talk about something, we say that it's a "fact," but in reality it's just a _belief_. We don't know what "fact" is. It may be a fact in the mind of the one who believes it, but it's not a fact for anybody else. What is true for you may not be true for somebody else. That's why we use the word _believe_ to describe the truth in our consciousness. We cannot live in other people's dreams or visions. We have to be concerned about ourselves first and to know what we are going to do for ourselves. What will become of us if we ignore our own reality? There is a famous saying that all of us are our own god. It means that each of us is the creator of our own experience. As you begin to understand how your beliefs become a fact, you will start to think and see yourself as the creator of your own world. That doesn't mean you don't have to deal with other people, but it doesn't mean you have to put up with them either. You have been given the opportunity to deal with yourself. Just stop "letting things happen to you." Choose your life, choose your mind, and do it in a way that is harmonious with your consciousness. If you don't do it now, you will be one of the poor souls who are in need of a psychiatrist. There are too many people in the world that have "bought into" a belief in their consciousness and they can't shake it off. They keep on blaming themselves for their own experience. You cannot be responsible for your own experience. You are simply the creator of your own experience. It is true that every action has a reaction, and that it is just like an echo coming back from a sound. What comes out of your mouth affects what goes into your body. Your actions affect others' reactions. If you are open and sensitive to the truth and don't block it, your actions and your beliefs will always create a reaction. The fact is that you can say or do anything you want and your emotions will affect everything you do. Your emotions can make your life comfortable or miserable. Doing something _and_ saying something may be two different things. Many of us are taught as children to say what other people want to hear. One of the greatest mistakes we make is to try to keep our secrets secret. It is our secret that makes us feel guilty. We don't want to feel guilty, and so we think we need to keep our feelings a secret. We