4-2. Love yourself first. By looking within and being gentle with your own heart, all the world will begin to come into alignment with that which you offer yourself.
One of the most misdirective and egregiously deceptive practices that the ego engages itself within, fired by an unrelenting effort to distract you from Truth, is to attempt to convince you that there has ever or will ever exist another person who can love you to a degree that is greater than the immeasurable amount of love, given to yourself first, than can be transformed by God into Love Itself. This is a great paradox, and it is one that the ego cannot resolve, nor would it even if it could, for the efforts of distraction are legion amongst the illusions of the ego, and they are all just as effective as you would have them be, for all of the lifeblood of the ego is maliciously drained from your own when you believe that what the ego offers might ever have been an accurate reflection of the Truth of Love. We see these forms of behavior in so many representations, romantic entanglements sought and coveted for the short periods of time that they play out against, beliefs in incompleteness so very temporarily assuaged by the presence of another, and such a vast array of presumptions of companionship that are expected to substitute, in some manner that has no logical expression or justification, for the company of your own self, given unto you first, without reservation or the hesitation that judgment must engender within your mind. That which you ask of others they cannot give, for you were not Created to be incomplete in any way at all. All that you are is self-similar and self-justifying - that you can be aware that you exist is all of the reasoning that you will ever require to justify your presence within this world, and your innate ability to perceive just as you believe is most appropriate for you. And in that we find the crux of differentiation that leads to so much confusion, for it is within your own sphere of influence that you misperceive and they employ your Free Will to create belief structures that are wholly out of alignment with the Truth of God and of Unity, imagining a world within which you are fragmentary, and then subsequently formulating an assumption that must be explained through some error of God - namely, that you are directed to seek out another, some perfect “soulmate” who will complete you in a manner that has no rationality at all. If this were to be true - if there were to be another who represented the “other half” of your soul, or something equally as strange and perverse, then you would be able to rationally assert against God an error in Creation where none has existed. For from such a dualism or even a pluralism of soulness, there would arise the necessity of reunification, a great locating and melding of two hearts into a larger structure that neither would have been able to have achieved on their own. Is that at all loving? Is that at all just? All that is cast against God that asserts that there could be a mistake that was ever committed within Creation must be held up against these two most fundamental and foundational inquiries, for if the reply is in the negation to either line of questioning, then you can be assured that you have located not an error in Creation, but one of your own perception. God does not Create out of any motivation save for Love, and all that is an accurate aspect of the Plan of God for the reunification of all of the wayward and wandering Children of God is absolutely just in every sense of equanimity of availability and a consistently equanimeous distribution of opportunity, for every moment of time is equally as appropriate as any other to shed all that was thrown towards the Mind of God in justification for an impotent rage that demands an explanation for what is believed to be incorrect about Creation in any and all manners within which it is possible to alledge that God is imperfect. None of that contains even the most meager rivulet of Truth, for the River of Love that is able to carry all of the Children of God back to the Ocean of Beauty that is the unification with God that they all so very fervently desire, even if they seek it out in every possible manner other that the reunion with their own hearts which is the only raft than can carry them back unto God, that River is not supplied by error at all - its headwards emerge from a fount of the most pure acceptance and Peace imaginable, one that is a wellspring of Truth everlasting and one that is equally unconcerned with mistakes in individual perception. When you ask of another that which you steadfastly and stubbornly refuse to provide to yourself first, you are setting the arc of your life in direct opposition to the currents of the River of of Love, and when you flounder and sink, believing that life stands in defiance of what you request, you are merely misperceiving your own intention for the direction of God. That which you give, believe, do and offer to yourself, first, is all that determines what it is that the Universe will perform, direct, align or provide to you in the form of situations and other opportunities for learning and growth. If you believe that you do not deserve to be revealed to the Universe, or that the Universe does not wish to be revealed to you, then it will be so, for your beliefs of your own worthiness and value are paramount above all else, for it if were to be any other way, your Free Will would be impinged, and that will never occur. That is the rub of it all - if you believe that you are denied Love from the Universe, you will deny it to yourself, first, and then the Universe will always mold itself into a representative reality that best matches what it is that you have presupposed must be true, even if it is all but the most desperately illusionary creations of the ego, for the Universe was Created to be your playground - not your keeper and not your teacher. You are charged with your own education and liberation from all confusion, and it can be only your own hand that frees you from your self-imposed prison of restrictions and calcified constructions of thought and belief, for none other that you did imprison yourself as such, and so there can be no other who wields the key of forgiveness that shatters all of the chains of misperception that have for so long encased you in a tower of the greatest isolation imaginable. To work in concert with Life is to be in a state of motion and allowance at all times, accepting all that arises because you have transcended all latent fears regarding death - knowing that you are eternal and unassailable by all that is physical, for the Love of God stands supreme above all that appears concerning, simply and most elegantly because when Love is the singular destination, all that was originating is recognized as finalizing as well, a great journey that returns unto itself, concluding all that was a wandering travel into a beautiful circle of infinite healing and redemption from all accusation and pain. That is the essence of the allowance of God, now manifest by you in an individual and fundamentally limited form, at least until you transcend all lingering beliefs in the necessity for limits in any manner at all. God allows all to be, just as it is, for there is no direct need for intervention when the outcome of all of the myriad wanderings of all of the most beloved Children of God is their inevitable and inescapable Return to Love. Knowing this without hesitation or doubt in any way at all will free you from all deliberation, allowing you to accept all others as you accept yourself - without reservation and absent any desire to cast judgment upon them, for you will know that it was only your own journey that was deemed by God to be what it was that you were to learn, and through accepting this most elegantly resplendent conclusion, you will finally See that it was but your own heart that you walked Home towards, for by Uniting all that was divided by desperate conclusions of an error in all of Creation, you will finally realize that your own existence and all that you have ever been or will ever be must be just as Perfect as God. When this is internalized and applied to all situations from the moment of its complete acceptance until the end of time, all division dissolves and the currents of Life will become completely in alignment with your own intentional framework of perception, not because they have ever altered, but because you have finally relinquished all beliefs in the possibility that you, as the Perfect representation of a unique aspect of God, could have ever been possessed of any error at all. Through knowing yourself Completely, all Peace will Return, for your mind and the Mind of God will share a singular origin that will carry you forth, forevermore - the origin and completion of all journeys, one upon which all that is Love Returns to Love, and the great cycle of Creation remains Complete, as it has always been and will always be.