Vernon Howard (1918 – 1992)
American writer and spiritual teacher.
We burden ourselves with useless ideas which we carelessly take as facts. Instead of letting reality come as a new surprise, we insist that it conform to our habitual concepts, and thus, we spoil everything.
Mental sickness has set up a system by which it never loses. No matter what you do and no matter what the results are, you will win an ego-victory. That means that when you send your desires out into the world: 1. You will get what you want, or 2. You won't get what you want. Of you get what you want, the pseudo-nature says, "I have at last been given what I so richly deserve," and the sickness feels affirmed. If you don't get what you want, you feel sorry for yourself. You still feel affirmed because you get a feeling, and that's all that neurosis wants is a feeling.
The only activities of true value are those which aim at inner transformation.
We need not hide anything from Truth, for it never condemns us, but only wishes to help.
Bitterness is the outcome of a wrong mental movement - the attempt to force external events to conform to internal fantasy. The cure is to see fantasy as fantasy, which will reveal it as neither necessary nor rewarding.
Constantly ask yourself, 'What level is above this one?' This makes things different. Take personal problems for example. Problems are not solved by choosing between this and that. The very need to choose indicates misunderstanding. Problems are solved by outgrowing both this and that."
You are not your cluster of memorized ideas about yourself. Awareness of this dissolves both the cluster and the belief that others can control you. If you have a self-image of being a desirable person, others can control you by flattering it, but can they control if you have no such image?
The need to impress others causes half the world's woes. Don't add to them. Be real, not impressive.
Self-righteousness loves to pounce on an evil which by sheer accident is not its particular evil.
A perfect method for awakening is to examine the results of our daily actions. If they are harmful, we know we need more consciousness.
Ask spiritual questions with intense integrity, and inspiring answers will surely arrive.
You are not responsible for anyone who stubbornly chooses to ruin his own life.
Remember that an answer to a difficulty resides at a higher level than our usual thinking, so seek this loftier level.
Astonishingly, if you will have absolutely nothing to do with suffering, suffering will have nothing to do with you.
You are not really bothered by what others think of you. You are bothered by what you think of yourself.
Human opinions are formed by accident and hardened by repetition. We cling to acquired opinions only because they give the illusion of being wise opinions. This creates division and hostility between people.
A person obsessed with the need to be happy will never be so. The obsession is the obstruction. He does not really seek happiness, rather he seeks for a condition which matches his personal idea regarding the nature of happiness. But happiness is not a mere idea, for one idea will always have competition from another idea. The is why the unhappy man chases for ever from one attraction to another. Happiness will come when he stops chasing, that is, when he stops thinking that an idea about happiness is the same as happiness. A man enjoying the sunshine does so without analysing it.
It is not a disaster to discover that you are not the person you assumed you were. To the contrary, it is the beginning of the end of disaster. Experiment: How you feel if you were neither a success or failure in life? How would you feel if you were neither popular nor unwanted?
To win real rewards, we must firmly decline the deceptive rewards offered by society.
Turning to God, Truth, Reality, simply means to let go, even fearfully at first, of our self-centered ideas.