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Post by Bodhitree on Jul 20, 2017 17:27:32 GMT
"TRUE GOOD People ask, "If I see social injustice, should I not try to correct it?" Answer: Who is doing the correcting? What is your _actual nature_ beneath your show of concern for others? How much greed and deceit and violence is concealed inside you? What self-gain and self-glory do you want? When _that_ person tries to correct anything he ruins everything. Leave the world alone and correct yourself. Only that is good." Live Above this Crazy World, # 25 Once you manage this, you will find that your whole life becomes an expression of goodness - not just the superficiality of idiot compassion, but listening deeply to what a person on your path truely needs and acting from a place of wisdom and kindness to help them achieve that.
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2017 9:36:09 GMT
"Would you like to reply to a foolish world with power and poise? You can.
Thoughtfully read the seven answers. _Remember, you do not actually speak the answers aloud to another person_. The answers are designed to build right and strong attitudes within you. And, of course they are not said as angry accusations; you are merely seeing obvious facts about the person. These silent answers will build your firmness and understanding. You will learn how to avoid the traps of cunning people.
These answers are really very kindly, for they come from a high source of strength and wisdom. It is weakness and confusion toward people that is unkind, for it keeps them undeveloped. So have no guilt in seeing thru deceitful men and women. You have a right to free spiritual speech, and it returns a rich inner reward. When you truly understand a harmful person you are free of him, so let these answers dissolve all problems with people.
The world has a desperate need for strong people who know and live the real answers to life. Be one of them."
FOR RIGHT STERNNESS WITH PEOPLE
120. Love consists of not agreeing with your hatred. 121. I refuse to excuse your ignorant behavior. 122. Your hostility proves that you are unteachable, which relieves me of helping you. 123. I will not join or defend your harmful position. 124. Your fondness for flattering lies is ruining your life. 125. You have absolutely nothing of true value to give me. 126. I wish to follow my own real nature, which means I cannot follow you."
How to Handle Difficult People, p. 21
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Post by Admin on Aug 29, 2017 9:46:38 GMT
"Peace of mind, spiritual innocence, natural goodness, is the absence of all the positions you could ever think of. The absence of all the attitudes and beliefs and defenses and offenses that you ever had. Giving up your life for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven is doing just what I’ve describ- ed, which is this: Letting, allowing, both sides, the opposite positions to be wrong, to be useless. To suspect at first, and know later on, that they have no value for you, no support for you, no good for you, because they are nothing more than a mere thought.
You just try to corral, like wild horses, you just try to corral your wild thoughts, round them up in the hills and bring them back to the corral and train them, put saddles on them and try to use them. Can’t do it, can you? They’re too wild, they’re too used to going in their direction and doing what they want to do; they’re not going to submit to you.
The thought horses are always thundering somewhere, the thundering herd. They’re always suddenly changing position in front of you. You think you just about get the rope over the head of one of them, bring it back and that it will be yours. You cut the stallion out in the wilderness out there and you’re going to bring him back and you’re going to train him and he’ll serve you, and other people will admire you as you ride into town on your fancy saddle. You have never been able to catch just one of them and train it and made it your own - and you never will.
Now of course, that’s not a thought to cause you dismay, but understanding what I am talking about should cause you to rejoice because you don’t have to do it anymore. You don’t have to claim ownership, not to one, not to a dozen, not to a hundred horses out there. You can just let them go and understand their nature."
from a talk given 8/15/1986 Vernon Howard's Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 5, talk 118, track 14
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Post by Admin on Sept 11, 2017 9:40:54 GMT
"Only the spiritual is truly moral. Man-made moralities are hideous hypocrisies. Everything that a lost man or woman touches turns into his or her lost nature. You were born into this world to learn how to disagree with the shameless sham of human so-called virtues and moralities. Did you hear that?
You're brought into this life on earth here in order to learn how to disagree with both your own nature and the natures surrounding you. Now disagreement is quite a different thing from agreement, correct? This is a world of agreeable phonies; everyone agreeing to be friends, to want peace on earth. Everyone has hypocritical agree-ments. You're going to start disagreeing with all that and I'm going to tell you how to do it and I want to give you a marvelous action that you can take any time anywhere. When you see human nonsense of any kind, you determine that you're going to be even more clear - minded than you are now. You're going to go against, you're going to disagree with what you see."
from a talk given 12/11/1987 Vernon Howard's Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 16, talk 396, track 14
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Post by Admin on Sept 23, 2017 9:18:52 GMT
Today's Vernon Howard Quote -
"Here is how the mistake proceeds in a man's emotional life: A feeling of sadness arises. The man immediately identifies with it, that is, he takes himself as the feeling. He thinks he _is_ this feeling, which he is not. He doubles the error every time he says, 'I am sad.' The more he says it the sadder he feels; the sadder he feels the more he says it.
If you, the reader, run into this, what can you do?
Separate the way you _feel_ from who you _really_ are. _You_ are not that feeling of sadness. Try to grasp this."
The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power, Chap. 4, p. 66
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Post by Admin on Oct 31, 2017 9:29:32 GMT
"THE RIGHT TOOL
A father observed his young son who was making his first fumbling attempts at building a wooden box. The father quickly noticed where the boy was making a mistake. Holding up a hammer and a wrench, the father explained, 'Norman, a hammer is for hitting; a wrench is for turning. Always select the right tool.'
Years later, in manhood, Norman became aware of the apprehensions which held most people in bondage. Wondering whether it was really necessary, he began to study esoteric ideas. His contentment grew as he understood many things which had formerly bothered him.
One afternoon, while working in a busy office, he was sharply and unex- pectedly criticized by someone. He remembered, 'A hammer is for hitting; a wrench is for turning. Always use the right tool.'
The right tool, he knew, was to be calmly aware of his reaction to the criticism, and to not let himself be carried away into anger. So that is what he did.
And that is how Norman daily built himself into a human being who was not at the mercy of self-damaging reactions. "
Vernon Howard
The Power of Esoterics, p. 161
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Post by Admin on Nov 15, 2017 11:02:58 GMT
"When you do something you want a result. You work for a week in the factory and you want the result of a paycheck. You like to study the stars and the result is you know more about the universe than you knew before. So we are very much result-minded. We want to do something and get something out of it for ourselves. All right. This is understandable working for your living. It’s understandable if you want to study the stars.
But we have become so used to thinking in terms of 'me' doing something and getting a reward, a result, a favorable outcome. We’re so used to thinking in that way that we wrongly bring it over into our inner work, which we must not do.
It is the depths of self-centeredness to say and wrongness to say, 'If I read a book a week, if I go to every class, if I work according to the rules of inner work, then I will get a result. I will be more spiritual. I will be happier. Things will turn my way after a long time of misfortunes.' Now you have to keep yourself out of results.
By the way, I’ll put this in right now. Results are guaranteed — right results.
But we’re talking about something extremely vital to you finding everlasting life. We’re talking about you getting rid of the old results habits. We’re talking about getting them out of the way. Because as unreligious people who call themselves religious often do, they make the statement, 'If I go to church regularly, if I sing the hymns all the time, if I do that, I will get a reward.' You must stop that kind of thinking."
from a talk given 2/22/1992 Vernon Howard's Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 33, talk 818, track 14
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Post by Admin on Nov 28, 2017 12:05:14 GMT
"The Pleasures of Self-Forgetting
Man's meaningless motions and agonizing appetites are nothing more than attempts to forget himself. Alcohol, social climbing, material acquisition — all are attempts to escape an unwanted self.
What is this unwanted self? We come back, as always, to man's false sense of identity. Man yearns to escape from _his own pretensions of who he is_. Inwardly, he knows that he is not the pseudo-self going around with surface smiles, drawing excitement from applause, swelling with pride over some achievement. His intuitive mind tells him that is all an act — and how weary he is of the routine role.
So he tries to forget. But he never succeeds. He always does the wrong thing. His churning and chasing merely cover up the anxiety, leaving it to do its dark destruction.
But there is a genuine way of self-forgetting. The false self and its built-in pains, can be demolished. Like a ball of string held at one end and rolled along the floor, the false self can become smaller and smaller and finally disappear altogether. Then you forget it. Who thinks about something that doesn't exist?"
The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power, Chap. 10, p. 173
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Post by Admin on Dec 15, 2017 10:53:14 GMT
"The great supreme cosmic commander in chief of the universe has assigned you a commission, has given you a task to enter the fierce battle of human and social existence on earth. You were put here to battle. I'm sure that you understand that we’re talking about battling in a different way - not the battle to get the rewards of this world, but the battle to win insight into seeing that we do want the rewards of this world and it’s the only important thing to us presently - and to change all that."
from a talk given 9/19/1987 Vernon Howard's Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 14, talk 347, track 15
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Post by Admin on Dec 17, 2017 10:46:35 GMT
"Would you like to reply to a foolish world with power and poise? You can.
Thoughtfully read the seven answers. _Remember, you do not actually speak the answers aloud to another person_. The answers are designed to build right and strong attitudes within you. And, of course they are not said as angry accusations; you are merely seeing obvious facts about the person. These silent answers will build your firmness and understanding. You will learn how to avoid the traps of cunning people.
These answers are really very kindly, for they come from a high source of strength and wisdom. It is weakness and confusion toward people that is unkind, for it keeps them undeveloped. So have no guilt in seeing thru deceitful men and women. You have a right to free spiritual speech, and it returns a rich inner reward. When you truly understand a harmful person you are free of him, so let these answers dissolve all problems with people.
The world has a desperate need for strong people who know and live the real answers to life. Be one of them."
WHEN PEOPLE INTERFERE WITH YOUR LIFE
1. Please do not use my personal affairs for your private entertainment. 2. What do you secretly expect in return for your help? 3. You pretend to help because you know of nothing else to do with yourself. 4. The greatest help you can give me is to leave me alone. 5. If I wish your help I will ask for it. 6. How would you feel if I asked you a personal question like that? 7. Your kind of help just adds to the problem."
How to Handle Difficult People, p. 4
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Post by Admin on Jan 2, 2018 10:49:19 GMT
"WHAT AN AWAKENED MAN SEES
Ronald asked, 'What does an awakened man see that other people do not perceive?'
'He is like an observer standing on a hilltop, watching the frantic chasings of men and women on the prairie below. Among other insights, he sees these hypnotized men setting traps for each other. The traps are always attractively decorated, to make them appear beneficial. The awakened man sees clearly all the resulting heartache. You may ask why he does not shout down to them a warning of what they do to each other. He does, but here we meet one of the peculiar features of the tragedy. Man is unable to hear. He is spiritually deaf.'
'But those who listen will hear. These people neither set traps nor fall into them.'
Self-awakening enables you to see the human scene as it is, not as it appears to be, which frees you of its chaos."
Inspire Yourself, p. 130
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Post by Admin on Jan 19, 2018 13:21:10 GMT
"Attend to what matters, not to what scatters. To do that, I will introduce you to a certain virtue to which we are seldom introduced. And that is the virtue of single-mindedness. And you’re going to hear some new definitions of that state, some higher explanations of it, that will do you good.
Single-mindedness, of course, means that your thoughts are not flying in every frantic direction. When you are un-single-minded there are colliding ideas and they seem to have a life and a will of their own. Single-mindedness, on the other hand, means something else. It means that you are able to give one complete concentrated attention on whatever is happening at the moment it is happening. You are with yourself, watching the world and understanding the world because the self you are with is really not mental but spiritual."
from a talk given 7/15/1988 Vernon Howard's Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 21, talk 521, track 15
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Post by Admin on Jan 25, 2018 10:46:51 GMT
"It may appear unkind to leave people with their own responsibilities, but it is a truly helpful act, for they can grow no other way."
1500 Ways to Escape the Human Jungle, # 1056
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Post by Admin on Jan 27, 2018 10:17:02 GMT
"Don't try to destroy enemies, whoever or whatever they are. Even if you succeed, you fail, for they disappear only to be replaced by other adversaries, as your experience has shown you. This forces you into battle after battle until you are worn out.
The right way is to let enemies destroy themselves. You start by seeing that enemies are not external to you. No, your enemies are not cruel people or frustrating conditions. It only appears so because you do not as yet understand. But you can start all over with a fresh mind. You can replace _thinking_ with _knowing._
How?
This is a good place to review the three supreme steps for daily success, supplied in Chapter 1: 1. We must deeply see the need for self-transformation. 2. We must see ourselves as we actually are. 3. We must work earnestly with esoteric principles."
Pathways to Perfect Living, p. 88
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Post by Admin on Jan 29, 2018 10:34:39 GMT
"The only reason anyone needs for doing right is because it is right. Doing right is right for you. Now you have the secret and the only secret for feeling good inside yourself regardless of exterior things that are going on with people or with your employment.
Doing right is the one guarantee you have for escaping the vicious malicious attacks of human society. When you are a right kind of a man or woman, which is a spiritual man or woman - listen to what I'm telling you - being right is the only thing you require for having a true, happy, harmonious life right in the middle of all the warfare and disharmony.
Rightness is the only giver for you. You want good things, nice things, pleasant things, peaceful things to come your way. Your personal, individual rightness is the only source for you getting what you really need."
from a talk given 10/9/1988 Vernon Howard's Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 23, talk 569, track 15
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