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It Is A Mistake For Anyone To Think He Has Lived Too Long In His Old, Unsatisfactory Ways To Make The Great Change. If You Switch On The Light In A Dark Room, It Makes No Difference How Long It Was Dark Because The Light Will Still Shine. Be Teachable. That Is The Whole Secret.

-Vernon Howard

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It Is A Mistake

Vernon Howard

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It Is A Mistake For Anyone To Think He Has Lived Too Long In His Old, Unsatisfactory Ways To Make The Great Change. If You Switch On The Light In A Dark Room, It Makes No Difference How Long It Was Dark Because The Light Will Still Shine. Be Teachable. That Is The Whole Secret.

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We Find The Light Only After Total Defeat Of Our Attempts To Deceive And Outwit It.

Everyone Must Concede That There Is In Existence Something Wiser Than Himself. Now There Is A Challenge, There Is A Challenge Which Few Even Investigate. We're Going To Do That Now. Let's See What We're Talking About. All Troubled People, Which Is All People, Must If They Are Going To Be Delivered From Themselves, Must Make The Concession That There Is A Force, An Entity, A Power That Is Higher Than Their Own Present Nature.

Happiness Is Yours In The Here And Now. The Painful States Of Anxiety And Loneliness Are Abolished Permanently. Financial Affairs Are Not Financial Problems. You Are At Ease With Yourself. You Are Not At The Mercy Of Unfulfilled Cravings. Confusion Is Replaced With Clarity. There Is A Relieving Answer To Every Tormenting Question. You Possess A True Self. Something Can Be Done About Every Unhappy Condition. While Living In The World You Can Be Inwardly Detached From Its Sorrows To Live With Personal Peace And Sanity.

When You Are Genuinely Strong, You Neither Attack Nor Defend And So Retain Your Energy.

Do Not Mistake Desire For Love. Desire Leaves Home In A Frantic Search For One Gratification After Another. Love Is At Home With Itself.

It Is A True Miracle When A Man Finally Sees Himself As His Only Opposition.

Procrastination Is Illogical From Every Viewpoint. It Is Like The Man Who Wanted To Cross The Stream, So He Sat On The Bank To Wait For All The Water To Run By.

Procrastination

You Must Dare To Disassociate Yourself From Those Who Would Delay Your Journey... Leave, Depart, If Not Physically, Then Mentally. Go Your Own Way, Quietly, Undramatically, And Venture Toward Trueness At Last.

How Would You Feel If You Had No Fear? Feel Like That. How Would You Behave Toward Other People If You Realized Their Powerlessness To Hurt You? Behave Like That. How Would Your React To So-called Misfortune If You Saw Its Inability To Bother You? React Like That. How Would You Think Toward Yourself If You Knew You Were Really All Right? Think Like That.

Truth Breaks You Down So It Can Rebuild You According To Its Specifications In Heaven.

Always Walk Through Life As If You Have Something New To Learn, And You Will.

Anger Or Bitterness Toward Those Who Have Hurt You Will Block Your Path To Higher Ground. You Can Have Anger Toward People Or You Can Have Freedom From People, But You Can't Have Both.

Insight Into The Two Selves Within A Man Clears Up Many Confusions And Contradictions. It Was Our Understanding That Preceded Our Victory.

Realize That The Surface Personality Has No Interest In Anything Which Might Disturb Its Darling Delusions.

The Only Way To Do Something Truly Important Every Day Is To Seek To Understand Yourself Every Day.

Instead Of Fighting Your Problems, Picture Your Way Out Of Them.

It Is Wise To Seek Immortality For Time Defeats All Other Ambitions.

Aloneness Is A Wise Teacher. Kierkegaard Remarked That One Sign Of Spiritual Maturity Was The Ability To Be Comfortable When Alone.

A Clear Understanding Of Negative Emotions Dismisses Them.

We Can No More Enjoy Life By Hoping For A Future Result Than We Can Enjoy Music By Waiting For The Final Note.

You Cannot Stop Destructive Actions By Others, But You Can Stop Your Own Destructive Reactions To Them

You Have Succeeded In Life When All You Really Want Is Only What You Really Need.

We Are Slaves To Whatever We Don't Understand.

It Is Against The Law To Permit Weak People To Steal Your Strength. Never Permit It.

Have The Daring To Stop Doing The Things You Really Don't Want To Do. Can You See Them? Look Closely. Can You Observe The Many Things You Do Because You Reluctantly Feel You Should Or Must? Watch Closely. Examine Every Action And Reaction. Do You Act Naturally Or Do You Act Because You Feel Compelled? If You Feel Compelled, Stop. Compulsion Is Slavery. Example: Refuse To Go Along With The Crowd.

We Can Become Slaves To Things We Don't Understand

Inner Guidance Is Heard Like Soft Music In The Night By Those Who Have Learned To Listen.

We Are Enslaved By Anything We Do Not Consciously See. We Are Freed By Conscious Perception.

You Can Not Escape A Prison If You Do Not Know You're In One.

Persistence Prevails, Like A Stream That Is Temporarily Blocked By Boulders And Then Collects Force Enough To Overflow Onward.

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep, But It's A Valuable Asset If You're Poor Or Haven't Any Sense.

Do Not Be Impatient With Your Seemingly Slow Progress. Do Not Try To Run Faster Than You Presently Can. If You Are Studying, Reflecting And Trying, You Are Making Progress Whether You Are Aware Of It Or Not. A Traveler Walking The Road In The Darkness Of Night Is Still Going Forward. Someday, Some Way, Everything Will Break Open, Like The Natural Unfolding Of A Rosebud.

Be Teachable. That Is The Whole Secret.

Living In The Now Is Freedom From All Problems Connected With Time. You Ought To Remember That Sentence, You Ought To Memorize It, And Ought To Take It Out, You Ought To Practice It, You Ought To Apply It. And Most Of All, You Ought To Rejoice In It Because You Have Just Heard How Not To Be Wretched, Miserable You Any More But To Be A Brand New, And Forever Brand New Man Or Woman.

Suppose You Stand On A High Place To Enjoy The Beauty Of The Sparkling Sea Below. You Need Do Nothing To Create That Beauty; You Need Only Be In The Same Place Where It Is, And Let Nature Do The Rest. So It Is With The Inner Life. There Is Nothing We Can Do To Gain Psychic Beauty. It Already Exists Without Our Effort. We Need Only Be Where We Belong, That Is, In Self-union. Then, Beauty Is.

The Most Marvelous Experience Of Life Is To Transform Life According To Reality, Not Imagination.

A False Path Must Be Tensely And Angrily Defended By Those It Has Deceived.

Ignorant People Remain Ignorant Because They Have A Secret Agreement To Call One Another Intelligent.

All We Have To Do Is To Receive What We Are Given...we Are Given The Naturalness To Love Someone, To Be Calm In Crisis, To Ignore Self-defeating Suggestions, To Be Pleasant, Forgiving, Tender, Helpful, Unworried, Brave, Energetic.

The World Consists Of Imaginary People, Claiming Imaginary Virtues And Suffering From Imaginary Happiness.

Can You Think Of Anything More Permanently Elating Than To Know That You Are On The Right Road At Last?

We Can Accept God Becoming Man To Save Man, But Not Man Becoming God To Save Himself.

Whenever Encountering A Troublesome Person, Do Not Identify Him As Being Cruel Or Stupid Or Rude Or Anything Else Like That. Instead, See Him As A Frightened Person.

There Exists A Special Self Which Takes Every Event As If It Were The Very Thing You Wanted To Happen. That Self Is The Supermind, Which Is Never Upset By Anything. Your Goal Is To Nourish It Into Greater Strength. Then, Every Step Is Sunlit.

All Forms Of Self-defeating Behavior Are Unseen And Unconscious, Which Is Why Their Existence Is Denied.

The Leap Is Made By Dropping Vanity Over Knowledge And By A Willingness To Become Nothing In Order To Become Everything.

Happiness Is Not The Acquisition Of Anything; It's The Understanding Of Something.

You Must Never Fear Anything At All.

Genuine Effort Is Success.

Mysticism Is: A. An Advanced State Of Inner Enlightenment. B. Union With Reality. C. A State Of Genuinely Satisfying Success. D. Insight Into An Entirely New World Of Living. E. An Intuitive Grasp Of Truth, Above And Beyond Intellectual Reasoning. F. A Personal Experience, In Which We Are Happy And Healthy Human Beings.

Self Awakening Enables You To See The Human Scene As It Is, Not As It Appears To Be, Which Frees You Of Its Chaos.

One False Idea Is That Anyone Can Hurt You. Events Can Ruin Your Reputation, Take Your Money, Mistreat You, Revenge Itself Upon You, Deceive, Betray, Abandon You, But Cannot Hurt You.

It Is A Mistake For Anyone To Think He Has Lived Too Long In His Old, Unsatisfactory Ways To Make The Great Change. If You Switch On The Light In A Dark Room, It Makes No Difference How Long It Was Dark Because The Light Will Still Shine. Be Teachable. That Is The Whole Secret.

A Desperation To Escape A Problem Is The Wrong Way. A Passion To Understand It Is The Right Way

Be Very Careful That You Do Not Unconsciously Assume That Nervous Tension Is Power. This Is Vital. Watch Yourself The Next Time You Work Toward Some Goal. Look Very Closely To Discover Tense Feelings And Nervous Thoughts Whirling Around Inside. Do Not Let Them Deceive You Into Assuming That They Are Creative Forces; They Are Not. They Are Thieves Of Genuine Powers. As Always, Your Awareness Of Their Thievery Is Your First Fine Step Toward Casting Them Out.

Awareness Of Your Weakness And Confusion Makes You Strong Because Conscious Awareness Is The Bright Light That Destroys The Darkness Of Negativity. Detection Of Inner Negativity Is Not A Negative Act, But A Courageously Positive Act That Makes You A New Person.

All Heartache Is Caused By Wrong Viewpoints.

Worried Thought Prevents Practical Thought Which Could Prevent Worried Thought.

If You Call One Thing Good, You Must Call Its Opposite Bad. If You Think It Wonderful To Make A Big Profit In Your Business, You Will Also Think It Terrible If You Incur A Large Loss. The Idea Is To Live Above The Opposites.

Quit Thinking That You Must Halt Before The Barrier Of Inner Negativity. You Need Not. You Can Crash Through... Whatever We See A Negative State, That Is Where We Can Destroy It.

Inner Liberty Can Be Judged By How Often A Person Feels Offended, For You Can No More Insult A Mature Man Than You Can Paint The Air.

Is The Beam From A Lighthouse Affected By Howling Wind And Rain? It Remains Perfectly Steadfast And Unaffected By The Storm. Your True Self Is Like That. Nothing Can Ever Harm You Once You Are Consciously Aware That It Is So.

The Only Reason You Do Not Do Great Things Is Because You Timidly Cling To Small Things. Will You Let Loose Of Small Things And Bear The Uncertainty Of Having Nothing For A While? Do This And Eventually You Will Do Great Things.

The Terrible Immoralities Are The Cunning Ones Hiding Behind Masks Of Morality, Such As Exploiting People While Pretending To Help Them.

Don't Look For Someone In Whom To Believe. Believe In Yourself. The Only Authentic Authority Is Your Own Original Nature.

You Need Only Choose ... Then Keep Choosing As Many Times As Necessary. That Is All You Need Do. And It Is Certainly Something You Can Do. Then As You Continue To Choose, Everything Is Yours.

When One Plan That You Have, To Get This Or To Get That, To Advance In The World, Or Whatever It Might Be, When That Seems In Danger Of Veering Off The Path You Have Set For It, You Have Your Emergency Plan Ready. And In Simple Language What That Emergency Plan Is, What You Put Into Operation, Is Called Worry. If You Can Worry You Are Occupied, And What An Incredible Human Situation It Is!

Find Yourself For Courage And Confidence Are As Easy As Breathing To The Person Who Really Knows Who He Is.

Finding Yourself

Pseudo-mysticism Seeks To Evade Reality; Authentic Mysticism Wants To Live It.

Don't Try To Be Spiritual. That Is Only A Word In The Dictionary. Make It Your Goal To Become A Normally Functioning Individual. Let These Principles Shape You According To Your Real Nature Of A Simple, Decent, Honest, Unafraid Human Being.

To Change What You Get You Must Change Who You Are.

A Perfect Method For Awakening Is To Examine The Results Of Our Daily Actions. If They Are Harmful, We Know We Need More Consciousness.

The Truth Must Be Told At All Costs, No Matter How Unpopular It May Be. The Authentic Spiritual Leader, Having Freed Himself Of His Own False Need To Be Popular, Tells The Truth Whether It Falls On Fertile Or Stony Ground. Such A Teacher Is The Salt Of The Earth, Though Few Know It. If You Think The World Is Delirious As Is, You Would Find It Intolerable Without His Healing Influence.

Healing Fails To Occur Because It Is Much Easier To Injure Another Than To Heal Oneself.

As Incredible As It Sounds, An Unhappy Man Does Not Realize That Happiness Is Better Than Unhappiness. Knowing Only His Own Concealed Anguish, He Worships It, Which Is The Same As Self-worship.

See Human Nonsense As Nonsense And Save Years Of Trying To Make Sense Out Of It.

Our Freedom Can Be Measured By The Number Of Things We Can Walk Away From.

We Never Get Upset Over What Happens. Never. We Get Upset Because Of Preconceived Ideas As To What We Think Should Happen, What We Want To Happen. When Our Preference Clashes With The Reality, We Get Hurt. Rid Yourself Of All Preconceived Ideas As To What Should Happen. You Are Then At Peace Whatever Happens.

The Reason Why Most People Are Frustrated Is Because A Lie Cannot Be Turned Into A Truth.

If Heaven Existed As A Physical Building On Earth, Human Beings Would Remodel It To Make It Right.

The Outer Storm Ceases The Moment The Inner Storm Ends, For They Are The Same Storm.

Don't Try To Be Unafraid. That Is Impossible. Rather, Go Ahead While Being Afraid. That Is The Entire Secret For Abolishing Fear. The Supermind Teaches Us To Have No Self-concern At All. Whatever Happens To You, Act As Though It Happened To Someone Else.

Your Central Self Is Totally Untouched By Grief, Confusion, Desperation.

Society Is Like A Crowd In Carnival Costumes With Everyone Fearful That Others Will See Through His Disguise.

No One On Earth Can Hurt You, Unless You Accept The Hurt In Your Own Mind. . . The Problem Is Not Other People; It Is Your Reaction.

We Clearly Realize That Freedom's Inner Kingdom Cannot Be Touched By Exterior Attacks.

An Obvious Fact About Negative Feelings Is Often Overlooked. They Are Caused By Us, Not By Exterior Happenings. An Outside Event Presents The Challenge, But We React To It. So We Must Attend To The Way We Take Things, Not To The Things Themselves.

Learn To See Things As They Really Are, Not As We Imagine They Are.

A Person Obsessed With The Need To Be Happy Will Never Be So. The Obsession Is The Obstruction.

The Genuinely Spiritual Person Is One Who Has Lost All Desire To Be Anyone But Exactly Who He Is, Without Labels And Without Apologies. He Is What He Is And That's All There's Is To It. Such A Man Is Undivided, Uncomplicated And Contented.

You Can End Half Your Troubles Immediately By No Longer Permitting People To Tell You What You Want.

You See Everything Depends Upon The Psychological Headquarters From Which We Live. 'where Am I Living From?' Ask Yourself That Question. If You Don't Like Your Headquarters, You Can Move Any Time You Like. Break Away. Don't Tell Anyone About It. Others Will Either Smile Tolerantly Or Mouth Sanctimonious Babble. Make Your Escape Plans In Secret. Never Mind If You Lose Certain Friends, You Will Find Others Who Also Have Dared. They Will Be Ten-thousand Times More Valuable To You.

You Know What Is Right. Deep Down, You Know. The Battle Between Your True Wisdom And The Counterfeit Wisdom Of Society Is What Causes Frustration. Refuse To Compromise With What You Know Is Right-with What Is Right For You.

We Are Exactly Where We Have Chosen To Be.

There Is No Way Reality Can Be Prevented From Flowing The Way It Flows. It Is Our Vain Attempts To Force It To Flow In The Service Of Our Imaginary Needs Which Sets Us In Painful Conflict With Our- Selves And Nature. You Are Not Separate From The Flowing Reality; You Are That Flowing Reality. See This And You Will Not See Any- Thing Else Which Conflicts With It. You Will Be What You See.

Many Of Us Knock On The Door But Remain Outside, Because Knocking And Entering Are Entirely Different Actions. Knocking Is Necessary, Consisting Of Reading Books, Attending Meetings, Asking Questions. But Entrance Requires Much Bolder Action. It Requires One To Enter Into Himself, To Uncover Hidden Motives, To See Contradictions, And To Realize His Actual Power For Self-change.

The Power Of The Present Moment Is So Immense It Is Capable - When Lived In Fully - Of Destroying Forever Every Past Mistake And Regret.

Who Asks A King For A Penny?

No One Can Tell You What Is Right For You Except Yourself. So Start Telling Yourself What To Do. If You Blunder For Ten Years While Thinking For Yourself, That Is Rich Treasure When Compared With Living These Ten Years Under The Mental Domination Of Another.

Just Be Honest With Yourself. That Opens The Door.

Run Forward When Possible, Walk Ahead When You Can, Stagger Onward When You Must, But Never Cease Your Forward Movement.

The Answers Come When You Are Quietly Willing To Be Without Them.

Resistance To The Disturbance Is The Disturbance.

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.

What You Really Want For Yourself Is Always Trying To Break Through, Just As A Cooling Breeze Flows Through An Open Window On A Hot Day. Your Part Is To Open The Windows Of Your Mind.

Men Have The Illusion Of Having A Duty To Make The World Spin Properly, Which Is Precisely What Makes It Wobble.

Freedom Begins As We Become Conscious Of It.

It Is A Thousand Times More Sensible To Climb One Foot Up The Mountainside Than To Chatter For Years About The Mountaintop.

The Miracle Of Self-healing Occurs When The Inner Patient Yields To The Inner Physician.

Every Day That You Attempt To See Things As They Are In Truth Is A Supremely Successful Day.

Truth Is Not A Matter Of Personal Viewpoint.

Truth Does Not Really Hurt, Rather It Is Our Resistance To Its Message That Causes Us Pain.

Cruelty Practiced As A Matter Of Social Principle Or Public Policy, And Presented To The Community As A Means To A Higher Goal Is The Most Obscene And Decadent Phenomenon Of Any Civilization.

Genuine Kindness Is Not What We Do, It Is What We Are.

One Of Society's Absurd Delusions Is That The Spending Of Money Can Cure Something.

Change Is Never A Loss - It Is Change Only.

We Cannot Be Free Of Nagging Desires Through Suppression. This Is Like Trying To Keep A Rubber Boat Beneath The Water. But We Remove Compulsive Desires Altogether By Understanding Their Nature.

When The Mind Is Exhausted In Trying To Find The Answer, The Answer Dawns.

Study Carefully The Law Of Cause And Effect.

We Must Become Acquainted With Our Emotional Household: We Must See Our Feelings As They Actually Are, Not As We Assume They Are. This Breaks Their Hypnotic And Damaging Hold On Us.

It Is Utterly Useless To Try To Change The Outer World, For It Is But A Reflection Of Inner Causes. The True Seeker Seeks To Change Himself.

Interpretation Blocks Reception While Masquerading As Reception. Rightness Does Not Need Interpretation; It Requires Simple Acceptance And Nothing Else.

Mysticism Is Not This Or That Particular Cup On The Table; It Is The Water Poured Into All Of Them.

You Have It Made When You Don't Care Whether You Have It Made Or Not.

When Told That Man Lives In Delusion Everyone Thinks Of Himself As The Exception; Hence His Delusion.

Our Life-transformation Is In Exact Proportion To The Amount Of Truth We Can Take Without Running Away.

A Cheery Relaxation Is Man's Natural State, Just As Nature Itself Is Relaxed. A Waterfall Is Concerned Only With Being Itself, Not With Doing Something It Considers Waterfall-like.

Human Sickness Is So Severe That Few Can Bear To Look At It...but Those Who Do Will Become Well.

A Chief Cause Of Unhappiness Is What I Call Mental Movies. Mental Movies Are A Misuse Of The Imagination. You Know How It Goes. You Have A Painful Experience With Someone, Then Run It Over And Over In Your Mind. You Visualize What You Said, What He Did, How You Both Felt. As Awful As It Is, You Feel Compelled To Repeat The Film Day And Night. It Is As If You Were Locked Inside A Theatre Playing A Horrible Movie.

Painful Experiences

Just As Surely As Distress Must Follow Self-deceit, Healing Must Follow Self-honesty.

A Truly Strong Person Does Not Need The Approval Of Others Any More Than A Lion Needs The Approval Of Sheep.

Learn This Great Secret Of Life: What People Call Interruption Or Disturbance To Their Routine Is Just As Much A Part Of Living As The Routine. To Split Life Into Two Parts, One Called Routine And The Other Called Interruption, Is To Be Caught Between Them.

The Search For Truth Is Really A Lot Of Good Fun.

Self-knowledge Is The Great Power By Which We Comprehend And Control Our Lives

Don't Try To Live. Let Yourself Be Lived.

The Need To Impress Others Causes Half The World's Woes.

The Problem Is Not What Other People Think, Do Or Say; It Is Your Reaction.

Happiness Is Liberty From Everything That Makes Us Unhappy.

Remember Above All That Mental Stability Comes By Examining The Contents Of The Mind, Not By Avoidence.

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