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Questions and Answers from Vernon Howard...

I don’t know the way out.

You are the way out.

I don’t know what that means.

Know yourself and you will know.

I wish to be whole, but am not sure what this means.

Wholeness is the harmonious working of all the natural parts of a man. This includes thoughts, feelings, physical movements, sexual urges, action, speech, and so on. An obsession is the domination of one wild part over the other parts, as when sex dominates the mind or when impulsive emotions dictate violent action. Knowledge of all this is the beginning of self-wholeness and thus self-command.

What is human life like?

Like a gigantic stage performance, which a story will illustrate. A group of children often played a game of dramatics in which each portrayed a stage character. One played the role of an important person, another of a profound thinker, and so on. Then they grew up. Incredibly, they continued to play their roles, which they now took as realities. They went around acting as if they were important or profound. They felt depressed and angry when other people did not accept their roles as real. They sensed that something was wrong, but did not know what it was.

We all agree on the necessity of persistent self-honesty. Where might a beginner help himself?

He can ask whether he really enjoys his life, or whether he painfully endures it because he knows not what else to do.

I hope my spirit is not too dark to learn.

How you underestimate yourself! You always forget that while you are your own darkness you are also your own sunshine for ending the darkness.

It is true that we scorn that which we do not understand.

A wind carried a man’s hat deep into the woods where man had never visited. Gathering around the hat, the wild creatures tried to discover its use. A dove thought it was a nest, while a bear declared it to be a strange and huge berry. Every animal but one connected the hat his own personal needs and experiences. The exception was a wise owl who immediately identified the strange object as a hat. The owl explained that he had been in another part of the woods where creatures called men wore hats all the time. Never having heard of a man before, the creatures derided the owl and continued to be puzzled over the hat.

I wish to enter your school of cosmic wisdom.

Come back in three weeks.

Here I am, three weeks later.

Come back in six weeks.

Here I am, six weeks later.

You may now receive your second lesson.

But what was my first?

The ability to take rejection.

I am caught between loyalty to my traditional beliefs and my urge to break out.

Do not feel guilty about leaving the old. You owe nothing to illusions. Do not permit other slaves to keep you in chains. Your life belongs to you and you alone.

But what should I accept and what should be rejected?

You are never required to accept anything you have not seen or experienced for yourself.

I do not fully understand what it means to be spiritually asleep or awake.

To be asleep means to be the slave of anger and envy, to demand that events turn out according to personal desire, to deceive oneself and others, to suffer from guilt and shame, to take secret delight in hurting others, to live in fear. To be awake means to possess self understanding, to have only one person within yourself, to see through the folly of worldly ambitions, to live from your real nature, to be free of all negative feelings, to be genuinely compassionate.

You seem to say we must leave our own intelligence behind when coming to these classes.

Do not confuse intelligence with conditioning.

Why can’t we bring our acquired ideas?

Can fire and water mix?

What should we do with an offered truth?

Four men walked through the Forest of Truth together. A leaf bearing a sublime message fluttered down at their feet. The scholar said he would write a long book describing the shape and color of the leaf. The man who considered himself religious claimed that this was heaven’s sign for him to go forth and save others. The angry man shouted his intention to fight the truth. But the fourth man merely read the message, nodded, and silently walked on. Nothing in him wanted to use the truth for personal profit.

Society has thousands of plans for helping the helpless, but not much changes.

Picture a shopkeeper standing in front of his shop and shouting to passers-by about his delicious fruits and vegetables. But the shop is empty. That is society. Only the individual who has found himself has anything to give.

I have a certain fear that I might lose my own individuality by accepting these higher truths.

Do you have individuality or do you merely have a fixed pattern of behavior which keeps you in conflict?

I see what you mean. Sheep in a flock may have different characteristics, but they are still sheep.

If you could only see it, what you will lose is what a certain part of you yearns to lose.

I wish to be inspired.

Then realize that inspiration is not the same as stimulation. Stimulation is temporary excitement, usually caused by exterior events. It always swings over to depression.

And what is true inspiration?

A glimpse of truth hidden within you. It comes at first in a brief revelation, just as a flash of lightning illuminates the scene for a split second.

I don’t know how to find the higher life.

To win the higher give up the lower. The home of a man stood near a beautiful lake. Also on his property was an old and unused cabin which blocked the view of the lake from the home. The man took great pride in boasting to visitors about several famous men who had possibly spent a night in the cabin. At the same time he was saddened by his inability to see the rippling waters. He finally sacrificed his boasting by tearing down the cabin, which gave him a new view.

I want my life to be fun.

So?

Don’t these studies tend to take away fun?

Is your present life fun?

No.

Has it ever been fun?

No.

These studies are the only real fun on earth.

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