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Vernon Howard eTalks
     There are 12 new eTalks available. All the new digital downloads have a flashing new next to them. There are now a total of 91 Vernon Howard titled talks available for digital download at a fantastic price. These talks were specifically chosen by Vernon Howard from his lectures. They are the best of the best, containing beautiful higher truths and covering a wide variety of inner life topics. Order today!           (Last updated January 1, 2018)

Take Charge of Life!

     Here is a new and exciting ongoing series of articles written by New Life Students who have been attending classes for a number of years. They have experienced the benefits of coming to class on a regular basis for themselves. Life throws challenges at us all the time so why not learn to deal with them consciously and effectively. Read and enjoy these helpful and insightful essays which will cover a wide variety of life topics.

The However Exercise by Bill Brown
     How can we Take Charge of Life? Our tendency is to believe taking charge of life means commanding external events and people, but it really means commanding our internal states. So what makes up our internal states?
     If you have a human nature you have a mechanical mind that generates self- defeating thinking. We all start as spiritually undeveloped people dominated by patterns of thinking that cause self-harm. Imagine every mountain peak on earth dedicated to presenting, with large, easily seen letters, a corresponding peak of human “intelligence” like: “I am not going to lighten up and smile — and nobody can make me!” There are not enough mountains on earth for all the examples of stupid self-defeating human thinking that you can find. Everyone can see them in other people, but spiritual students must take responsibility for seeing them in themselves and then allowing Truth to get rid of them for us.
     Begin to win over self-sabotage with the word HOWEVER. Remember HOWEVER so that you can link personal self-defeating thinking with the spiritually victorious thinking that begins to conquer it.
     The original HOWEVER example comes from Vernon Howard’s booklet, Live  Above this Crazy World, number 73 (partial excerpt): MAGIC WORD — One word can turn darkness to day. The word is However. Don’t just cry “I feel defeated” but add “However, I can change all that.” Don’t just complain “Everything seems against me” but add “However, I can see life in a new way.”
     We were instructed to make connections between these spiritual ideas. An insight came to me that throughout these teachings there are thousands of concise magical transformations from harmful to victorious thinking like the one above, but they simply do not contain the word However. So, I am using this all caps version of HOWEVER to refer to them.
     This connection was triggered by the instructions for writing about Take Charge of Life given to New Life students. Included were some quotes from Vernon Howard on writing about higher principles and one marvelous example of HOWEVER was there: “You don’t really have to write, you just have to talk on paper.”
     You can tell by the way this is worded that many people have difficulty expressing themselves on paper. Just for the sake of example, we could put the However in there: Don't get stuck with “I have writer’s block” but add “However, I just have to talk on paper.”
     We should acquire as many HOWEVERs as we can from this work and then allow new ones to come to us.
     At a recent New Life class in Scottsdale, Arizona, a student volunteered to get up and pass on some spiritual help he had received from the book, There Is a Way Out. You could feel the class was glad that he did. Paraphrased, Vernon was saying: You say you are blocked from this New Land by a ditch and a fence? It is in your mind only. I tell you the ditch is filled in and the fence is down. Crossover.
     Earlier this summer we planted some wildflower seeds in several locations on the New Life property in Strawberry, Arizona. After several weeks, I was becoming convinced that we had only planted grass and weed seeds. Jerry, a man who does work for us, suggested patience. He said the flowers were on the way and indeed they were and still are. Under natural law, the right combination of seeds, soil, nutrients and water is producing a nice enjoyable, varied, colorful display of beauty that changes daily.
     Under spiritual law, beauty comes from admitting that our life is out of control, sincerely wanting to change that, and then persistently studying and applying these higher teachings to show us how to get out of the way so that what we really want comes to us.