Monthly Lessons Archive 2015

NEW LIFE-COMMAND
     Look inside yourself and ask, “Am I a pleasant person to myself right now?” The answer will always be “NO.” Self-honesty is a must. And when you see what’s really going on down there, you’re to see that’s really not you. Self-observation separates us from what has taken us over and the result will be new life-command.

SEEK ANSWERS UNTIL SOMETHING RINGS TRUE
     Here’s your exercise. When alone say out loud and listen to yourself saying it, “I will seek answers until something rings true to me personally.” Notice it is only words to you. Now here’s the main point: while saying “I will seek answers until something rings true to me personally” out loud, you are to listen to yourself talking out loud. Here’s what you’re doing, you’re connecting a spiritual fact, a truth, with yourself, with something that is not just your intellect. It’s something that you want to make a part of your essence. As you said, you want the truth to be a living part of you. You want to feel it, you want to know it. You want to do more than think about it.
     Again, “I will seek answers until something rings true to me personally.” It will! You watch. What a delightful experience this is by working on yourself. Finally, something other than you is living your life for you. That is the meaning of authentic spiritual salvation. Want it? You can have it but you’re going to have to arouse yourself and not remain complacent. Remember, the knowledge in this lesson already exists in your higher nature. You need only ascend to that location within yourself.

BE CONSCIOUS LIFE ITSELF
     When you are an alert, conscious spectator of life, life goes on. Instead of being a role-player, be someone whose role is of being conscious life itself. Get off the stage and be a spectator — neutral — not on the stage. Then there is no curtain. The curtain can come down only on an actor. Be interested in watching yourself doing. When doing this right, we are letting some light into the mind. We are not a mechanical man at these times, but a conscious one. Remember this. Watch!

“WHOEVER IS OUT THERE, PLEASE HELP ME.”
     Don’t take this as being too simple now. You must say this: “Whoever is out there, please help me.” Now, that’s not being irreverent. You don’t have to use the word God, Lord. You don’t have to use them at all. You can use them if you want. You don’t want to identify with the word God, Lord, either. Otherwise that’s part of the wrong cause and effect. Do you see the honesty in it? “Whoever is out there, help me!”
     Of course, you have to say that with your heart. Not because you want a personal reward but because you see that what would happen to you must happen to you. It must happen to you, otherwise, there’s no salvation. Otherwise you’re still you with your affirmations.
     “Whoever is out there, help me.” I’ll tell you something. The light that is out there is trying to get into your darkness, but since there is no God to you yet, there is no help to you yet. You’ve got things exactly reversed. “Whoever is out there, help me” – period. Stop there and don’t go one word beyond it. You must stop there. Otherwise the dark forces will try to make you add to it and spoil everything.
     “Whoever is out there, help me.” Say that as best you can. Say it every day. Every second begin to live it. The change will come. You’ll go through a lot of fearful experiences. You’ll be worried a lot but I warned you about that. Finally, whoever is out there will save you.

THE PERFECT ANSWER
     What is more pleasant than the great escape? So don’t hide out, break out. Here’s the perfect answer for any kind of frustration, worry that comes up all day long:  “That has nothing to do with my search for the light.” When something happens to you, use this method to clear the difficulty away entirely.
     Work on this for yourself.  After a jolt say, “That has nothing to do with my search for the light.’’ Absorb it, let it sink in. Say that regardless of the brick wall you run into. You’re telling the truth. That’s the power of it. “That has nothing to do with my search for the light.” All right, at first you’re just going to be saying it. The comprehension of it comes later.
      Don’t you want a pleasantry that will do something for you when you can’t do it for yourself? “No, no, no! That banging against the brick wall is not going to thwart me. It’s not going to make me cry.” And by the way, you cry only because you’ve forgotten your way back home. Right in the middle of your temptation to fall apart, you’re going to claim a spiritual truth that you’ve heard and stored up in your mind but which you have not yet allowed to activate itself at the precise moment that you need it. You should be overwhelmed at the power of that simple true statement.
     Whatever happens to you, you lose something. Something didn’t turn out the way you want. “That has nothing to do with my search for the light.” That’s how you make yourself unstoppable in your search for the light. By believing in the truth and the power in back of what you said, by living with it, you just jump over the brick wall; you come to the next brick wall, you jump over that.
     This is spontaneous spirituality. You are attracting the force that will enable you each day to more and more see how true it is and a billion troubles a day have not power to stop you because the Universal Father is behind that declaration. “It has nothing to do with what my heart wants to find.”
     Now you have to remember that. You must not forget it. Don’t forget the words now. Write them down. Underline them. Practice at saying it. An annoyance comes along and you’re going to remember that you made a vow to go all the way into eternity. But you forgot it and you allowed hideous forces to swamp you with their sickness and their cruelty.
     So get this elementary step down in your mind of remembering the principle “That has nothing to do with my search for heaven.” That is mechanical so far. You’re not living it yet but you’ve taken the step so that you can go on from the mechanical to the conscious, so that the time will come when your brief reminder to yourself that “that has nothing to do with me wanting to walk on” — here’s the beauty of it — this is your intention to not believe in darkness, to not believe in the power of pain. Don’t you dare believe in the power of pain.
     Something makes you anxious. Never again will you allow it to take you over and make you think it’s a necessary part of your life. You are to refuse it. You are to reject it. When something comes along that distresses you say, “That has nothing to do with my search for the light.” You have made a resounding battle cry for freedom. You are not living it yet. Take this elementary step of refusing to believe in your pain.
     Why would anyone choose to believe in pain? Because of evil forces that invade human beings they come to believe that pain, suffering, anguish, annoyance, fighting, is a necessity for their self-existence. You’re not going to believe in your acquired false nature anymore. You’re going to pull yourself out of it.
     One of the slyest tricks of evil is to pull the following blanket over your eyes. It makes you think that pain, anguish, is your survival. You have to see that you think this.

NO, I WILL NOT WORSHIP PAIN
     Watch yourself very carefully. Watch small and large concerns, worries come up and ask to take permanent residence in you. When you accept them – worry, jealousy, etc. – you are accepting them as god of the moment. Key thought: “NO, I WILL NOT WORSHIP PAIN.”

YOUR PURPOSE MUST BE
     The enemy is both inside you and outside you. You must first defeat the enemy inside you in order to defeat it outside you. Remember that!
     The purpose of this mad world we live in is to drag you into the whirlpool of its madness. Your purpose must be to not go! You must have some realization of the lures and temptations that are put out toward you and dragging you in, so you can feel yourself and see yourself being pulled in. And then you must make up your mind – even if you have no strength at all – that you’re not going to go. You’re supposed to be a human being, not a sheep. There are already enough meek, mild, self-destructive sheep out there. Don’t add to it.
     Each of you was given an individual gift of life – a certain individuality all yours. You must protect it as if it were a diamond. This world has nothing for you. If you knew it has nothing for you, you’d want to have classes [study] seven nights a week. You’d spend your entire day going through your necessary responsibilities trying to shake yourself awake – instead of trying to keep yourself asleep, because you’re still in love with your dreams. It’s so much easier, even while cooking dinner just to run the same scene through your mind over and over. You’re not supposed to do the easy thing. You’re supposed to make it rough and tough on yourself. You’re supposed to do what you don’t want to do inwardly.
     The world doesn’t want this. It wants all the noise it can get; it wants someone to be with, to talk to. They don’t want to develop their individuality. They want to be with other people so they can take away their energy so they can take it for themselves. That’s why they want to be with you. They want your energy so they can build their false life with it. And the more they get the more they destroy themselves. And the more you give to them the more you allow yourself to be destroyed to where you get weaker and weaker. And what a tragedy that is. Strength comes when you are in a constant state of prayer. This means you know you have no strength of your own. You can’t call on yourself.
     Remember, something is trying to help you right now.

MAKE YOUR VANITY PROTEST
     You’re leaping into the dark when you slow down your motions, you’re slowing down your mechanical unconscious motion of putting the package on the shelf unconsciously. If we can leap into the dark ten times a day with such a little exercise as that, doing something we don’t want to do, doing something that is going to make our vanity scream in protest; you try to do something in the next twenty-four hours that will make your vanity scream and protest.

STOP BELIEVING IN FEAR
     Vernon told a story about a man who, after observing himself awhile, finally discovered he liked being afraid, furious, hateful. He wanted the shaking and vibration and the earthquakes and volcanic lava. You all do this because you think it is a necessity. You wanted that explosion. You thought you couldn't live without it.
     This is you reflecting: “Why would I want that at all?” It’s because of your lack of insight into what is truly beautiful – the place that God has prepared for you. You think you have to be somebody. “I am someone who knows what I’m doing.”  That’s a lie.
     People do incredibly stupid things spiritually and socially speaking. One of the most stupid and self-destructive things a human being can ever do is to believe in fear, in terror, as something necessary to his survival. You don’t know you do that but you do that. You believe in the necessity of sorrow, of nervous explosions, of pangs of pain. Know that you go through your day believing that you have to have them. I’m telling you, you don’t have to have them. You prove your belief in them by them clinging to you. How many were troubled this morning? You were troubled because you wanted to be worried over your health or snappy toward someone who offended you. You wanted to be insulted! You wanted to be ignored and left out because then you could say, “See I exist. I’m someone who got left out! I’m someone who's not privileged like everyone else.” And out of these attitudes comes evil towards everyone. If you're evil towards yourself, you’re evil towards everyone else.
     The student asked himself, “What if I gave up being jealous or competitive completely?” You don’t even know you’re jealous. That’s the first step. Then he said, “I’m going to stay awake and determine to use spiritual intelligence.” Then he saw he was only 99% scared and 1% part pure knowing.
     The assaults continue to even get worse as you advance because Satan doesn’t want to lose anyone. Exercise: At the moment you feel that terror within, remember there is a false part in you that wanted it and, at that moment, know there’s something wrong with your reactions. Your mistake was in wanting to get a thrill out of it. You’re not supposed to have any reaction at all. You will no longer be terrified. You’re willing to exorcise the darkness inside yourself. And Truth itself will walk with you and you will know you are safe because you are no longer you.

CATCH YOURSELF
     OK, you can do it and remember what I said now, right now, right now: I am aware of myself talking, the tone of voice, my hands are like this. That’s an exercise, turning the arrow back, just watching. Maybe I can catch myself in a false gesture, I can catch myself doing false, and I want to catch that, so I'm not identified with it, so I'm not asleep to the physical reaction to it. But at other times, because our minds are made to work in different ways at different times,  I will be talking to you, maybe in five minutes from now when I want to drop that exercise and concentrate on something else.

DEFEAT THE ENEMY
     The enemy is both inside you and outside you. You must first defeat the enemy inside you in order to defeat it outside you. Remember that!
     The purpose of this mad world we live in is to drag you into the whirlpool of its madness. Your purpose must be to not go! You must have some realization of the lures and temptations that are put out toward you and dragging you in, so you can feel yourself and see yourself being pulled in. And then you must make up your mind — even if you have no strength at all — that you’re not going to go. You’re supposed to be a human being, not a sheep. There are already enough meek, mild, self-destructive sheep out there. Don’t add to it.
     Each of you was given an individual gift of life — a certain individuality all yours. You must protect it as if it were a diamond. This world has nothing for you. If you knew it has nothing for you, you’d want to have classes [study] seven nights a week. You’d spend your entire day going through your necessary responsibilities trying to shake yourself awake — instead of trying to keep yourself asleep, because you’re still in love with your dreams. It’s so much easier, even while cooking dinner just to run the same scene through your mind over and over. You’re not supposed to do the easy thing. You’re supposed to make it rough and tough on yourself. You’re supposed to do what you don’t want to do inwardly.
     The world doesn’t want this. It wants all the noise it can get; it wants someone to be with, to talk to. They don’t want to develop their individuality. They want to be with other people so they can take away their energy so they can take it for themselves. That’s why they want to be with you. They want your energy so they can build their false life with it. And the more they get the more they destroy themselves. And the more you give to them the more you allow yourself to be destroyed to where you get weaker and weaker. And what a tragedy that is. Strength comes when you are in a constant state of prayer. This means you know you have no strength of your own. You can’t call on yourself.
     Remember, something is trying to help you right now.

VALUE TRUTH
     Begin to value truth. You start with that. You begin to value truth and you watch how the wisdom for doing all these things we’ve talked about comes to you quite easily, quite automatically, so that you can use every human relationship you have, I don’t care what it is, twenty years ago or one of a stranger you met tonight, you can begin to use this wisdom to set yourself free of everyone.

HOW CAN I FIND GOD, TRUTH, REALITY?
A: By doing one thing at a time slowly, while being aware of yourself doing it.

Q: How does this help me find Reality?
A: It breaks off the habitual and mechanical and unconscious movements of mind and body. It is these unconscious movements that separate you from Reality. A man riding a recklessly galloping horse is in a beautiful meadow, but cannot see it. By commanding the horse to slow down he sees where he is. In the same way, this technique shows you where you really are — in union with Reality.

SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE IS EVERYTHING
     You’ll never make it if you rely on yourself. I want you to know that you’re in that condition where you still are trying to do it by yourself, for yourself, and I tell you you’re not going to make it. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT. But you don’t know that yet. But I want you to be in a state of complete agreement that you’re not going to make it the way you’ve been trying. Then something else can happen. I’m telling you, you don’t have to do it and you’d better not do it or you’ll never make it if you rely on yourself.
     What you have to do is stop trying to climb the mountain in your own wisdom and arrogance. Just stop! You have to stop doing what you’re doing! Here is the alternative. What you have to do is pass along the base of the mountain and go through a storm that is even worse than the one you’re living in now. And if you’ll go through this superstorm ten miles long, on the other side of the storm, you will find the path. The path you will find has already been prepared. “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” It will always be there! You can’t climb of yourself but you have to do the internal work that is necessary for you to find the cleared way.
     From storm valley, you now go through a deeper storm, a different kind of storm. It consists of you, what you are now. No one else is the storm. You’re the storm. We’re talking about passing through the storm along the base of the mountain where you come into a clearing where the path begins upward. That’s the same thing as a new nature for you. You can’t do it on your own and you never will. You have to ponder how you can stop being what you are and what you are doing. Spiritual knowledge is everything. Fight hard to get rid of your present existence so that God can lead you to the upward path.

OBEY SOMETHING HIGHER
     You don’t have a lot of time while you’re here on this earth. Be faithful to work on the level you are now on and there will be results. After a few years right feelings begin to take over. Make a note as follows and put it by your chair and other places: “NO! I’M NOT LIVING FROM YOU ANYMORE!” Not from fear, anxiety, fear of finances, sadness and depression, any negativity, vibration, the devil. NO! I’m not going to be afraid of death anymore, of bad health, etc. Don’t walk with the devil. This is all a necessary stage. You rise above the idea that there’s someone there. Learn to scream it in a new way at the top of your voice — NO! You will be less and less concerned with your life, with yourself.
     Where do you suppose that any human being who has found his way out — which doesn’t mean anything to you because you haven’t done it — where do you suppose such a person started? Well, with just the things I’m telling you to do. Because I know that if you will be faithful to work on the level you now are at — if you will do what you can do, you can do this — you can do this if you obey something a little bit higher than your own laziness. You can do exactly what I say. You take that note out and you say NO! It won’t mean anything. You’ll mutter it. You’ll mutter it and you won’t even know what you’re doing and you hope no one sees you. You do it anyway in your own way; maybe it’s in your purse or wherever. And you’re going to learn to say NO.

I’M NOT ME
     Here is what human beings do every day: tell you all about themselves. They are describing something that has no existence whatever. Your exercise is to start saying “I’m not me.”
     Oh! What a secret for you today. You’ve got it now. You’ve got the secret of the ages! And the acceptance of that secret will start a new kind of spiritual power — electrical spiritual power inside of you. Who you really are has everything it needs already. You don’t have to try to add to it. If you add to it, you’ll spoil it all. You’ll be adding to your delusion that there’s something to do for yourself. There’s nothing you can do for yourself because there’s no self requiring anything at all. When you know there’s no one there, you’ll just stay home and enjoy yourself. When you say, “I can stay home and be who I really am,” you’ll know who you are because you know who you are not.
     Remember, your acceptance of saying “I’m not me” can start a new electrical spiritual power inside of you.
     In addition, here is a second exercise called the “I am not” exercise. Say: “I am not this pain. I am not this body. I am not these thoughts. I am not these emotions. I am not this worry. I am not this fear.” Who I really am is apart from all that. We have been hoaxed.

DISSOLUTION OF TIME
     The invented personality, the artificial self, must have a future to survive. Since the artificial self lives in thought, in ordinary thinking, that is, time itself, it must always revolve around past and future. If you begin to rob the artificial self of time experiences, it will scream its objections but in spite of all its objections, it must fade away. As it begins to fade away you begin to see yourself, not think yourself, but begin to know yourself as a different kind of entity than you knew before. Because when you cease to recreate your invented personality thru thinking, as you cease to recreate it, it begins to dissolve. The dissolution of time and the dissolution of the invented personality are the same thing.
     So gradually, more and more and more, you — your real nature — begins to rest in the here and now no matter what you are doing, whether you’re sweeping the floor or conducting business or driving your car or whatever. You begin to get a sensing that there really is nothing but right now and that is because that is where you are. But for a long time the pull, the tug of time-thoughts, will try to pull you away from here and now — the timeless state — and will succeed, won’t it? You’ve had this experience where maybe you understand that this is all that counts. There is no past to feel ashamed of, there’s no future to go to, and there is nothing at all that time-thought can create. This sensing becomes stronger and stronger as all the pieces are put together.

IT’S TIME TO GROW UP
     Q: If I really try to drop something, it seems to attack five times harder. Why?
     A: I will cover that with the prison breakout story: The guards in the prison don’t keep a close eye on a prisoner who’s out in the courtyard there doing pushups. But when that prisoner gets up and starts running towards the wall, the guard pays attention. He gets his rifle out, doesn’t he?
     When you determine you are going to escape, you will hear all kind of gunfire from up in the tower there. That is, you’ll begin to hear objections and screams from your jailers — from the old nature that just loves to keep you a prisoner. And this is very interesting to observe. You should know then and be encouraged by the fact that the harder you make an attempt to escape the more they’re going to scream. Therefore, the more screams you hear, the more you should be encouraged by the fact that you are doing the right thing. Another way to put that is when you begin to see how insane you really are, and I mean actually insane — I’m not using a figure of speech when I say insane; it’s just that the insane asylum is in here and it’s covered over with smiles and successes. The more you hear the screams inside of you and recognize them as insanity, that is the beginning awareness of the fact that you were in an insane asylum, or a prison. And it means you are doing the right thing.
     And when you hear a guard go rattle, rattle, on his machine gun, don’t stop! Just keep running faster towards the wall. Throw the rope up. Keep going. There is nothing that can stop you from going on if you just go on. The reason you stop is because you’re afraid of what is going to happen to you. “He’s going to shoot me.” The bullets can’t penetrate you. The machine gun of the guards has blanks in it.
     Do you understand the spiritual parallel? Go! Why do you stop for anything? You don’t have to stop! The reason you stop is because you want mamma, you want papa. You want your little cuddly bear. Little children, grow up. Little children, put down the teddy bear and run towards the wall. Don’t let anyone or anything stop you. Listen! Don’t let your own sinful past stop you. It will try. How many of you have done horrible things in the past? Everyone, right? Don’t let them stop you; they are a fake, they’re a bluff, they’re a phantom. GO! GO!

THE LAW OF SELF-RESPONSIBILITY
     Happiness can only be ours when there is obedience to spiritual laws. The law of self-responsibility is a law of life. You have to get suspicious that you are a very irresponsible human being. Then let that suspicion lead you to absolute final conviction that you never have been responsible for your soul’s salvation. You and every other human being were born into this world under a certain unbreakable law of personal responsibility. You alone are responsible for what you say and you will get the results of what you say and do. Here’s how to begin to get your own life back. Think of the following phrase as your password from now on: “It was my fault. It was my fault.” Now, don’t you ever say anything but that. Never say, “It’s your fault” or “They told me what to do.” No more of that childishness, that cowardice, that abandonment of God’s principles of self-reliance, of self-correction.
     When you say “It’s my fault” and mean it, that gives you a clue to further thinking. “If it’s my fault then there’s something wrong with me and that’s where I have to put my attention instead of screaming out, ‘Look what you did to me!’”  A man and woman live together for many, many years and they break up and each says it’s the other one’s fault. Each is lying. Can you take it that everything has been your fault in that marriage, in that friendship, in anything? Can you take it that it’s been nothing but your fault? From day one you didn’t say, “It’s my fault,” you said, “It’s your fault” and you continued and got hurt by that bad relationship all because you disobeyed the law of personal responsibility, which always means “I will see that it’s my fault and allow the correction to come in.”
     You’re going to have to do much better with that simple marvelous moralistic statement that self- responsibility is a law of life. Nobody wants to understand it but you will from now on. I instruct you, from now on, to love ordinary goodness, which is the same as loving God and it’s the same as loving individual personal responsibility, which will grow into natural strength. Remember: Password — It was my fault; I will see that it was my fault and allow the correction to come in.

BECOME TRULY INTELLIGENT
     The earth is a sad place because the possible is not achieved — to become something that we are not when we enter this life. Why there is no excuse: You were given enough intelligence to know you need more intelligence. If you knew something was wrong with you, you’d be different. You have to find out for yourself what you value more than catching yourself every second. The preference is to feel yourself rather than abandoning yourself. Use what intelligence you have to become more intelligent. We are cheerful because the way out is here. You can find it.
     The spark of life is to be able to see what you did, and after making a mistake say, “You know, I could have done better. I could have done something new. I am fascinated and love strong feelings — afraid of boredom.” Instead of feeling something when we meet obstacles along the path, think about this correct thought all day long: “I want to learn how to close the window to the wayward winds that have been scattering my life.  I don’t want this tragedy anymore.
     “I could have abandoned myself instead of having a negative reaction when there was a disappointment, or that car cut in front of me, or someone was rude.”

THE WAVES NEVER LIE
     Vernon Howard opened with a story about a father who took his son and daughter to the seashore. He had them toss a ball and other things into the ocean and notice how they always came back to them on the shore. Vernon used that to illustrate a lesson about this higher spiritual law:
     "I always get myself back." You always get yourself back. You are the cause of it. Absorb this and put it into practice. If you want to get over your anguish, etc., see what you are sending out. Everything wrong that you get starts with you, with what you’re sending out into the world.
     No one can hurt you but the way you are living. If you get hurt, you sulk, you get angry, who caused it? Who caused your last depression? If you’re still infantile you will say your husband caused it, the boss caused it, financial circumstances caused it, etc. Every excuse or outward cause is false.
     A pure and innocent spirit — man or woman — only gets back itself and the wrongness that comes in its direction can never touch it. Never send out anything wrong because you’re going to get it back and you don’t want to feel wrong anymore. All blaming of others, all accusing others must stop 100%.

INSTEAD OF HAVING A NEGATIVE REACTION
     The earth is a sad place because the possible is not achieved — to become something that we are not when we enter this life. Why there is no excuse: You were given enough intelligence to know you need more intelligence. If you knew something was wrong with you, you’d be different. You have to find out for yourself what you value more than catching yourself every second. The preference is to feel yourself rather than abandoning yourself. Use what intelligence you have to become more intelligent. We are cheerful because the way out is here. You can find it.
     The spark of life is to be able to see what you did, and after making a mistake say, “You know, I could have done better. I could have done something new. I am fascinated by and love strong feelings — afraid of boredom.” Instead of feeling something when we meet obstacles along the path, think about this correct thought all day long: “I want to learn how to close the window to the wayward winds that have been scattering my life. I don’t want this tragedy anymore.”
     “I could have abandoned myself instead of having a negative reaction when there was a disappointment, or that car cut in front of me, or someone was rude.”

TRUE COMPANION
     Spiritual growth always, always, includes the kind of excitement where you feel, “Oh, there’s so much to do,” and you enjoy growing so much. A little insight — you read that book ten times and on the eleventh time you finally saw something great that you never believed was in that book, and you no longer want to go around wasting your time or anyone else’s in idleness. You’ve got too much good work to do, happy things to do. You can’t be bothered with people anymore. Before you couldn’t live without them. Now you’re delighted not to be in their company.
     You are really getting your life back now. And guess what you’re getting as the only real companion you need — the companion of Truth itself. You know it’s right. You’re reading that, you’re reflecting, you’re thinking about something. You want your mind and your time to yourself. So you have to see it both ways. You have to see how you are wasting other people’s time, maybe mine for example, or someone else's. You connect this with someone; whose time are you wasting? Shame on you, don’t you have any conscience at all that you force yourself and impose yourself on other people and waste their time? What’s the matter with you? Can’t you be a good human being? All right, it works two ways. You see how you’re wasting their time and having seen that you always turn the arrow of attention back on yourself and you see what a ghastly mistake you’ve made in wasting your own life too. Wasting your own time by wasting their time. You see, isn’t it nice to know as you become nicer to others, you become nicer to yourself? As you become nicer to yourself you become nicer to others because it’s one niceness; it’s the niceness of Truth itself.
     Go over everything that was said here and every time you feel impelled to go toward another human being, I want you to remember everything I said and I want you to remember that you are quite capable of being happy all by yourself because in the spiritual kingdom you are never all by yourself. You’re with Truth itself and you feel it and you live it and oh, how glad you are that you finally exchanged the human for the spiritual!

STAY IN THE PRESENT MOMENT
     From now on I will say to the mind: “I do not wish to be pulled away from the present moment anymore. From now on I am in charge wherever I am, at my desk or walking or driving. From now on, you are not going to be lazy; you are going to stay in the present moment and remember something higher — not 10% attention, not 50% but 100% attention in the present moment. You will know where you are and what you are doing. And when you start to give me those old ways of thinking, I will remember where they lead and say, ‘NO, that is not what I ordered!’ Sure, you will give me a fight, but the Truth is stronger than you are and from now on this is going to be a lot of fun. I will say to your sad stories, ‘This is not the Spirit of Truth.’”