Monthly Lessons Archive 2019

HOW TO BE HAPPY
      All loss is simply marvelous! You have nothing to do in your spiritual life but to lose. Forget trying to get anything! Concentrate all together intensely on losing something. This is what it is all about.
     In the first place you don’t know what to get. You do not know what to get. It is not in your knowledge. The man out in the desert does not know what it means to find gold in the mountains. What is the point of thinking about gold when he isn’t in the right place to think about gold? What he has to do is lose his desert location. Therefore, put it down well that your objective every day, every minute is to start losing. Losing what? Everything. Now that is not too much to take. Come on, start taking it.
     The answer is that the mind must surrender to the spirit. Your mind must give up to the spirit. Now, you don’t know what the spirit is, so say, “I am going to start where I am in surrendering my mind to the spirit.”
     So you have to exercise all day long in practicing self-loss. See how long you can go during the day in simply practical thought and spiritual self-watching. Now, that means you must not fall asleep. Both of those are good which leads to self-loss. If you fall asleep, you go into self-thought, self-wailing.
     The way you wake up as fast as you can — don’t love the mental movies, or the self-pity. Simply understand that the loss you suffer of them is gain for who you really are. What we’re talking about in keeping this exercise going for as long as you can is studying and putting first the invisible world, not the visible world.
     The whole world is both a visible and an invisible world. Even you don’t see the invisible world inside of you. It is the invisible that produced the visible. No nation ever went to war without discussion around a table first. It is the cause of the visible world.
     Since that is true, are you going to ever try to change the visible world again? Therefore, pay attention to the cause. Stay in this invisible world every day as long as you can. Then you won’t try to change anything or anyone. Instead, you will want to work from the invisible world and lose.
     The invisible world also includes a false world that wants to torment you. [Say] “Ah, I want to get rid of misery.”
     How to be happy: lose so much that you at last understand that loss must be your primary power, aim and virtue in life. Then you will know what you’re doing because you will know that the doing of that is correct and will lead to high places.

ABANDON ALL HOPE
     You can never be happy with what you have now. Do you want to know who you really are? How to get back home? You have to abandon all hope. You can’t believe in any other human being on earth, in human personality. You have to give up hope in finding your answer as you presently are. There is no one there. It is all only what thought has created — a delusion.
     You have to come to the conclusion: “I’m still lost. I’m an awfully unpleasant human being. I’m worried.”
     You have nothing but self-sickness. Please abandon all hope. You don’t have to believe in yourself anymore. The only way you will be happy is when you’re back home. Start by knowing you’re not home and Truth will do the rest for you.

THE ONLY ENCOURAGEMENT YOU NEED
     There are three kinds of encouragement, as classified here:
     1. False encouragement: Anything that encourages you to use this world for self-fulfillment. It won’t
         succeed.
     2. Real encouragement: Based on facts that help us perform tasks well.
     3. Supreme encouragement: Spiritual. You are given facts, right instructions. You need encouragement,
         real guidance. You finally won’t need any encouragement at all.
     God provided a counter attack to dark forces. Finally, the time will come when you don’t need any encouragement at all. You can have permanent confidence in yourself when you’re real.
     Problem — you think too small. If you don’t get tired of your miserable little world, you won’t break out.
     Superlative — there’s none to describe what you are on the way to discovering — the greatest of superlatives — TRUTH.
     Instruction — Realize the only way to stay encouraged is to stay with only things that are truthful.

HOW TO BE UNAFRAID
     All fear is caused because you believe you have a separate personality. We will show you how to be unafraid by disappearing so there’s no one there to be afraid, hateful.
     If you are afraid of anything, you had better look at your fear instead of what’s out there. The next time fear tries to take you over, you watch very carefully and the watching itself puts an end to it. Where fear arises, don’t argue with it. Simply watch it with detached observation. Darkness must yield to light.

LET HIM DO THE TALKING
     If you do this, your nature will change. Again, you’re not going to understand what I’m about to tell you. Here is the exercise for the rest of your life. You are never ever again in your entire life going to dominate a conversation.
     Every time you ever talk to another human being, you are to let him do the talking. Be passive! This is for the rest of your life!
     You are to sit back and listen without interruption. No more! You want to learn the difference between rocks and rubies. Note everything about the conversation; for example, notice how nervous you get and you want to fill up the silence.
     Next rule: When you do occasionally talk, please notice your favorite topic of conversation.
     There is nothing worse than you being involved with you. If you get rid of this false personality, your pain will go away.

DO WHAT YOU DON’T WANT TO DO
     To increase your speed toward self-health, towards spiritual success, always do exactly what you don't want to do. You don't want to carry that exercise over to the next day that you were given the day before. You don't want to shake your head in a certain setting where you're getting ego-gratification out of staying asleep. You don't want to go against yourself. You don't want to paddle upstream. You want to stay asleep in the canoe.
     NO! Do what you don't want to do. Go against the powers of darkness that want to keep you lazy, that want to keep you dreaming, thinking you are awake. Always give yourself a shock by deliberately doing that exercise one hour longer. Or by going into the supermarket and your aim is going to be aware of yourself turning the corner and going down the aisle and watching other people. Don't be sleepwalking through that supermarket.
     Summary: Do exactly what you don't want to do and that will lead you to a new self.

RISE ABOVE YOURSELF
     You must abandon your love for good and bad experiences and instead have experiences that make you feel alive. There really does exist a way of life with a true feeling of life. There's one revelation after another in which you know you can rise above yourself.
     For example, fearing people. Why should you ever be afraid of any human being? There’s no need. He screams like a maniac. He's weak and he's a coward, and you attribute strength to him. Any human being who likes to hurt other people is a lost soul.
     Isn’t it about time you see through the enemy called suffering? Here’s the basis of suffering. You look out at the world and try to get something from it you think you need. There is only junk out there. You look out at a world from pain-filled eyes.
     A state of loneliness without knowing what to do about it is the state of all human beings who have not found God. The only thing you've got is you. You’re supposed to have God in your life.
     Everything you do is an attempt to escape your pain — the awful haunting. You are running away from the fear of isolation.
     You can learn how to see the entire world through the eyes of understanding, not through the eyes of frantic desire. See that there is no way you can succeed because there’s nothing to get. Think of what you’ve counted on to save yourself from your loneliness. Run out of hope. Come to the realization that the world is empty — no value to you. And realize that you are empty. No value. No hope. Know that there’s nothing good that you presently see. You'll become spiritually sane! The mind will collapse of its own delusions.
     You have to realize that you have to run out of yourself. “If I give myself up, that’s it. There’s nothing more to do.” That’s what it means to be saved. That’s what it means to rise above this world. That’s what it means to see this world as it is — crying.
     Your biggest amazement will be how you clung to yourself. You must put your attention on your inner nature. Stand at the window. Your spirit will brighten. You’ve transcended!

STICK WITH IT
     The first man was “The man who knows what he wants.” He had everything he wanted. Millions of people followed what they read in his story, I KNOW WHAT I WANT.
     The second man, who knew him from high school, never knew what he wanted. He tried things but he couldn’t persist in them. He stayed scared (that is great). He couldn’t convince himself he wanted that business career. “There’s something wrong.” He stayed with that many years.
     Stick with the wavering, the self-doubt. What happens is the delusions begin to fade; the house starts to crumble altogether. Stick with it over the years. Delusion is persistent. It is getting carried away in the flood.
     Let God open your eyes and you will know who you are and you will know who you will be forevermore.

CONSCIOUS KNOWING
     I better just say a few words about that horrible monster, vanity. Let me tell you, first of all, that when you are vain you don’t know you are. Vanity is always unseen, unconscious, hidden inside yourself. And even if someone says you’re vain, you won’t see it.
     You might resent them telling that you’re vain and why did you resent it? Because you know it’s true, but there’s a difference. This is a very fine line I’m going to draw here.
     There is such a thing as conscious knowing, which is not a part of your mind but a part of the Spirit of Reality. There’s also a sensing which is part of the intellect but not beyond it. This is why, when you’re accused of something bad and you did do something bad, you get angry because you know it’s true. But you don’t want to admit that it’s true that you did something that you should not have done.
     So you do have inside-sensing. That’s a good word which means repressed knowledge of your actual lost condition. And that you do live in a world of shadows and you must bring that up to consciousness. And you bring it up to consciousness by taking your lessons home and studying them. You learn the lesson by knowing, through personal observation, that you can’t do the lesson you know. You know the lesson but you can’t do it. You read the book on how to drive an automobile but if you got in an automobile and tried to drive you’d get in a wreck.
     That’s what happens to you. You take the intellect for the spirit and the hideous force of vanity is in back of that. And vanity serves as a substitute for Reality.
     You know very well that you can’t drive your car through life properly without getting into accidents, wrecks inside. You know it. However “that’s a shameful thing to admit to anyone that I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.” So you put up a picture of yourself driving the car and call it real. It’s an imagination that you can drive the car. It’s an imagination and vanity that you’re sensible, that you’re spiritual, that you know all about inner subjects and you’re a good knowledgeable person, in charge of yourself. You’ve substituted dangerous vanity for safe Reality. When are you going to stop?
     I tell you, ooh, no question about it, it’s a rough business to come to a place of truth like this is and have your vanity knocked down. To tell you, to make you see, that what you’re claiming for yourself — the virtues, the strength, the wisdom, the knowledge — is non-existent.
     To generalize it a little bit, you’re compelled frantically and nervously to tell yourself that your life and way of life is OK. You put the label on it, then no need to change right? “I don’t need anybody to tell me anything. I know it. I’ve got it.”
     Those highways in the physical world are filled with crashing cars and hurt human beings, but that’s nothing compared to the crashes and smashes and the injuries and the fatalities that go on inside human beings who say, “I know how to drive my life.” And that’s their vanity talking. Vanity doesn’t know how to drive through life. If you knew how to drive through life, you could go out of here and never ever have another problem, another grief, another worry.
     You’re simply saying that your life is all right but inside it isn’t. Will you please know that! Come on. Never mind the blows. Be a true spiritual warrior. A lot of parts of you don’t want to believe there is pure truth here. I’m telling you, decide for yourself with the one little part that knows that everything here is healthy and good for you.
     What you have to do is to know you’re in the shadow world and to stop enjoying it. It’s a false enjoyment. The shadow world wears you out and makes you tired and unhealthy and scared. Let us show you how to turn around and go into the light.

DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS
          If there’s an attack, I’m simply going to know that the attack was there and I am not going to feed it with emotional energy, because I know that it will immediately turn negative and sour and evil and harmful. I’m going to keep my feelings and my thoughts out of it and rely on God to give me clear perception of what is happening at the moment it is happening.
     Put special emphasis on the fact that the enemy, the attacker, the foe of your soul has no force, no life, no aggression, no power to hurt except as your unawareness of spiritual principles allows it. Don’t feed the animals — the weasels and the hawks and the alligators, etc., with your mind and emotions. Instead, understand what is going on.

DETECT THE LIE
     Experiment with this in order to see through the lie, the deception, that suffering is all there is.
     What you have to do: You’re to know altogether that the way you’re now living and trying to find peace of mind, security and safety, that you have never found it and never will this way. Your consciousness of the fact that you have only a trembling self is to be followed by remembering that you are lied to many times a day by part of this insecure nature, false mind. In the great final lie it says, “If you leave me you will be in pain. Something bad will happen to you.” “That’s what I have now! You’re threatening me with something I already have.” Detect the lie and dare to accept what Truth tells you about your condition, instead of what the dark forces tell you. Know the urgency of this, the necessity of it.
     God has given you, inside of you, one bit of intelligence — the chooser — which can agree to follow the instructions from heavenly headquarters to get up and go out and face every terror in the haunted house. You must do it. You will get unafraid.
     Every human being who has ever found his true nature, who has ever become united with God, who has ever been saved, who has exchanged his sick nature for a healthy nature, became aware and realized the futility of sitting in the closet and putting oneself to sleep every few hours and blanking out again. He heard that God has provided a plan whereby he can get outside of himself. Outside of the haunted house.
     Key words: Dare to defy darkness. Dare to listen to the voice of light. There is freedom from the closet, but you have to do what you have to do in order to attain it. Be willing to have your whole egotistical self collapse completely so God can tell you the right direction. What you will know is that there is eternal life. You will be out of time completely. You will be living with who you really are.

HOW TO GAIN CONTROL OVER YOUR LIFE
     Don’t you dare ever do anything about your miserable wretched life.
     IMPORTANT: The one way that you or anyone will ever find control over your life is to have no control whatever. Any attempt for you to try to figure out what’s best for you will fail. Any attempt to feel good will fail, including watching TV, associating with people who make you feel good. Feeling good is really the absence of getting excitement over everything that is you.
     All this is schoolwork you have to go to work on. You have tests every day.
     Make a conscious wish, decision to let Truth tell you how to take the next step, where to go, what to say. This means acknowledging that you don’t know what to do. You don’t have control over yourself, so you say, “I will consciously decide to choose God and Truth.” That is already a declaration that you don’t know what to do or where to go.
     The spiritual condition can change the human condition. It increases the ability to know the only thing that can help you take the next step up is something that is not you. Behind the words is the spiritual power.
     Now you make a deliberate conscious decision to allow God to rule your life. Who, what is ruling your life now? Ghastly! You have been taking and obeying orders from the dark, downhill course. What is ruling your life is something simply awful. Now that you see how bad it is, so awful, you made another mistake with a question, “But how can I change it?”
     Temptation comes and you start to interfere with what God is trying to do for you. The way to trust God is to no longer trust yourself. Yielding to God is to no longer trust yourself anymore. To really be on the side of God is the only peace. Dedicate yourself to get yourself out of the way and you’ll know what it means to live from the Spirit of Truth.

THE SUPERMARKET EXERCISE
     Regardless of whom you talk to from now on, you’re going to stay apart from their life. You will not enter into their life; you’ll stay in your own life. You won’t be in the shadow world that they live in and which is reaching out to pull you into it.
     Yes, all lost people want to pull you into their lost desert but now you’re an alert and awake spiritual student. And you go down to the supermarket and you meet someone. You’re both so unaware that your carts bump. But now you look up at that other person and first there’s the sad condition known as automatic nervousness and jitteriness when the eye contact comes. Right? Nod your heads yes. Why? There’s a reason for looking and seeing and understanding, but there’s no reason for you to immediately go into their world, which means the same thing as losing your world.
     The basis of you getting wrongly involved with anyone is the fact that you want something from him or her. That’s it. If you didn’t want anything, you’d be quite different. But being a perpetually insecure nervous man or woman you want to try to give your burdens to them.
     You want to get rid of something, so you get involved in the shadowy world. Now there’s no other way you can behave as long as you’re the way you are. They can entice you because you’ve surrendered to them in an attempt to give them your troubles. Oh, didn’t you tell them about that near-collision you had?
     You cannot stay as you are, as the world is. You have to stop. What you have to do next is, right when that urge starts to boil and bubble inside you when you meet that person, you will notice the first little urge you have to pour your griefs out into the whole world.
     I want to tell you something strange and fascinating. It is wrong, hurtful for you to continue to chatter to anyone and tell them your griefs, to try to use them to get a false sense of security. That is anti-spiritual and you’re supposed to be pro-spiritual. You’re compulsive in exploiting other people.
     You heard the words and it stopped right there in your mind and didn’t go beyond it. I know that. You don’t know that, and I’m going to prove it to you.
     I said, you must not enter another person’s world but stay strong, alert and aware and upright and innocent whenever you meet anyone in the supermarket or anywhere else. You must remain strong and not be petty and not selfishly use other people.
     It went into your mind and it stopped there and you think that you understood what I said. And you haven’t the slightest notion of what I said. You merely have the words without the music. I will prove it to you. There’s going to be a Monday and a Tuesday and you’re going to do it again and again. And pour out all your griefs, your own troubles.
     Now, that means that you’ve got an awful lot of work to do. And that work consists of taking the information, the facts you’ve been given and letting them go beyond your mind, beyond your intellect.
     Be a true spiritual warrior, man or woman. Side with the part that says, “I’m going to study from now on. I’m going to practice. I’m going to do the supermarket exercise.”
     All this is for the sake of something that exists that is pure and marvelous and good for you that you don’t know exists yet.

STOP SEEKING COMFORT
     Listen and obey this spiritual instruction: you must never again ask for comfort, sympathy from anyone. You have the habit of seeking comfort when something goes wrong, when disappointed in love, finances, whatever. You give comfort to yourself if no one will. For example, blabbing your problems, food. All comforters are miserable comforters. It changes nothing.
     Truth is about changing your nature, uplifting it. By that standard alone, you should never want sympathy.
     There is a state that has nothing to do with that. You can’t afford to continue with your dilatory spiritual practices anymore. You have to get busy! Your energies are so wasted and you don’t know it. You have to stop remaining a victim of dark forces.
     The quality of your thought and feelings is extremely low. That is draining you. Who you really are has no need of, doesn’t want a word of comfort, sympathy, or consolation from anything or anyone. It doesn’t need it. Only the false needs the false. The true doesn’t need the false.

GO ALL THE WAY
     Spiritual principles alone can save you so you have to keep going. You can’t stop anymore. You have to go all the way.
     First, think of an automobile which can stop any time it wants. A farmer’s tractor can stop anywhere in the field. No problem. A boat can stop out in the middle of the pond. No problem. An airplane cannot stop. If an airplane stops it falls and it crashes. And there’s tragedy and enormous defeat.
     I hope you followed that thought. Once you have heard, once you’ve been introduced to the principles of heavenly flight, you must determine to go all the way.
     Billions of human beings said they wanted to know God; they wanted to have a new kind of person inside themselves. And they stopped and they crashed. This is not a grim thing I’m talking about. It is a sunny, cheerful rightly encouraging thing because it’s telling you how to not stop, how to not be discouraged and fall away from the flight.
     If you stay where you’re supposed to stay, which is within the area of inspiration and information, you won’t want to stop in mid-air. You’ll want to continue all the way going higher and higher. And raising yourself every day. Thank heaven there’s more above the level of human madness. That means you’re getting more sane yourself.
     By reading, by studying, by pondering, by doing the exercises, by praying to, and inviting something outside the circle of self, by trying to stay in the present moment, by catching negative emotions and letting go, and by persistence, the grace of God begins to come in and change you through understanding.
     Say you have a problem with another person, finances, health, or down at work. And you don’t want the same old painful result anymore. This time you say, “I’m going to learn the lesson that is in this. I want to learn, not fight, not struggle. So I’m going to ask heaven to show me how to use it correctly this time. I have insisted up to now what I was doing was the right thing to solve it, but it has kept me nervous and hostile and worried. I don’t know the answer!“
     The honesty, the blank space, the vacant space allows the new, the higher to come in and change me.

YOUR CLEAR SPIRIT IS THE TEACHER
     Sit down quietly at home and clearly state your problem to yourself. State it with no emotion, no dramatics, no self-pity, no anger — or no lashing out at the world.
     Then you can say, “When I stated the problem clearly to myself it disappeared.”
     Go home and solve the problem for yourself. Your clear spirit is the teacher. When you state the problem clearly to yourself, it will come to you that you indeed are the only problem.

NEVER ASK FOR COMFORT
     Listen and obey this spiritual instruction: You must never again ask for comfort, sympathy from anyone. You have the habit of seeking comfort when something goes wrong, when disappointed in love, finances, whatever. You give comfort to yourself if no one will. For example, blabbing your problems, food. All comforters are miserable comforters. It changes nothing.
     Truth is about changing your nature, uplifting it. By that standard alone, you should never want sympathy.
     There is a state that has nothing to do with that. You can’t afford to continue with your dilatory spiritual practices anymore. You have to get busy! Your energies are so wasted and you don’t know it. You have to stop remaining a victim of dark forces.
     The quality of your thought and feelings is extremely low. That is draining you. Who you really are has no need of, doesn’t want a word of comfort, sympathy, or consolation from anything or anyone. It doesn’t need it. Only the false needs the false. The true doesn’t need the false.

SHINE THE LIGHT OF AWARENESS
     Something is trying to deceive you about the nature of your nature and of life, and makes it a full time occupation to prevent you from knowing what is going on. In areas in your unconscious mind where there is nothing but darkness inside of you, you can’t see what’s going on there. It’s making you think, say and feel things you don’t want to feel.
     Where there is that darkness, it is possible for you to obtain the light that will shine on it and show you where you have been wrongly following this force of deception that has controlled you, that has made you an unhappy human being. But you want to keep your eyes closed so you won’t have to take responsibility.
     Something you don’t see wants to keep things exactly as they are because if you should ever find out how to shine the light on it, it would cease to exist. It would cease to have false existence. It is terrified lest even one human being discover its deceit, its control, because it would no longer have the illusion of life. An evil force is living through millions of human beings and has no right to exist inside of you.
     You’re going to look inside yourself and the darkness there, and begin to shine the light of awareness, consciousness, and understanding inside of you. And you’re going to go out tomorrow and be with people and notice certain activities inside of you. You’re going to be aware that that is the darkness struggling down there doing things against you!
     What happens when you shine the light on it? You can name it, see it, understand it, and that gives you power over it. You can clear out all bats, devils, down there — the only cause of suffering.

A COSMIC GUARANTEE
     Don’t forget why you are here on earth: To alternate between practical thought and knowing what you are doing.
     When hostile, bad thoughts come to you, remember the words: Imposition from the evil world. Understand yourself and don’t be ashamed. That is, those thoughts are not you. They have been imposed on your mind.
     Make an effort to be a people-watcher. You are going to look, starting with the fact that that man/woman is lost. They can’t stop talking, are conceited, etc. They want to stay self-enclosed by thinking about themselves. Now that you see how bad they are, put the mirror up. You love the person you hate living with. Study yourself at the same time. You are a lost soul.
     God rules over all evil including the evil in yourself. Leave it to God. You either learn to love God in this life or you don’t learn it at all.
     Do right regardless of consequences and the consequences will always be right.   Evil doesn’t want anyone to escape. When you make your effort to escape, it will descend on you and lie and tell you it’s too late.
     Secret message from heaven: “I don’t belong here, I belong somewhere else.” Tell yourself that every day and that will be the start of regeneration.
     “I don’t belong here” must be so much a part of your life, your day, that it lives your life for you. Something else is entering you, is taking over. Your work is to make strong the honest voice that says, “I don’t know what I’m doing,” not the one that says, “I know what I’m doing.” Say, “I don’t know but I am not going to be afraid that I don’t know.”
     Because of the rebellion of the human mind starting thousands of years ago, the human mind wanted to be a god unto itself.
     Only a tired man can be saved. If you’re weary enough, you will be willing enough. If you’re willing enough, God is right there.
     You cannot solve your problems by thinking about yourself. A guarantee from Vernon Howard: If you decide to go along with that world out there, I guarantee it will destroy you. If you decide to go along with the teaching at New Life, I guarantee it will save you.

LET GOD FIND YOU
     Catch yourself calling yourself good or bad or something. This is catching the thief in the night in which you praise or condemn yourself.
     “I can actually study myself and what’s going on inside of me that’s been wrecking me. I am not that person I called myself.” You have to give your full attention not to finding God but to allow God to find you. As you say, “I am not that,” you will know you are a child of God and you will know who you are.
     The path starts by seeing evil. Facts are always healing even if you don’t think they are. You’re going to have to descend into the depths of hell, which you call heaven. There is no entity there to be good or bad. If you get rid of the opposites of good or bad, you will no longer exist.

YOU’RE A DOVE, NOT A DUCK
     Instruction. Realize the only way to stay encouraged is to stay with only things that are truthful.
     Summary of a Vernon Howard story: The little dove didn’t know he was a little dove. He thought he was a duck. He imitated them. He had a wrong identity so he tried to quack like a duck. He had lost his naturalness, was a depressed, discouraged and a sad little dove. See where you’re trying to quack when you can coo.
     You’re taking your feelings of life from duck-land. Understand you’re the little dove put in the duck yard. Triple your spiritual suspicion that a false nature of yours is trying to prove to you that's it’s a true nature. The evidence that you’re a little dove in the duck yard is so obvious. Pain, etc. is unnecessary. You imitated people when you were little. All evil is nothing but acquired imitation that you believe in. See through thought-pangs and heartache.
     You are a human being put onto this earth to discover that you are not a duck. You don’t have to be accepted, liked by anyone. God has said you don’t have to prove you’re right. Be firm; recognize those evil forces wanting to draw you away. There’s another world for you.
     Only God can save you. He starts with the mind. You’re a dove, not a duck — a spiritual entity. You can fly away. Your real nature is glorious!

PUT SELF-DISSOLUTION FIRST
     Be very vitally concerned with your own life. To give proper attention to your life as a human being, you must realize you don’t have a higher life at all. Get rid of the illusion that you are now serving yourself. You search desperately around for assurance from someone to assure you that you’re all right. Everyone is doing that. Don’t do it.
     The key thought is for you to know that you must stop living your life as you now live it. Cease to emotionalize as you now do. The power and intelligence is available, but only when you obey the rules.
     You’re apart from what you could have. You have nothing but yourself. You are afraid, isolated from anything else higher. When living in the basement, you don’t know there are fine living quarters up higher, that there is a God. You’re apart from anything else higher.
     Start to have a genuine concern for your real life. Thinking is not spirituality. Emotionalizing is not spirituality. Imagining is not spirituality. If you feel bad it is because you are living in a bad place internally.
     You have been depending on some magical means and you wait for them to happen. You must now — every moment is now — say, “Now is the time to catch myself believing in false parts.”
     Say to everything and everyone, “Sir, you just yell at me all you want. I’m going to find my way out.” Do this because there is something stronger in you that wants out more than you want the pretense of being out.
     Unless you put self-dissolution first — the same as putting God first — with ten times the effort you now have, you aren’t going to make it. You must die inside to your self-deception. Your responsibility is yours. Don’t fail yourself! Those of you who can be saved — your intensity has to be much greater. You have to collapse and stay collapsed. Stay down. If you die to vanity — do what you have to do — God will do the rest.

HOW LIFE WORKS
     Stress and strain in life are the result of trying to make the unworkable work. If you are not comfortable with yourself, if you are uncomfortable in society, if you are just plain old uncomfortable living with yourself, you can be quite sure that somewhere you’re trying to make something work that can’t work, which, of course, is the story of the whole world. Everyone has his own pet philosophy, or scientific or unscientific system, in which each individual thinks that it will work for him and he hopes it will work for others so that he’ll get added gold and glory.
     You can start tonight to understand that all stress, all strain, all discomfort inside of you, which you do have, is a result of you trying to force something to happen that can never happen. And one of these peculiar things that human beings try to do in order to find happiness, in order to find contentment, which they really don’t want in the first place — by the way they prefer strife. One thing that human beings try to do, which is impossible, is to try and be happy without understanding themselves, without knowing how their minds work, without understanding their relationships with others, even their relationships with nature or with mechanical things.
     People have an almost complete total lack of understanding of how life works, both their own and consequently, that of other people. This means exactly what you and I see in the world today — people hurting each other, people not knowing how to behave, people not knowing how to behave toward themselves or anyone else.

LIVE FREELY IN ANOTHER WORLD
     You can find another, inner world and live freely there. It is mapped out. It is possible for you to know what the journey looks like. Here are four steps, which are a complete summary:
     First stage: Men and women whose whole life is dominated by “I know.”
     Second stage:  When the individual says, “I doubt that I know.”
     Third stage: When he says, “I don’t know what it is all about.”
     Fourth stage: There is ‘knowing’. Being saved, being rescued is 100% impersonal.
     No person, name can know. Vanity can’t know. The old knower has to be out of the way. When you have vanished, spiritual knowing is there. The ending of all ‘I’ thoughts and feelings produces Heaven. You can’t possess Truth. The absence of you is what makes Truth appear.
     Where a person has been battered around and made so many mistakes, there is something ready to happen. Where truth is beginning to crack the kernel of ego, beginning to break down the hardened ego shell, instead of letting go, you will go into intense ego suffering, unlike anything you’ve ever known before. You are becoming conscious of what is there.
     You have wasted your agony just like you threw away your money, time, and let people drain you. From now on, you’re going to have to use pain. You’re going to have to know it is there. You are the only pain you’ve ever experienced.