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     “There is no real happiness for those on the wrong side. The greatest pleasure in life is the security of the true side. You can vainly try to win over the world or you can nicely be over the world. Your task is to change your operating center from strained imagination to relaxed reality.”

Special Spiritual Exercises 3

     Below are spiritual exercises and special lessons taken from classroom lectures by Vernon Howard. They are marvelous tools that can be applied to your life and will help you better understand what these teachings are
all about. Use them and gain the wonderful rewards and benefits which they can give you.

  • Walk Yourself Awake

         I am going to give you an exercise to take home with you, which will uplift your mind, spirit, which will give you a new way to think toward yourself and toward your life here on earth. We could call it Walk Yourself Awake. I’m going to explain it in detail, and write down notes because I want you to get every step clearly of what you’re going to do. It will do so much for you if you will have an interest in it and practice it all the time.
         First of all, be alone in a room in your home or wherever. You MUST be alone in the room. Even if you have someone who’s friendly there, you’re going to have to give all of your attention to what you’re going to hear when practicing this, and someone else even being there, even if they’re silent, they distract your attention. You’re thinking about them, what they’re thinking about you, when you should be practicing the exercise completely, wholeheartedly.
         Now you’re in this room. You’re going to walk at a selected starting place from one end of the room to the far end of it on the other side. You’re going to walk from your starting place to the opposite wall, turn around, pause a minute, and then you’re going to walk back to where you started. Now on your first trip across, you’re going to let yourself think anything your mind wants to think. You could be aware of your thoughts and you should be, but just be a watcher of your thoughts and don’t try to fight them, don’t judge them, don’t feel that they’re attacking you. Just let your mind think anything it wants to think on your first trip over and back.
         All right. Now, this exercise has a second half to it. This is a two set exercise. The second time you walk across the room, pause, and come back, you’re going to do it in an entirely different inner spirit. You’re not going to think at all. You’re not going to let your mind wander where it wants to, as you did in the first walk. Instead, you’re going to work hard at understanding what it means to be a conscious, aware human being. You’re going to be spiritually awake, alert, to your inner state as you cross over and back again. If a thought creeps in, push it aside and go back to just knowing that you are walking across the room and back again. Just get a sensing that there’s this physical body, NO, NO, NO. — You’re not to think, “I’m being aware.” If you think you’re being aware you’re not being aware, you’re in contradiction. This is why it’s important to catch any intruding thoughts when they jump in — as they will — to try to tell you that they are a state of seeing, of consciousness, of knowing.
         So you’re walking across the room and you pause at the far end just long enough to remind yourself of what you’re supposed to be doing, because you’re likely to forget so easily what you’re supposed to be doing. You’ve forgotten that the second trip is supposed to be different from the first trip. So, I’ll state it again. Just relax and REALIZE that this physical body is crossing the room and coming back again. I will use all the words there are possible to describe an indescribable state. Just KNOW what is happening to you in that room.  You are to walk back and forth without SAYING “I’m walking back and forth.” ‘Cause if you say it, you now put yourself back into the picture, your false self back into it and you won’t have gained what you’re trying to gain.
         One purpose of this exercise — which you must do over and over and over — is to begin to detect the difference between the two states. It will not come to you the first time you try it. You must do it over and over and over again and maybe a session would consist of you doing both sets maybe five or six times or  something like that. At the start, on your first mental trip, you’ll wonder what it’s all about. You’ll be thinking about the second trip, and I said that’s all right. Just be thinking. But know that you’re thinking! See, for example, the sudden shifts of your attention. Think of the hundreds of things you can think about in just that one short trip. Just know you’re thinking, and for a long time thinking will be in charge of you.
         Now one day, as you’re on your second lap of the trip, something will come to you. You’ve been trying to NOT think but to allow spiritual consciousness to be with you as you cross. It will come to you on one of your trips that there really is a different kind of “me” than the mental “me.” It was the mental “you” who took the first trip. Now, you’re AWARE of that first trip, because you’re on the second trip in which you’re trying to become aware of everything. Your attention on the second trip is not centered around “ME” and what “I” want. On the  second trip you’re not to say, “I want to wake up, I want to wake up.” When you bring “I” in it you’ve brought in all the past. Instead, you can think about it in the proper way. You can say “there is awakening, there is such a thing as spiritual seeing, and I want that.” That’s not wrong to have that desire. But what I’m warning you against is the old ego nature that doesn’t want you to wake up — inserting itself when you’re on the second trip — and you get chattering about yourself. “Oh I wonder if I am doing this right.” “I wonder if I should do it five or six times?” “I wonder if my wife in the next room wonders what’s going on?” Really, all sorts of crazy thoughts can come into your mind.
         One day, the dawn will break because you have been faithful to God, and that’s what you’re doing. God will be faithful to you. You see, spiritual consciousness IS God. God is conscious; Satan is unconscious.  At a certain time when you’re not thinking but just watching yourself go back and forth, a little message will come into your mind and it will come into your heart — instead of a thought talking to you like there is now, there will be — YES this is accurate, listen to this — there’ll be a higher spiritual power talking to you. Consciousness, awakedness, awareness, seeing and living in the higher, will come to you. Remember, help has to come to you. All you have to do is yield to it.
          Practice this exercise very often. Watch the whole thing that happens and the day will come when you will KNOW that you don’t have to live in that first, ragged, third-best type of human being. You don’t have to live in that kind of nature at all, because you’ve got your first glimpse of the spiritual nature, and you will be interested only in that. You’ll want above all to know what it’s all about, which you’ll find out as you practice this exercise. Go to work.

    (Taken from a talk by Vernon Howard in 1991)

  • Carelessness Is a Curse
  • If You Do This You Will Make It
  • The Secret Weapon That Guarantees Victory
  • Protect the Candlelight
  • Remember Our Purpose in Life
  • Self-Surprise
  • Do Right
  • I Am Apart from All That
  • See Thru the Hoax
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     “I am inspired to send a note of thanks. I am 45 years old, married and a father. It is such a pleasant and helpful thing to see how Heaven’s Helpers have brought us a sincere and compassionate teacher like Mr. Howard. What a wonderful vision he had for mental health and emotional happiness and vigor! Really, really grateful — so keep up the good work. There are so many souls searching and hurting including myself. My journey is not over but along life’s path I am so pleased to see a teacher with some guts and common sense. Thank you again.”

— Julian P. via e-mail

All of the above exercises were transcribed by Sally Forrest or Regina Netherton from a class lecture.

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