Special Spiritual Exercises 4

     Vernon gave the class this beautiful practical exercise of Self-Reliance, and the benefits derived as a result of doing it.
     When we were children, we were told quite often about certain virtues which we commonly called the old- fashioned virtues. This morning we’re going to take the virtue of self-reliance and its power.
     If you want to build some self-reliance, obviously you have to work on yourself. There are endless ways in which you can do this, one being to find some small way where you would normally ask for assistance from  someone else and do it yourself. For instance, when around the house and you can’t find the salt shaker, your first impulse is to ask your husband or wife, “Where’s the salt shaker?” You be self-reliant in such a little thing as this, which forces you to think and to not mechanically call out, “Hey, where’s the salt shaker?” Instead, look around and find it, and obviously if you can’t find it after a thorough search, then you might ask because it might be out for repair.
     Here’s an exercise for you to do:  After class and by yourself take a piece of paper and write at the top, “How I Can Build More Self-Reliance,” then number the items, 1, 2, 3 and so on. Force yourself in little everyday matters to do things for yourself so that you’re not so lazy about it. You’ll have a different feeling by breaking the mechanical habit of asking someone else. There’s also the habit of relying on your essence,  rather than on ideas. Fill the page out as much as you can, add to it and then practice it.
     On the writing exercise, this time you’re not to show it to anyone at all. You’re not to show it to your wife,  your husband or anyone else. This is to be strictly and one hundred percent a private project. You see, nothing is fixed. There are times when we get together to discuss ideas back and forth, and there’s also the opposite of that where you must keep everything to yourself. That’s part of your self-reliance.
     Another thing is when you get to point five and you can’t think of anything else, increase your self-reliance by staying with it, and don’t get up to fill your coffee cup, but force yourself to think. This will bring your memory out properly because whether you know it or not, for every five ideas, you could think of ninety-five more if you’d just sit and force yourself to do it. It’s very easy to write five points, then stop and say, “I have accomplished something.” Always push yourself far more than you want to, never spare yourself. Find ways to make yourself uncomfortable which will force your mind to yield what it actually has for you.
      Vernon then asked the audience to finish this sentence: “I can make myself more self-reliant by:” Some of the responses were making my own decisions, doing my own cooking, forcing myself to do something that  I’ve never done before, not depending on comfort from others, not being concerned about another person’s business, and seeing how unconscious and mechanical I usually am.
     There’s something in every one of us that senses the rightness of being self-reliant.

     Let me give you the fundamental error. The chief error of every human being which causes every problem on earth is the individual thinking that he exists as himself. That he exists apart from other people, apart from events, apart from everything. In other words, a man’s mind starts to form when he’s young by saying, “I am I.”
     Now he backs up this false statement with false supports which say “I, in my physical body, am either magnificent or not so pretty.” It starts with that, because that’s the thing he knows mostly. And already he’s got an identity of being beautiful or being un-beautiful.
     That’s the bare beginning of it, though. He has hundreds of experiences, miserable ones, so-called triumphant ones, but every one of them he captures and puts into his little box labeled ‘me.’
     Here’s a forty-year-old man, his box is compacted and it’s like steel. This is why you can’t get anything new into that box, because it’s so hard. You can’t talk to him about anything outside of that “box of me,” because everything is referred to it, which is all he can do, because that’s all he has!
     Now here’s the chance you have — and don’t you miss it!  You have built this box up so that when someone talks to you about another kind of a life, another kind of a self, it doesn’t mean anything to you. But now you can say, “You know, part of the box was my imagination that I was happy, that I was free, that I’m learning, that I’m open minded.”
     You have to see where you might indeed be envious of someone else and stay there and suffer through to the very end of that envy. Because that means you’re still divided inside yourself. It means you still love the pain of envy more than you love Truth. And you don’t understand that yet.
     Let me give you the fundamental error once more. Remember this, never forget it, review it constantly. The chief error of every human being which causes every problem on earth, the chief error is the individual thinking that he exists as himself. That he exists all apart from other people, apart from events, apart from everything. A man’s mind starts to form when he’s young by saying, “I am I.” So, you’re hanging on to jealousy so you can say, “My I, myself is secure.” But you’re not because it’s a delusion. Give it up! Let it go! See what is on the other side of you seeking security by feeling envy.
     You will pass through a period of darkness when you determine to do that. And in that darkness, you won’t know who you are, which is exactly what you have to do. And the fear is beyond explanation. Marvelous! Do it. Stay in the darkness, not having anything to run back to at all! Stay in it and something will happen inside of you. This is all an internal experience, you know. This means that you have given up all hope, all refuge, all comfort — given up all past time. And when you have given all these up, they — being your false self — also disappear. And when you disappear, the darkness disappears. And there’s only the Light. And it isn’t your Light, is it, because you have disappeared. It is the Light of Pure Truth.

     Once upon a time there was a good and noble King who turned over to his citizens a marvelous beautiful castle where they would be comfortable and happy and safe from surrounding enemies.
     For a while everything went just fine and they grew their agricultural crops inside and outside the castle land. But there was something wrong with them. They had careless minds. They were just plain careless and lazy about the development of their own inner natures. They paid attention to their outer world only where it could do them some good in body and appearance. So something happened that would not have happened had they not been asleep inwardly. Enemies who did not love the good King, who bequeathed the castle, infiltrated the castle grounds and the surrounding yards, and they began to bring their evil into it. And more  and more they came into it and more and more the people lost control of both the castle and of their own inner lives.
     Malicious monsters took over and little by little they took over one room and the next room and the next one until the people themselves were forced out of what was once a marvelous happy place to live. While it was happening they did not realize that evil forces were being infiltrated into the castle, and they didn’t even notice that they were becoming unhappier day-by-day. So the monsters took over just as evil spirits have taken over the world. Now that fact is not clear to you, you’re afraid to face it. Face it anyway.
     When the people did not rise to the challenge of taking back their castle, the King decided the only thing  to do was to send a Hero down in human form, someone who represents Truth, to assist them in driving the enemy out of the castle.
      And here’s where we’re going to have to go to work this morning. The Hero led the people in going from room to room to drive these monsters  out — those sufferings, those arrogances, those prides, those vanities — drive them out one room at a time and finish it before starting on the next room, until the whole castle is cleaned out.
     Your exercise is to begin cleaning out the first room in your inner castle, which is to take paper and write “What I Know About Healing” then write everything you know about it. For example, one could be what does  healing mean? Well we’re not talking about the physical body. And another could be everything that goes contrary to the good King. By doing this exercise it will put you into right and good associations. And those associations will become new sources of light on how to allow healing to happen.

     Vernon gave the class this simple yet powerful exercise of answering the world in a different way. This will be of tremendous help in our daily lives:
     Thousands of years ago a certain man, a certain woman over here and over there somewhere in the world, made an astonishing discovery, a marvelous discovery, and this person tried to tell other people about it, but other people didn’t want it at all and this individual passed it on down in writings. Some people read the writings and others didn’t, but this secret which I’m going to give to you exists right today.
     It doesn’t exist for the vast population over in China or France or Portugal or Egypt or anywhere else, but it exists for individuals and I’m going to explain it to you very carefully.
      Someone says, “We’ve got all this military equipment just laying around, let’s start a war,” and they destroy each other. Now the same thing goes on inside you. You are very contagious to yourself as well as taking on the contagion of the outer world.  Someone can say something to you and you react in kind in a negative way. You are answering the world with your neurosis. The world talks to you in different ways, such as in advertising, in political meetings and in religious meetings.
    You overhear a conversation down where you work and you react in a certain way to it. You unknowingly answer the world in kind. Here’s a key phrase to use when answering the world: “I have nothing to say to  that.”
     The world insists, it demands, “I know what is best for you.” And because you’re so easily intimidated, you meekly answer, “Yes Sir, Yes Ma’am.” When you agree with the outer world and the equally sick world inside you, you don’t know that you’ve taken another step downhill. Someone angrily challenges you and offers something you don’t really want, your only answer is simply, “I have nothing to say to that,” and that’s the end of it. This cuts off energy waste.
      Real slow now, when you meet any situation one of two things happens, the situation takes charge of you or you take charge of it. Now which would you say it is presently? Doesn’t the situation take charge of you, which merely means that you are living your life from the outer to the inner. Why don’t you start living your life from the inner to the outer? Wouldn’t you like to be in charge instead of the inner chaos? Don’t you ever again answer chaos and confusion in you when it wants to take you over.
     The Light exists, Truth exists, it will work for you as you receive it. Remember the main point, “I have nothing to say to that,” get it into your memory and let it go into your spiritual memory. Now if you don’t reply the way you usually do, what else is there? There is silence and that is the reply that is different, and it’s  coming from something higher than you. God is silent. Pursue this all the way to see what it means to be spiritually silent and you’ll walk through this noisy world and you won’t hear a thing offensive.

     Vernon gave the class this simple yet powerful exercise of answering the world in a different way. This will be of tremendous help in our daily lives:
     Thousands of years ago a certain man, a certain woman over here and over there somewhere in the world, made an astonishing discovery, a marvelous discovery, and this person tried to tell other people about it, but other people didn’t want it at all and this individual passed it on down in writings. Some people read the writings and others didn’t, but this secret which I’m going to give to you exists right today.
     It doesn’t exist for the vast population over in China or France or Portugal or Egypt or anywhere else, but it exists for individuals and I’m going to explain it to you very carefully.
      Someone says, “We’ve got all this military equipment just laying around, let’s start a war,” and they destroy each other. Now the same thing goes on inside you. You are very contagious to yourself as well as taking on the contagion of the outer world.  Someone can say something to you and you react in kind in a negative way. You are answering the world with your neurosis. The world talks to you in different ways, such as in advertising, in political meetings and in religious meetings.
    You overhear a conversation down where you work and you react in a certain way to it. You unknowingly answer the world in kind. Here’s a key phrase to use when answering the world: “I have nothing to say to  that.”
     The world insists, it demands, “I know what is best for you.” And because you’re so easily intimidated, you meekly answer, “Yes Sir, Yes Ma’am.” When you agree with the outer world and the equally sick world inside you, you don’t know that you’ve taken another step downhill. Someone angrily challenges you and offers something you don’t really want, your only answer is simply, “I have nothing to say to that,” and that’s the end of it. This cuts off energy waste.
      Real slow now, when you meet any situation one of two things happens, the situation takes charge of you or you take charge of it. Now which would you say it is presently? Doesn’t the situation take charge of you, which merely means that you are living your life from the outer to the inner. Why don’t you start living your life from the inner to the outer? Wouldn’t you like to be in charge instead of the inner chaos? Don’t you ever again answer chaos and confusion in you when it wants to take you over.
     The Light exists, Truth exists, it will work for you as you receive it. Remember the main point, “I have nothing to say to that,” get it into your memory and let it go into your spiritual memory. Now if you don’t reply the way you usually do, what else is there? There is silence and that is the reply that is different, and it’s  coming from something higher than you. God is silent. Pursue this all the way to see what it means to be spiritually silent and you’ll walk through this noisy world and you won’t hear a thing offensive.

     This practical exercise which Vernon gave us could be called the “Are You Willing to be Wrong?” exercise.
     Let’s say you work in the storeroom of a large company. One day your boss reprimands you. He says, “You were careless when you returned boxes to the storeroom. You did it with no regard for instructions or for putting the boxes in right order so they could easily be pulled out when someone needed them.”
     At the moment of the criticism were you able to see the fact without self-defensive emotion, or did egotistical self-protection, which is wrong, come in and speak in your name? It manufactured all the wrong things, including the pain you must experience because you asked for it.
     Or, did you say, “Yes, I was careless. I see what you mean. I put boxes “A” back in the corner and they should be toward the front and boxes “B” are also hidden, and should also be in the front. I understand.”
     When you admit you are wrong, the next time you have to put the boxes back you do not go into hostility toward the boss. You don’t let the present time arouse your pernicious memory of the previous time.
     You know you were careless the first time because you wanted to go to lunch and meet that pretty girl. You didn’t care about a certain neatness and order we must have in human affairs. All you wanted was get it done and you hoped no one would notice. Also, because everyone else hates the boss, you do too.
     You realize you’ve been exposed as a lazy and careless man who cannot do what he’s supposed to be doing at the moment he’s doing it. You see you have a rambling, selfish and wild mind. You resolve in the future to give your attention to what you’re doing at the moment. Why? For your sake and everyone else’s because your nature affects them. You say to yourself, “I’m going to be very careful with these boxes.  I’m going to look at the instructions, I’m going to learn to think right, to behave right. I’m going to see how clearly, how accurately, how nicely I can set these boxes in the storeroom.”
     Notice that when you stack the boxes right, there will be something very alive in you as a result of this right experience. When you do right, you feel right. Watch what happens. What will happen is this: Light radiates, doesn’t it? The same with this experience. When you have that right feeling that you should be with yourself at every moment and pay full attention to what you’re doing, there will be accuracy and you won’t go into wrong emotion over stacking the boxes. All you need is a clear mind. And you understand you constantly have the wrong emotions while doing other tasks. This lesson just happened to be in the storeroom. So the lesson spreads. It goes out from you. And what is happening is that the rightness of the truth of God is beginning to displace the wrongness which you have recognized and no longer desire. The light is getting brighter.
     You have to understand it is right for you to see the wrong.

     Vernon Howard gave us this refreshing illustration and exercise, so we can begin to reclaim our lives.
     The purpose of our work is to arouse right rebellion in you which comes as a result of right insight. Here’s an example: There was a movie on TV that had a lot of great psychology in it. Here is one of the incidents to illustrate what we’re talking about.
     This is the story of a typical New York striving young couple. He wanted to become somebody in the business world, and she played the role of the helpful wife.
     One time as part of their phony scheme to get in with the crowd, they decided to have a party. They had a little money and hired a caterer who was going to come to the New York apartment and set up all the food. So the caterers came in before the guests arrived and the couple, pathetic you know, strivers are always pathetic, aren’t they?
     The couple’s seven-year old daughter wandered into the kitchen and asked the caterers for a piece of cake. The mother was right there when the child asked for the cake. And the caterer, the man in charge, the  big boss, said, “No, you can’t have a piece of cake. We’re in charge here. We’re fixing things up for the guests, so no cake.” The child then went away feeling disappointed. The mother walked out of the room half thinking about it because she had so many other things to think about. All of a sudden it hit her. Pray for the day when it hits you. She said:
     “Wait a minute, this is my house. I paid for that food. I hired you. Go get a piece of cake. Give her a piece of cake.”
     You don’t know that, you don’t do that, which is why you are the way you are.
     Pray for the day when you say, “Just a minute, whose life is this?” Don’t say it, scream it, shout it, like I am now. Oh! You’ll see through your cowardice.
     See, if she’d been awake, she would have said it when it came up.
     “Just a minute, this is my house. I’m paying you. You don’t tell her what to do, I tell you what to do. Little Mary, take a piece of cake, take two if you want.”
     You have given your life over to sickness. When are you going to reclaim it? Start now, saying, “Just a minute.” Do you see why people are arrogant? Because you let them. You’ve sold your soul. See! Years ago it happened that way, and you’re afraid to tell that man you hired who’s in your house, “This is my house. I’m paying you. If you don’t like it, get out. I’m in charge of my house.” You’re afraid you’re going to get knocked down if you rebel. I tell you, dare it!
     When are you going to start? God himself will back you up when you say, “Just a minute, whose life is this? It’s my life.”
     You don’t know where that one right rebellion and declaration of independence is going to take you. It’s going to take you to an enlightenment in which you are free.

     Vernon Howard gave us this Spiritual Seriousness exercise to use in our daily lives so that we can distinguish between right and wrong humor. And also to meet gloomy, sour-spirited people with a conscious mind so that we can grow.
     When someone tells you his troubles, let them fall on your understanding not on your shoulders. To do that, you have to be a serious and very energetic student of human nature.
     Bad people, gloomy people, sour-spirited people are everywhere. The purpose of this talk — one purpose of it — is to make you aware of this kind of a wrong person so that you won’t meet him lightly and asleep, but will meet him with a conscious mind, so that you’ll be able to spot what he is doing.
     Now, to help you work at this from here on, you will now use memory properly to think of two or three sour, bitter hard-faced men and women that you know. That didn’t take long, did it? Wherever you wander, they’re all over the world, but you get two or three of them that are close to you, and I want you to know that they are life destroyers.
     See, sin, sickness, mental unhealth must never under any conditions be taken lightly. I told you once awhile back, an alcoholic is not an object of jokes or of humor. To be alcoholic is to be self-destructive, therefore destructive of everyone else. But the point is this. Do not take it as a joke among yourselves when there’s a sour-faced bitter person working in your office. Don’t take it as a joke and laugh over the fact that she is hard and troublesome to work with, to deal with.
     Always take wrongness very, very seriously. Don’t allow levity or lightness to enter into it. And the reason you have done this in the past is, believe it or not, because you sense the dreadfulness of that person’s condition and it frightens you a little lest you be like that. It frightens you and so you do make jokes about it in order to give yourself certain relief. You will never do that again.
     I want you, starting now, to have spiritual seriousness. This means no more joking at the wrong time. No more laughing at things that are not laughable. Anything that is apart from the Kingdom of Heaven must be seen seriously. And, as I mentioned before, from now on you will not make jokes about staggering drunks going down the street.
     You will not speak lightly of that woman who can’t stop criticizing … “Ah, she’s a nut.” She is a nut, but you’re to understand that below that, what appears to be an amusing character trait, below that is a  perniciousness that you must see without trying to relieve yourself by laughing at it.
     Spiritual seriousness is an enormous power. This you will understand as you practice it. Do not, do not be frivolous toward this world. Do not try to find humor where there is no humor. There is right humor and you’ve gotten them all mixed up. I want you to be very watchful of jumpy, grumpy people as they come along and enter your life. And everyone is jumpy, grumpy unless they have the Spirit of Righteousness within them.

     If we do this exercise from Vernon Howard, we can run and sprint, instead of crawl, toward the higher life. Here it is:
     You can live your own life. You’re not doing it now, and that’s why it’s such an unhappy and tense one in which you have to look out and ask, “What person can give me what I want? Furthermore, I wish I knew what I want.” It gets pretty confusing, doesn’t it? Now I want to tell you how to start to steer a course for your own life. And before I tell you what it is, I want to tell you the overwhelming importance of it.
     I know in my heart that there is no spiritual technique more valuable and if you put the following exercise first, then all other lessons will come to you and work out for you.
     Make up your mind at this very moment that effective as of now and throughout the coming months and years, no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you’re going to know where you are and know what you’re doing. I’m doing it right now. I know that I’m here, that you’re there, and there’s no division between us as far as I’m concerned. As I’m looking at you and seeing you out there, I’m also equally aware of myself talking to you. I’m aware of how thoughts come up and finally go into words and they go out to you at this present moment without any judgment or without trying to change it in any way, but simply seeing what is happening.
     Now I want to add something to that technique of knowing where you are, and knowing what you’re doing at the moment you’re doing it by adding the word ‘what.’ Here’s an example, “What am I doing now? I’m watering the garden and thinking some thoughts which I don’t understand.” Now, let’s add the word ‘why.’ “Why am I watering the garden with these confusing thoughts in my mind? Well, I can now see among other things, I have wrong motives. Someone offended me yesterday and that offensive scene is now going through my mind as I’m watering the vegetable garden.” What is the wrong motive? “I was blasted by that individual and that hurt, and to my astonishment, I can now see that I am so in love with hurt that my motive is to keep it going. What on earth is wrong with me that I want to keep the hurtful feelings going? The whole thing is getting clearer. The light is coming from different directions, pointing down into my psychic system making the ‘why’  clear.”                                                                
     The next part of the exercise is to take paper and pencil and write at the top of the page WHYs. The following are some examples of WHYs:
          1. I permitted these thoughts to go through my mind because I don’t know any better.
          2. There’s something wrong with me.
          3. I still have to fight because I think it’s necessary for my survival, and so on.
     The WHYs begin to bring to the surface unconscious motives.
     Now make the aim that from now on you’re going to understand the whole process and be free of it.

     Everyone does (interfere). Why? Because you take feeling as life. You are responsible for whatever you feel. Where there’s a pain, there’s something that you won’t give up. It is the habitual fondness for feeling emotional fire, plus a disinterest in trying to find out what it’s all about.
     You have one chance, which is to be willing to take what comes to you a hundred times a day without you interfering with it … the financial disappointment, and you interfere with it. Stop interfering with your own life. There’s no one usual there, regardless of what happens in your social or financial world. There’s no one there to feel defeated. You thought there was. When you see your faults, just see them as a fact and as nothing else. You want fire, heat, in order to say “that feeling is me, I exist.” And you also say, “I don’t need God” because you are now worshipping yourself. If you give it up, instead of that, you’ll have life.
     Here’s what you must do: Simply see that negative reaction, for example, jealousy, as an existing condition inside of you. You have to see it is there! But suppose you just calmly stand aside and look at the wave of envy, fear, or worry go through you and you just simply, quietly, as a detached observer, say to it, “Let’s see now, that is called having a feeling of jealousy.” Quietly identify the feeling and don’t go any farther than that. DON’T INTERFERE with what you see. You stay out of it.
     See? Your false treasure was one series of reactions and explosions after another; that was your life — quarreling, anger, worry over the headline. That was your unconscious way of going through your day. And because you had this laziness, it didn’t occur to you to question your life, so you just suffered from yourself. From now on put the question mark in your mind “Could there be something else?” Stop there. If you enjoy the feeling you keep it going.
     Now you begin to practice the exercise of observing what is happening to you and stopping right there! No commentary, no enjoying the feeling which will keep it going. Don’t ask “What will replace me?” Then you won’t change.
     Astonishing beautiful fact: No matter how muddled and confused you may be at this moment, God knows what to do for you. You don’t. Why do you try? Simply know, for example, that jealousy is there and don’t do anything about it at all, because if you do something you will increase its power to come back again.
     Never forget this: Whatever you do for yourself, you do against yourself; and what you allow God to do for you is perfect.