Quote Archive by Vernon Howard

“You have to face your responsibilities to evolve.”

“Resistance to the disturbance is the disturbance.”

“I am not concerned with the consequences of being true.”

“Truth seems harsh and negative only to dishonest people;
dishonest people who would rather attack than yield.”

“Heaven is the nonexistence of the thought-self.”

“Life cannot make sense on the level of life.”

“You should never give up, for truth never gives up on you.”

“The shocking revelation that you are no one at all is healed instantly
by the understanding that you need not be anyone at all.”

“The truly necessary and vital is to realize we are here on earth to rise above ourselves.”

“No one can fall under the evil influence of another unless he is already under the evil influence of himself.”

“Make the pain get worse so you can see it. Let the pain get as bad as we can bear and then add to it.”

“Keep going in spite of all obstacles, not knowing what is going to become of you.”

“The way to inner success is utterly simple. Just do what is unpopular but right.”

“The entire human problem resides in a peculiarity of human nature
— its unwillingness to explore human nature.”

“You are here on earth to find yourself, not prove yourself.”

“Inner liberation can be described as a condition in which
you no longer take either credit or blame for anything.”

“Place no one, nothing, above the Spirit of Truth.”

“No one loves me? What has that to do with me?”

“Think about the miracle of saving yourself.”

“Stop depending on an undependable world.”

“Genuine kindness is not what we do, it is what we are.”

“Freedom is not the opposite of your usual state, but above it.
  Liberty is vertical, not horizontal.”

“A  reminder: You are not here on earth to live up to the expectations of others.
You are here to develop into a whole and happy human being.”

“Do you want to please others, or the Truth within?”

“What the world has done to you, Truth can undo.”

“Think from Truth about life, not from life about Truth.”

“The struggle comes to an end when there is no ‘for’ and ‘against’.”

“For the sake of rightness I must learn to disappoint others and myself.”

“Your patience and persistence will develop into valuable self-knowledge.”

“An evil man slanders the Truth because of the hell he feels for doing it.”

“A lost human being doesn’t care if he wrecks the whole world,
as long as he feels the sick pleasure in the wrecking.”

“Seek only the high places and you will have everything.”

“A false man loses even when he appears to win.
A True Man wins even when he appears to lose.”

"To have quietness you must give up noise."

“The world is destroyed by ‘good’ people.”

“It is your moral duty to be happy.”

“Defeat has no right to exist.”

“Be curious, not furious.”

“All hostility is enmity against God.”

“Now is new because it doesn’t include you.”

“Give needed thought to your outer future, but give your whole life to your inner future.”

“A free man is free because at one point in his life he became willing to hear what he did not want to hear.”

“Never, never, never, rescue yourself. If you do you will have to go through the experience again.”

“Loneliness is caused by trying to find a sense of completion where it can’t be found.”

“The secret of spiritual success is to be utterly discouraged but to continue to work.”

“False spiritual work keeps you comfortable. Real spiritual work makes you uneasy.”

“A sane mind never tries to help settle differences between two insane minds.”

“If you want to know who you are not, you are not your biography of yourself.”

“Just now we have neurotic energy — hatred, etc.
God’s energy is pure, but it is distorted on the intellectual level.”

“Individual receptivity is absolutely everything. Without it,
nothing changes. With it, all things are possible for you.”

“Both the problem and the solution are within ourselves.”

“You have a flip flop life simply because you have a flip flop mind.”

“When the mind is exhausted in trying to find the answer, the answer dawns.”

“Exhaust yourself. Every time you exhaust yourself, you renew your strength.”

“The truth inspires because it connects what is real in you with what is real in the universe.”

“Don’t give neurotic people a reward. When you permit them to upset you, you are giving them a reward.”

“Who you really are is absolutely victorious, triumphant over any difficulty you can name.”

“Care only for pleasing what is honorable, for that is the same as pleasing yourself.”

“Self-acquaintance supplies self-command.”

“Your life belongs to you, not to the demands of others,
and when you see this fully, their demands are powerless.”

“The victorious way is to take commands from your own interior
nature, not from exterior events or from other people.”

“The leap is made by dropping vanity over knowledge and by
a willingness to become nothing in order to become everything.”

“My greatest hell is to try to convince myself I’m right when I’m wrong.”

“To work hard on yourself is good and decent and necessary.”

“From now on you will welcome your troubles with great glee.”

“Evil can be described as ignorance of the need to develop inwardly.”

“Human evil is latent. Make every effort to become sane.”

“Aim to understand the dragon, not defeat him, but to understand the dragon is his defeat.”

“Remind yourself over and over that the prison of unhappiness has no bars except incorrect thoughts.”

“Every virtue, every freedom exists because God exists.”

“There is no hope for tomorrow. There is only reality right now.”

“The great goal of life is to get up knowing that you’re going to wake up.”

“A right aim is to refuse absolutely to ever attack anyone or anything again.”

“You can no longer believe in your own self-written propaganda
about yourself? Congratulations. You are on the way.”

“When you want to follow what is right but cannot do so,
remember that your authentic nature can easily do so.”

“Cosmic Command is acquired by taking new and small
responsibilities each day for inner development.”

“Don’t try to solve the problem, rather see through myself.”

“You must come to a stop and remain at a stop.”

“You will be aware when your wish to be aware is stronger than your wish to be unaware.”

“Cosmic confidence grows with the simple realization that truth exists — which few people really realize.”

“Remind yourself over and over that the prison of unhappiness has no bars except incorrect thoughts.”

“Self-honesty heals self-deceit.”

“Any teaching which avoids self-facing is untrue.”

“Do you think the King of the Universe would visit your mind the way it is now?”

“I don’t learn by doing what I always do. I learn by doing what I can’t do.”

“Watch the river of your mind. Know when you think useless thoughts.”

“If you have no false notions to defend, who can offend you?”

“Cherish self-liberation above all else.”

“Right and constant inner work is all that matters. Inner work is the whole and only answer to everything.”

“God cannot care for the parts of you that cannot care for God.”

“You condemn yourself because you first approve yourself.”

“Sorry means you can’t and won’t do it again.”

“We must leave the lower to have the higher.”

“We learn to love the light by seeing clearly what the darkness does to us.”

“The truly positive makes a negative mind scowl. The falsely positive makes a negative mind smile.”

“Badness is an admission of failure. Think about this all day.”

“Gloom is passive instability; insolence is active instability.”

“Conscious evaluation is NOT the same as criticism.”

“True strength is complete awareness.”

“Cowards crave crazy crowds.”

“The world is on the Titanic.”

“Underneath it all, the real battle is between God and Satan.”

“The world says, ‘How little can I give — how much can I gain?”

“Get rid of any unconscious fear that the answers to life may not exist — for they do exist.”

“Let go and let God reveal to you who you are and what you can be.”

“There is never a need for you to feel sad over anything.”

“The more you use this sentence the faster you will grow:
That is all wrong and I will have nothing to do with that.”

“Disgrace is painful only to the disgraceful parts in us.”

“One day all your right parts will come together.”

“Approval from other people is trash.”

“When you have no future, you are saved.”

“Settle for nothing less than total 100% spiritual health.”

“Wish right now to be genuinely rescued and you will be.”

“The way to make it is to never listen to anyone who tells me I can’t.”

“When you really see that you are doing something against yourself you will no longer do it.”

“The one thought that can break you out is this: It is not necessary for me to be in pain.”

“You have no duty in life but to find God.”

“All you need is a clear mind and spirit.”

“There has to be receiving without the receiver.”

“The conscious rejection of evil is the beginning of goodness.”

“You want God to treat you better than you treat him.”

“Conscious ego defeat is victory.”

“It can be done.”

“I can’t know God. The Un-I can know God.”

“Five liberating words: I need no one’s approval.”

“Oh how easy your life will be when you are sane.”

“You need not obey your swirling sea of confusion.”

“If life won’t let you succeed, who said you had to?”

“Thoughts go out and seek what is identical to them.”

“You inherit eternity by dissolving time while still in it.”

“The only problem you have is you as you presently are.”

“Never fear the consequences of a right thought or action.”

“A happiness which is lost was not happiness at all, but a dull smugness
that thrived on a temporary absence of challenges to its smugness.”

 “Never mind solving the problem. Solve yourself. You are the only problem you have.
Look deeply until you see. The seeing and the solving are the same thing.”

“God says you are not lost. It is because you THINK that you are lost that you FEEL lost.”

“A lost person is lost because he permits other people to tell him what is important and necessary in life.”

“My nature and my experiences are one. My conditions and my experiences are one.”

“You and I are here on earth for one purpose, and one purpose only: to evolve,
to develop, to become something other than a kindergarten student.”

“If you angrily object to being called a coward, your very objection proves
that you are one. Your objection also proves you are also a big liar.”

“Right surrender is to voluntarily detect and abandon everything
inside of you that causes trouble. Can you think of a happier task?”

“Don’t try to straighten out this insane world and don’t try to even
talk to it. It is a sign of insanity to talk to an insane world.”

“First I am one with my sickness. Then I stand apart and
see my sickness. Then I am one with my wholeness.”

“An awakened man has no enemies; even if he has enemies.”

“Awareness is knowing that you don’t know what you are doing.”

“You know who you are when you don’t think about it.”

“An eagle has nothing to say to a parrot.”

“Distress is hypocrisy exposed.”

“You are forbidden to put pressure on another human being in order to get what you want from him.”

“You can either think about yourself or you can study yourself.
The difference between the two is the difference between chains and liberty.”

“Feel sorry for yourself rightly by feeling sorry that you have a self.”

“A man looks for exciting surprises instead of healing revelations.”

“It is the highest form of active intelligence to let whatever
is right within grow at the expense of whatever is wrong.”

“God cannot be thought or talked about. But he can be lived.”

“Every human being is possessed either by Light or darkness.”

“Let the fighter and the world being fought collapse.”

“If you look forward to being happy you will never be happy.”

“Don’t trust anything of human origin. You trust because you don’t know.
When you know there is no need to trust. Knowing is life; trusting is death.”

“I am about as awake as sleeping beauty and I have doubts about the beauty.”

“Self-honesty coupled with self-investigation will bring you to self-healing.”

“There is not one speck of human dust in the kingdom of heaven.”

“You don’t have a past; you just think you do.”

“God help you, for no human being will.”

“To see that I have no life IS LIFE.”

“God’s creations change but God’s Nature never changes.”

“I own the whole world when I no longer want to own the whole world.”

“You see that when you no longer try to save yourself, God can save you, and he will.”

“When you have found love and love has found you, you need not cling to it.”

“The greatest day in your life is when you hear the voice of God.”

“Underneath it all, the real battle is between God and Satan.”

“Self-ignorance is the only crime and punishment.”

“You have to get used to being sane.”

“True life is vertical, not horizontal.”

“It is bad to be mad.”

“Knowing is the absence of ignorance.”

“All you need to be is a simple, good, decent human being.”

“The few who do realize this can start the interesting journey that ends
beyond ordinary mental conditions, where true security resides.”

     “Always stay where you are and the solution will come to you, and you will fly freely.”

     “Call my sickness health and I will love you. Call my sickness sickness and I will hate you.”

“People wonder how higher truths can possibly be of practical help in home or office,
never once sensing that higher truths alone can help.”

“Don’t ask the terrifying question and you won’t need a comforting answer.”

“Ask God every morning, ‘Help me to keep the integrity of my own mind all day.’”

“Little prayers are so powerful. Here is one: God help me to go beyond myself.”

“Since I must have no god but God, I will stop worshipping my pain.”

“God increase that right feeling tenfold tomorrow.”

“Pretense tells a lie when it tells you, ‘The battle is won by fighting for your positions.’”

“Reality tells the truth when it tells you, ‘The battle is won
by seeing you need not have any positions to fight for.’”

“It is better to be healthy than to be sick.”

“You must see where you are consenting to your own torment.”

“You give people a helping hand only because you have nothing better to give them.”

“You have little initiative to get out of the pool of mud because you don’t know you’re in it.”

“When are you going to initiate spiritual action yourself, instead of having someone else initiate it for you?”

“You can’t solve problems one at a time. You solve all problems or keep all.”

“Instant observation of your weakness when it expresses itself is absolutely essential.”

“Welcome higher facts without understanding them and in time you will understand.”

“I am not required to sacrifice my life to your weakness.”

“You do not have to know God. You only have to invite God.”

“Interesting, the words ignorance and insolence both start with the letter ‘I’.”

“The only psychological peril is to not understand the peril.”

“No one pushes you into mud holes. You push yourself.”

“We suffer only from unlearned lessons.”

“Revealed rightness releases relief.”

“Life must be built on spiritual plans.”

“If you make an effort to act rightly, you will act wrongly.”

“I have no business or real importance in my life, so that leaves me
with only one alternative — I’ll have to pry into your business.”

“You will see spiritual truths much clearer by using your eyes instead of your mouth.”

“You invent the fear, the obstacle, the threat, because
you would rather vibrate with fear than find eternal life.”

“It is a bright day when we see that cosmic facts are as practical as a recipe for baking bread.”

“Cosmic wisdom reveals why unhappy events happen, after which they cease to happen.”

“The aim of wrong people is to try to make you feel wrong and I forbid you to fall for it.”

The term justice has no meaning unless connected with spiritual principles,
such as love for truth and a wish to understand.”

“Remove ignorance, truth dawns.”

“A self-tormenting question is a wrong question. Drop it right now.”

“The love of being afraid is one of the greatest enemies of mankind.”

“Life-victory arrives by desiring spiritual answers more than you desire exterior results.”

“Be pleasantly touched by the following statement: there is no natural need for you to be bad.”

“Those sick friends who back you up in this life — do you really think they will always do so?”

“You will understand human badness better by seeing its cause in deep,
haunting and unadmitted insecurity.”

“Inner liberty can be judged by how often a person feels offended, for
you can no more insult a mature man than you can paint the air.”

“Inner and intense punishment is a harmful vibration that
cunningly masquerades as a right and necessary movement.”

“Right daily decisions are as simple as smiling, once you see
the difference between natural and artificial needs.”

“The other person has a right to his own life, and you have
no right to demand that he give it to your neurosis.”

“There exists a natural goodness which never needs to think about itself.”

“The most helpful thing you can do for yourself is to be real. To be real is to be everything.”

“The awakened mind flows with sparkling originality every new moment, like a mountain brook.”

“All good things come to anyone who refuses to be intimidated by his own despair.”

“Truth can be simply defined as a calm and self-complete
state of knowing needing neither allies or defense.”

     “To encourage his students to empty themselves of false values, a teacher asked,
‘If a treasure chest is filled with stones, can you add jewels?’”

     “Ignorance is inferior to intelligence. Intelligence is superior to ignorance.”

     “Whoever is eager enough to find the secret kingdom will never fail in his quest.”

     “Reach out! Within your grasp is that which you have been secretly yearning for all your life.”

     “Your first responsibility in life is to live a life of truth. Do that and you will never have any of the false responsibilities which burden and confuse most people.”

     “To live rightly in this world we must first become aware of it. The problem is a man’s false assumption that he is already aware, which leaves him no motive for investigation. Do not assume that the only existing world is that presented by the five senses and the surface mind.”

     “You place yourself in great personal danger when you are mechanically kindly and helpful to a lost person. And if you don’t try to understand what this means you will find yourself in danger when it is too late to save yourself from injury at the hands of the lost person. Lost people are totally treacherous.”

     “Make a rule not to spend over five dollars foolishly. Watch the compulsion come up and refuse to go along with it. You don’t need anything that money can buy to be happy. Try being disloyal to your compulsive spending.”

     “When you hear your enemy criticized and you feel pleasure over it, there is something seriously wrong with you. It is possible to know that you or another person is faulty, without falling into any kind of self- centered reaction.”

     “When you send a mean remark, look or attitude toward someone, it happens because you are asleep. You are your own worst enemy and don’t even know it because you have no right values. Instead of feeling bad about being mean, you will say to yourself, ‘I must go forward.’ You have then made up your mind to get out of yourself and the total madness. This cuts off the thievery of energy.”

     “If you are in painful conflict with someone and you can really see the  whole situation from the other person’s viewpoint, you will instantly dissolve your pain, for it was in your own exclusive viewpoint that the  pain resided. Passing over to the other person’s viewpoint shatters your own exclusive and self-centered viewpoint.”

    “It is  impossible for any fact or circumstance to harm you, for the fact itself has neither punishment nor reward for your spiritual nature. Punishment comes only to false beliefs about yourself. It is when false beliefs  meet the fact and try to twist it for ego-serving motives that the damage occurs. The fact itself remains pure and innocent.”

     “The following fact occurs to only one mind in a million: when someone is punished for bad behavior, it is also for bad behavior against himself.”

     “Don’t waste the works of the devil. Spiritual roots can grow deeper in adversity. Use the inner raging storms. Have sight without flight or fight. Remain a see-er. Nothing is too much. All storms are for growth. Remember, no exceptions!”

    “Society is like a crowd in carnival costumes with everyone fearful that others will see through his disguise.”

    “The painful human contradiction is easily explained: A man behaves like a devil and then expects to be treated like an angel.”

     “If you are compelled to think about the condition, it controls you. If you don’t need to think about it, you control it. But this kind of control is unique. It is a state in which there is neither a controller nor anything to be controlled. It is non-mental control, something like a man in good health who never needs to think about controlling illness.”

     “Sit or lie relaxed and watch what is going on in your mind. Whatever you think — that is what you are at that moment. You will see there is no controller, just vagabond thoughts. You will also see that thoughts come to you rather than you promoting your own thoughts. Look at these thoughts as if they had no connection with your real nature, which they don’t.”

     “We have affection for whatever is natural, simple, innocent, untouched by man, like a rainbow or waterfall. The spiritually natural has the same appeal. So let others nervously scramble for the unnatural rewards of wealth and praise. Just think of the grand prize of winning permanent victory over life.”

     “There really is a spirit of truth that can come into your physical body, into your mind and your whole being. There really is an all-powerful force, an entity that you can live with 24 hours of the day. And then you will never cry again. You’ll never feel cheated again. You’ll never wonder how you’re going to get rid of your grief again because it is gone and you know it is gone permanently. This is what is called a genuine spiritual experience. It’s waiting for you.”

     “You run into one problem after another because you really don’t realize that you live in an insane world. This insanity includes both the outer world and your own inner lunacy. Now this is not a cruel or insulting thing to say to you; in fact, it may be the first gift of compassion you have ever received in your entire life. Can you see why? You have been told how to end your problems once and for all. To review, you must clearly admit both exterior and interior insanity, which is the first daring step toward sanity and problem-free days.”

     “All of society lives from an endless deceptive practice. That practice is to perform the unnecessary and the harmful while trying to make them look like the necessary and the beneficial.”

     “Society says, ‘We know what is best for you.’ That is a monstrous lie. You will get nothing from society. And yet, we abandon our integrity and swallow it whole. No one knows what is best for you except the real you.”

     “All our lives we have excused ourselves. There is no excuse whatever for any one of you now reading these words to not find yourself. That means there is no excuse for you loving your pain any more because an alternative has been supplied. I am telling you that an alternative has been supplied and it is ready for your investigation and taking.”

     “One of the most spiritual statements you could ever make is, ‘I’ve had it!’ Make it refer to your own weakness of falling asleep when you should stay awake.”

     “There is destructive excitement and there is constructive excitement. You know what destructive excitement is, such as the thrill of receiving money or having power over other people. Constructive excitement is a miraculous life-elevating experience. It consists of anything that happens to you while you are in a state of surrender to the lesson in it. The feeling that accompanies the learned lesson is constructive excitement.”

     “The overwhelming insistence of your own desires prevents you from seeing and understanding the desires of the other person. This causes conflict, for your unseeing state arrogantly insists that the other person must think and act in the only way that exists to you — your own self-centered way.”

     “Human existence on earth makes no sense at all the way it presently operates, so any effort you make to make sense out of it will only drive you more senseless. You cannot make sense out of ordinary human life, but you CAN understand clearly that it makes no sense. This places you on a high level which alone makes sense.”

     “Your actual level of spiritual health reveals itself each time you leave practical thought. An unhealthy mind instantly falls downward to self-centered thought, such as returning to a grudge or feeling left out. A healthy mind rises upward to levels of inner-development, such as reviewing a spiritual lesson or seeing through the falseness of fame. As an example, two men work side by side in a factory giving thought to turning out furniture. The noon whistle blows. One man departs from practical thought to scheme how he can take some small advantage of someone. The other man leaves practical thought to ponder how human  affairs are dominated by personal craving disguised as noble ambition.”

     “Let the following powerful fact swirl around in your mind. Let it go wherever it wants to go and reveal whatever it wants to reveal: ‘The world is one giant mistake.’”

     A person who suffers from a loss or heartache or crisis cannot understand why it happened to him. This is very characteristic of a foggy mind. It cannot look back and see the firm connection between his careless cause and its shocking effect. Seeing the connection breaks it. You have just been given your first clue in a great mystery, that of conscious time-travel.”

     “Do not turn against yourself, no matter how badly you may have blundered in the past, for blundering  exists only in man-made time and your true nature does not live in time but in the pure present.”

     “If you want to know why things are the way they are, it is because things are the way they are. If you try to change the way things are, you will just keep them the way they are. Knowledge of this changes the way you are, which places you in a new and commanding relationship with the way things are.”

     “Unpleasant behavior is sick behavior. Few people want to think about this fact, but you will do so. From now on you will see that unpleasant people are sick people. You know the thousand varieties of  unpleasantness, including sarcastic accusations, delirious demands, repulsive self-worship, a cold and hostile face. If your behavior is unpleasant, you must see that you have chosen midnight over noon and see that you will stumble and fall in your own darkness. If another person is unpleasant, realize that your wish for sunlight must have nothing to do with his darkness.”

     “Take one instance of a depressed, forlorn, heavy-spirited state and track it back to its origin in some  thought or comment. Thought-watching is absolutely necessary for you to catch thoughts and comments passing through your mind — false elation, gloom, etc. No matter what you’re doing, be a thought watcher. Watch your thoughts until they dissolve, and watch your life and mind become new and fresh.”

     “If you did not take pleasure in anger, you would not be angry about anything. There is a great sick pleasure and ego excitement in the thrill of hating or any other negative emotion.”

     “Suffering always runs along the track of mechanical thought, so by permitting consciousness to interrupt mechanical thought, we learn the secret for ending suffering.”

     “If you let others carry a lamp for you, they may lag or rush ahead, but carry your own lamp and it is impossible to ever be out of the light.”

     “Sooner or later, for the first time, you will catch a glimpse of that Something Else you somehow sensed just had to exist out there.”

     “Disorders are healed when lifted to a higher plane of thought than the plane which caused them, for on this higher plane we cease to interfere with the healing.”

     “Here is a fundamental truth. Your free nature — your essence — your  kingdom within — use any name you want — is free from all problems, from all anxieties, from all tensions, from all nervousness, from all  groping around in the dark as to what life is all about. Your original nature is a totally free element. It has no problems at all! This is Truth. This is reality. This is what God is — and God cannot have any problems at all. When we are unified with this state, when we have come back home to it, we are free human beings.”

     “How come your prayers aren’t answered? In the first place, you want God — what you  call ‘God’ — to give you an advantage over someone else. Or you want God to unmake the mess you got into through your own ignorance, and through your own vanity and through your own pride. And one of the worst things that can happen is to have an accidental answer that we attribute to God, because now we’re even further into the illusion that, ‘If I pray in a certain way, God will answer this prayer.’”

     “Here is the difference between mental sickness and spiritual health. Mental sickness dramatizes human suffering, which makes it incapable of offering the cure. Spiritual health understands human suffering, which  qualifies it to present the cure.”

     “You are not required to be brilliant or wise. That comes later. You are required to just be honest.”

     “Practice these principles with no concern for results, for a planted seed is quite capable of developing in the dark.”

     “You learn about God by learning about Satan. You learn about Satan by learning about God.”

     “The next time you feel pushed around by life, ask who is the pusher and who is the pushed.”

     “You must reflect all day long about your need for allowing Supreme Truth to be the only governor of your life. You have to be constantly at work wherever you are, whatever you are doing. You must realize that your life isn’t supposed to be spent hoeing the corn in the field or tapping the typewriter. That’s incidental, that’s casual.

     You’re supposed to be thinking all the time about your life, not about your occupation, not about your physical action, not about your dinner, not about how you were slighted when you wanted to be praised. I said you have to think about letting Truth be the governing factor in your life.”

     “We read a truth, a fact. And then we very easily get careless with it, forget it or think we already understand it. So do bring yourself back to simply thinking about — and reflecting on — a fundamental truth — and you can’t get one that is too simple. Don’t make the mistake, which many people do who come to these classes for the first time, of thinking you already understand the words. There’s a great difference between familiarity with a word — perhaps the word ‘love’ — and understanding and actually living the state which this word represents.”

     “The hoax was played on you and on me — so subtly, so carefully and so persistently, that you didn’t know what was happening to you. And finally, when you woke up one morning — with the heartache, with that tragedy, with that mess in your life, with that pain, with that anxiety, with that worry — then it dawned on you that something was seriously wrong with you, with you personally! Don’t you dare — shift the blame to anyone else. You are responsible for breaking the hoax that was imposed on you!”

     “If I could stand on a mountain top overlooking the entire world, I would shout down, ‘You don’t know you are being taken.’”

     “Most of you have a flippant attitude towards the devil, which means he has won. He exists and torments you because you allow him to.”

     “Ask, ‘What is my state right now?’ Go through the day and night asking yourself that question.”

     “You will understand human badness better by seeing its cause in deep, haunting and unadmitted insecurity.”

     “You hope for a miracle in your life. It is possible for you to experience a real miracle. It happens when you hear your silence speak.”

     “One cruel trick of a sick teacher is to take a harmful human trait and use clever words to make it appear to be a healthy characteristic. This succeeds in popular lectures and articles because this is what most  audiences want to hear. For example, a sick teacher declares that shyness is a type of modesty, a form of consideration for other people which lets others do the talking. The fact is that shyness is a form of  unwholeness, and a million words of deceitful flattery will not reduce the shy person’s pain one bit.”

     “I will give you a guaranteed method for keeping yourself dull and dejected: just find pleasure in another person’s real or imaginary mistake.”

     “The world is out to get you all right, but if you are not the you the world thinks you are, it cannot get you.”

     “Always ask yourself these questions: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?”

     “Truth will show you what to do with yourself every day just as soon as you no longer know what to do.”

     “Here is the difference between mental sickness and spiritual health. Mental sickness dramatizes human suffering, which makes it incapable of offering the cure. Spiritual health understands human suffering, which  qualifies it to present the cure.”

     “I falsely love what I see because I falsely love what I am. I am only what I see. When seeing through the net of ideas, inner division stops.”

     “An inconsiderate person does not see how much unnecessary work he selfishly piles on others. Not seeing this fact he hurts with disbelieving indignation when told about it.”

     “If you really understand human nature you will know everything needed to know to live skillfully in this world. But if you merely pretend to know human nature you will be the helpless victim of people and events.  Now do you think it worthwhile to really understand human nature?”

     “I didn’t know there was a law against ignoring someone you don’t want to talk to.”

     “My rights consist of ignoring your idiocy when you scream for your rights.”

     “The devil is a raging worry to himself and loves it. He therefore works fiercely to make you think that you have worries so that he can continue to masquerade as you. Your detection of this trick frees you of both the devil and his worries.”

     “The secret of spiritual success is to repeatedly let the house collapse on top of you so often and so watchfully that you finally see that there is neither a house to collapse nor anyone for it to collapse upon.”

     “If you take, you will have less. If you give, you will have more. This is spiritual law. This higher kind of giving will be easier understood by thinking of it as release. You release your old nature, which in turn causes the releasing and the giving of the new nature. In this higher state there is no personal giver and no personal receiver; there is only natural and healthy giving of the Universe to itself.”

     “Imitation is always unconscious. A person imitating another’s ideas or behavior patterns is unaware of doing so. He insists his ways are both original and independent. He will resist being told otherwise, for his cluster of imitations have hardened into what he calls his ‘I’ and ‘me’. The last thing he will permit is the destruction of what he calls his ‘individuality’. Among other errors, he fails to realize that by borrowing another man’s habits he also borrows that man’s problems.”

     “If truth is leading you, it will also make decisions for you. And since these decisions are right, they will also make you feel right. So what does it mean if you are still using your usual mind to make your own strained decisions? It means you are not yet taking your decisions from the available cosmic compass. Remember that truth will never lead you into a circumstance without also showing you exactly what to do while within it. It is truth’s very nature to reveal clearly to you your needful actions. It is impossible for truth to abandon you. If you feel abandoned, you should see that you have carelessly led yourself into the circumstance. This insight allows the cosmic compass to correct your life-direction.”

     “Your day is filled with strain and pain because of a certain unseen and frantic activity. You try to prove that you can leap over the tall wall, and preferably ahead of everyone else. Do you know that there is really neither a wall nor a leaper? You had better discover what that means.”

     “Don’t ever accept anger in yourself or others as being right. If you will refuse to accept anger, hostility and hatred — this inner violence — as right and necessary, you will then begin to see where the actual cause of your problems is. You now justify violence in yourself and others you are allied with. They hate the same things you do, and you justify each other’s hatred.”

     “You can trust Truth because it is the only thing that is not in trouble with itself. Spirit is heavenly, mind is earthly. There is heaven on earth when the spirit guides the mind.”

     “Your anxiety belongs to you. It does not and cannot belong to me. I need not: feel responsible for it; try to ease your pain from it; feel guilty over it; converse with you about it; give my attention to it; feel sympathetic toward you over it; be anxious toward it; react with confusion toward it; be burdened by it; get involved in any way with it. Your anxiety belongs to you. It does not and cannot belong to me.”

     “You are saved when you invite spiritual perception, which will give you spiritual renewal, the discovery being that truth, God, resides above the way your mind operates in opposites. You rise above the opposites, and truth is there. You rise above them and your new nature is there. Your true nature is above your mind. Eventually you won’t think about spirituality. You will know it, you will have it, and you will live it.”

     “I will explain to you why you’re not happy, why you’re not carefree. It’s because you’re trying to collect things. You’re a collector, and you think that every time you get one of those objects that you desire so fervently it adds something to you, to your security. Well, I would guess that if you take paper and pencil and write down all the things you’ve acquired — friends, romances, exciting occasions, physical  objects — it would number in the thousands, wouldn’t it, tens of  thousands of things you have possessed for a few seconds or maybe several years. Maybe you’ve had that house for 50 years, for example. How come you’re still worried?”

     “It is right instruction to slow down and very beneficial to make small aims to do this. You will see how you forget to follow the simplest of instructions. This observation of failure is success. Make an aim to slow down your reaction for three seconds when someone speaks to you.”

     “If you make a physical break with an unwanted person or condition without also making a mental break you have broken nothing. You are still tied to the other person by a powerful rubber rope that will sooner or later snap you back to the same, or a similar, condition. Only a mental break, a spiritual break, can free you from a punishing situation. This spirituality can be described as a new and superior kind of loyalty. You are loyal to your impression of the existence of something higher than anything on earth, including yourself.”

     “The only standard and the cowardly standard lived by most people is this: ‘What acts of mine will please the maximum number of people and offend the minimum number?’”

     “No one is asked to give up enjoyment; he is asked to abandon his false concept of enjoyment, so that true refreshment may enter every moment.”

     “You can begin to catch the false behavior by asking the question, ‘Who said that?’ and you will catch your false personality being unpleasant, sarcastic and so on. As often as you can, you will interrupt yourself and say, ‘Who said that?’ And if it is negative in any way at all, that is the invented self speaking in your name.”

     “On a piece of paper write, “What I do when I am scared.” Then list numerically what you do. Keep it simple. Write down everything you remember. This includes all the centers: physical, mental, emotional and the sex center. For example: 1. I get tense, 2. I get anxious, 3. I get jealous, or 4. I retreat. The longer the list, the better work you are doing and the more you know about the machine. With that knowledge, something higher than the machine will repair it for you.”

     “Once seeing that something is truly natural, you can stop right there; you need not go on to decide whether it is good or bad. Naturalness contains nothing of the usual kind of human goodness or badness, being neither a hawk nor a dove, but only flight itself. Now, your mechanical mind will probably ask what is meant by being natural. I expected that common question. The fact that you ask that question means that you would rather ask about naturalness than find it.”

     “A choice made by a divided mind is surrounded and attacked by a dozen other nervous choices. But a choice made by a whole mind stands in powerful independence, for there is no alternative to a conscious  choice.”

     “Know that distress and disappointment are states of stupidity and nothing else. Do not trust them. They have no intelligence whatever in them; they can only lead you astray. You are foolish in being lured after their frantic shrieks. They shout that they are right, but they are always wrong and wrong for you personally. Do not follow the deceitful lures of distress and disappointment.”

     “Evil is not a judgment of one human being on another. Evil is nothing more than being in a state of unconsciousness, of being asleep. All wars are the activity of sleeping human beings killing each other. All riots are the activities of sleeping human beings — hoaxed human beings — who think they are awake. This is the madness — or insanity — which doesn’t see itself as that because it says, “We are fighting this war to free our country.” Come back to the simple definition of all evil, all sinfulness, all wickedness being a state of not knowing yourself as you really are. Therefore, you behave — or I behave — mechanically. And I destroy me — and you, with this same psychic sleep that I have in myself.”

     “The condemnation you feel for being evil comes only from evil itself, never from God. The condemnation is nothing more than the unnatural storm arising from your present confused nature. This means that the curse on you comes from you. That can be corrected because you need not remain what you are. A contrite heart has earned you the privilege of being scolded by truth. This steadily removes the curse. A truly humble spirit, which is a truly strong spirit, knows no curse. To summarize, a curse or a condemnation is nothing more than demonic whisperings which gleefully hope that you will listen, tremble and become one of them by believing in their lies. Simply reply, ‘Sorry, but I will no longer fall for it. I don’t have to. Truth said so.

     “A man inherited a country home which was surrounded by tall and wild bushes and weeds. Wanting to see what kind of scenery was beyond, he removed the bushes and weeds. He discovered that he loved the beautiful scenery. Inwardly, our bushes and weeds consist of wild ideas and words.”

     “Few people ever really realize the following fact: Insecurity is a mental condition, not a condition of finances, friendships or sex. The few who do realize this can start the interesting journey that ends beyond ordinary mental conditions, where true security resides.”

     “A real teacher is never concerned whether or not a student learns a lesson. His only task is to present  truth, and as clearly and forcefully as possible. He knows too much to be concerned with whether the seed falls on rocky or receptive ground.”

     “Knowledge of divine nature is possible only by entering and passing through the dark tunnel of human nature. Any other way leads to self-trickery and self-isolation.”

     “Man’s life on earth is what it is because he spends almost every moment of his life trying to cover up his anxieties instead of understanding and dissolving them.”

     “If you have no spiritual initiative of your own you will unknowingly try to steal initiative from those who have it, but you will go nowhere and you will feel your emptiness.”

     “You are trying to reach the place where you can say, ‘No one can hurt me now.’ Trying to reach it prevents you from reaching it.”

     “When something that is not of your world begins to change your world you will know it, and know it surely and silently.”

     “The entire secret of real happiness is contained in the following truth: I am not my memories about myself.”

     “God never punishes anyone. People punish themselves by preferring their own way.”