What’s New

Ten Vernon Howard Books Reprinted
     We now have 10 beautiful new editions available. Most of them have spectacular new covers and all have been carefully proofed and corrected to eliminate any errors. They are printed on bright white paper and the print is a nice size to make it easier to read. Because of production, paper, ink and freight costs we had to raise prices a bit. However they are still very affordable. Below is the list of books with links to each one.
Your Power of Natural Knowing … 700 Inspiring Guides to a New Life … The Power of Esoterics …
Cosmic Command … Esoteric Mind Power … Treasury of Positive Answers … Solved — The Mystery of Life …
Esoteric Encyclopedia of Eternal Knowledge … Pathways to Perfect Living … Inspire Yourself

How to End Suffering — Dependence

     The commentary series below is focused on a particular negative emotion, painful feeling, negative trait or  state of human beings that causes us tremendous pain and suffering. Perhaps you will recognize that you yourself have had personal experience with this condition. You’ll find the explanation of how it causes suffering and how it produces detrimental effects in your daily life. You will also be shown how Truth can help you to lessen these effects and how you can eventually eliminate them from your life altogether. A new negative characteristic of human nature will be gone into each month. It will be great fun to explore these things in order to help us see through them and to be rid of them.
DEPENDENCE by Dr. Lynne Wooldridge
     There are whole categories of dependencies, including some that are practical in daily living like relying on a grocery store to provide food or a mechanic to repair a car. To clarify what we’re talking about, here’s one dictionary definition of the kind of dependence this article will address. Dependence can be defined as “the state of relying on or being controlled by someone or something else.” In other words, behaviors and actions are not under your control, but under the authority of something foreign and alien to your original nature.
     This can cover a lot of territory, but one type of control we seldom consider is that we’re driven through life by a haphazardly formed, but hardened set of beliefs and ideas and the personal self-images created by them. For example, living from a self-image of being “good” is not the state of goodness itself. The fantasy image creates a rigid framework for how to behave that’s been projected outward so many times, it comes up automatically and unconsciously. It’s like the response is encased in stone. We take these “attributes” on as friends that help us navigate a hostile world and give safety and security but that’s not true, is it? They don’t function that way. They torment us. If I perceive myself as good but do something offensive and unpleasant that hurts another human being, that puts me in a very painful, contradictory position. How could someone as good as I am do something that bad?
     Dependence on something false can never lead us to something real. In the chapter ‘Welcome Your Higher Nature’ in Your Power of Natural Knowing, Vernon calls these tiresome manipulations costume changes. They are contrived, unnatural and mentally created responses. He says, “The idea of putting on one costume after another must be explored minute by minute.” And we ought to let this statement of his shock us. Vernon said something like, “See that all your replies to the world are from costumes; you never speak from anything but a costume.” In other words, there is nothing real and pure operating in us at present. But all that can change. We must keep these principles at the center of our lives at all times to learn how to say no to all costume selections.
     One simple exercise Vernon gave to break out of these self-created reactions was “to let go of one little incident that you took with offense.” Has it ever occurred to us that we’re not in touch with Real Life at all? That these buffers insulate us from experiencing any authentic relaxation and peacefulness that we could have in this life? In a talk, Vernon once said something very memorable. He said emphatically “I want you to have experiences that make you feel ALIVE!” The way has been given and it is our choice as to whether we want to follow the path all the way home.