Vernon Howard Quotes

Remember above all that mental stability comes by examining the contents of the mind, not by avoidence.

Interpretation blocks reception while masquerading as reception. Rightness does not need interpretation; it requires simple acceptance and nothing else.

Every day that you attempt to see things as they are in truth Is a supremely successful day.

When told that man lives in delusion everyone thinks of himself as the exception; hence his delusion.

The power of the present moment is so immense it is capable - when lived in fully - of destroying forever every past mistake and regret.

Don't try to be spiritual. That is only a word in the dictionary. Make it your goal to become a normally functioning individual. Let these principles shape you according to your real nature of a simple, decent, honest, unafraid human being.

The truth , when it arrives is always different from what we thought it would be..if we imagine that we already know the truth, that imaginations based on old and habitual ideas. But the truth is always something entirely new to the mind; so we cannot possibly imagine it. Just as we cannot know what a new day is like before we experience it, we cannot think accurately about a new truth until we first live it. As we dare to drop our conditioned opinions, we make room for the truth...

You can end half your troubles immediately by no longer permitting people to tell you what you want.

Run forward when possible, walk ahead when you can, stagger onward when you must, but never cease your forward movement.

The miracle of self-healing occurs when the inner patient yields to the inner physician.

Is the beam from a lighthouse affected by howling wind and rain? It remains perfectly steadfast and unaffected by the storm. Your true self is like that. Nothing can ever harm you once you are consciously aware that it is so.

You have succeeded in life when all you really WANT is only what you really NEED.

Think of happiness as a state of inner liberty. That is exactly what it is. It is never anything else. It will help if you forget the word happiness altogether. Substitute the term inner liberty. It works favorably upon your thinking habits. It connects inner liberty with the genuine meaning of happiness. And that puts you on the right track.

The problem is not what other people think, do or say; it is your reaction.

Genuine effort is success.

Realize that the surface personality has no interest in anything which might disturb its darling delusions.

The following brief points are like magic moccasins. They
guarantee safe guidance through the forest of people. To walk
safely, wear them!
1. The most persuasive power you have toward others is a
mature self.
2. The mark of greatness is to be superior without feeling
superior.
3. "The consciousness of being loved softens the keenest
pang." (Joseph Addison)
4. The turning point in all your exterior relations comes
when you start changing your inner self.
5. Strong people attract the weak.
6. Possessiveness and dependency are not states of love.
7. Your own level of being attracts the kind of people who
enter your life.
8. "He is happy as well as great who needs neither to obey
nor command in order to be something." (Goethe)
9. Your True Self cannot be afraid of anyone.
10. You break the cord of painful thought toward another
person by snipping the connection within your own
mind.
11. It is very painful to pretend to be someone.
12. Any sincere effort at bettering your human relations
returns a reward.
13. Don't drain your energy by thinking negatively toward
people who harm you.
14. You get along with others to the exact degree that you
get along with yourself.
15. A real person stands out like a human being among statues.

Pseudo-mysticism seeks to evade reality; authentic mysticism wants to live it.

A perfect method for awakening is to examine the results of our daily actions. If they are harmful, we know we need more consciousness.

Worried thought prevents practical thought which could prevent worried thought.

Beauty is only skin deep, but it's a valuable asset if you're poor or haven't any sense.

Do not mistake desire for love. Desire leaves home in a frantic search for one gratification after another. Love is at home with itself.

No one on earth can hurt you, unless you accept the hurt in your own mind ... The problem is not other people; it is your reaction.

How would you feel if you had no fear? Feel like that. How would you behave toward other people if you realized their powerlessness to hurt you? Behave like that. How would your react to so-called misfortune if you saw its inability to bother you? React like that. How would you think toward yourself if you knew you were really all right? Think like that.

You see everything depends upon the psychological headquarters from which we live. 'Where am I living from?' Ask yourself that question. If you don't like your headquarters, you can move any time you like. Break away. Don't tell anyone about it. Others will either smile tolerantly or mouth sanctimonious babble. Make your escape plans in secret. Never mind if you lose certain friends, you will find others who also have dared. They will be ten-thousand times more valuable to you.

We clearly realize that freedom's inner kingdom cannot be touched by exterior attacks.

To change what you get you must change who you are.

There is no way reality can be prevented from flowing the way it
flows. It is our vain attempts to force it to flow in the service
of our imaginary needs which sets us in painful conflict with our-
selves and nature. You are not separate from the flowing reality;
you are that flowing reality. See this and you will not see any-
thing else which conflicts with it. You will be what you see.

We never get upset over what happens. Never. We get upset because of preconceived ideas as to what we think should happen, what we want to happen. When our preference clashes with the reality, we get hurt. Rid yourself of all preconceived ideas as to what should happen. You are then at peace whatever happens.

Aloneness is a wise teacher. Kierkegaard remarked that one sign of spiritual maturity was the ability to be comfortable when alone.

Insight into the two selves within a man clears up many confusions and contradictions. It was our understanding that preceded our victory.

A chief cause of unhappiness is what I call mental movies. Mental movies are a misuse of the imagination. You know how it goes. You have a painful experience with someone, then run it over and over in your mind. You visualize what you said, what he did, how you both felt. As awful as it is, you feel compelled to repeat the film day and night. It is as if you were locked inside a theatre playing a horrible movie.

When one plan that you have, to get this or to get that, to advance in the world, or whatever it might be, when that seems in danger of veering off the path you have set for it, you have your emergency plan ready. And in simple language what that emergency plan is, what you put into operation, is called worry. If you can worry you are occupied, and what an incredible human situation it is!

Study carefully the law of cause and effect.

A positive virtue - the real thing - is not something that you do. It is something that you are. A genuinely kindly person and his kindness are a single unit; they are one. A really gentle person cannot help acting with kindness any more than a cruel person can help but act with cruelty.
Do not be afraid to face the existence of negative attitudes and emotions within you. Simply see that they are there. Remember, they are not the real you; they are acquired negativities.
Once you really see this you will go to work on yourself in a new way.

The only reason you do not do great things is because you timidly cling to small things. Will you let loose of small things and bear the uncertainty of having nothing for a while? Do this and eventually you will do great things.

Your central self is totally untouched by grief, confusion, desperation.

A self-working individual will be sitting around home one day when the startling thought occurs, "Here I am, sitting around, doing nothing of interest, nothing to hope for, no one to talk with-and I am not depressed.

To return to the basic idea, you must see that there is a difference
between your True Self and your False Self. The True Self
is the essential you. It is pure, unconditioned, natural, spiritual.
It has nothing to do with ego-competition, pretense, self-deception,
pride, vanity, arrogance, and other negativities that keep a
man afraid. All such items belong to the False Self.

Whether a person is aware of it or not, he is assaulted constantly by misleading and hostile voices within the mind. They speak both through you and to you. Everyone is their target, but because of their extreme cunning, few people ever detect and dismiss them. So the only problem is a lack of information about these foreign voices. The curing facts are as close as your desire for them. It is extremely important for you to remember the following truth: these hurtful voices are not you, and they do not belong to you, but merely speak through your psychic system. Don't take them as being your own voices, any more than you take radio voices as being your own. They simply use unaware human beings. Your true nature has nothing to do with them. When finally dismissing these sinister speakers you make room for spiritual health and true life.

You know what is right. Deep down, you know. The battle between your true wisdom and the counterfeit wisdom of society is what causes frustration. Refuse to compromise with what you know is right-with what is right for you.

Doing good to someone in order to reduce self-guilt will only ruin things for both of you.

We can no more enjoy life by hoping for a future result than we can enjoy music by waiting for the final note.

You can not escape a prison if you do not know you're in one.

We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception.

Change is never a loss - it is change only.

What you really want for yourself is always trying to break through, just as a cooling breeze flows through an open window on a hot day. Your part is to open the windows of your mind.

Truth breaks you down so it can rebuild you according to its specifications in Heaven.

Bitterness is the outcome of a wrong mental movement - the attempt to force external events to conform to internal fantasy. The cure is to see fantasy as fantasy, which will reveal it as neither necessary nor rewarding.

Do not be impatient with your seemingly slow progress. Do not try to run faster than you presently can. If you are studying, reflecting and trying, you are making progress whether you are aware of it or not. A traveler walking the road in the darkness of night is still going forward. Someday, some way, everything will break open, like the natural unfolding of a rosebud.

We must become acquainted with our emotional household: we must see our feelings as they actually are, not as we assume they are. This breaks their hypnotic and damaging hold on us.

Remember, you are not your negative thoughts. You are not
your painful imaginations. See yourself as separate from your
thoughts. This will aid you in dismissing the horror films. Just as
fire fades when not fed additional fuel, so do emotional fires fade
away when we cease to fuel them with negative imagination.

Living in the now is freedom from all problems connected with time. You ought to remember that sentence, you ought to memorize it, and ought to take it out, you ought to practice it, you ought to apply it. And most of all, you ought to rejoice in it because you have just heard how not to be wretched, miserable you any more but to be a brand new, and forever brand new man or woman.

All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is denied.

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.

As incredible as it sounds, an unhappy man does not realize that happiness is better than unhappiness. Knowing only his own concealed anguish, he worships it, which is the same as self-worship.

We cannot be free of nagging desires through suppression. This is like trying to keep a rubber boat beneath the water. But we remove compulsive desires altogether by understanding their nature.

There exists a special self which takes every event as if it were the very thing you wanted to happen. That self is the Supermind, which is never upset by anything. Your goal is to nourish it into greater strength. Then, every step is sunlit.

No one can tell you what is right for you except yourself. So start telling yourself what to do. If you blunder for ten years while thinking for yourself, that is rich treasure when compared with living these ten years under the mental domination of another.

An obvious fact about negative feelings is often overlooked. They are caused by us, not by exterior happenings. An outside event presents the challenge, but we react to it. So we must attend to the way we take things, not to the things themselves.

Self-knowledge is the great power by which we comprehend and control our lives

Awareness of your weakness and confusion makes you strong because conscious awareness is the bright light that destroys the darkness of negativity. Detection of inner negativity is not a negative act, but a courageously positive act that makes you a new person.

If you call one thing good, you must call its opposite bad. If you think it wonderful to make a big profit in your business, you will also think it terrible if you incur a large loss. The idea is to live above the opposites.

You need only choose ... then keep choosing as many times as necessary. That is all you need do. And it is certainly something you can do. Then as you continue to choose, everything is yours.

Truth is not a matter of personal viewpoint.

It is against the law to permit weak people to steal your strength. Never permit it.

Human sickness is so severe that few can bear to look at it ... but those who do will become well.

Ignorant people remain ignorant because they have a secret agreement to call one another intelligent.

By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.

Truth does not really hurt, rather it is our resistance to its message that causes us pain.

It is a mistake for anyone to think he has lived too long in his old, unsatisfactory ways to make the great change. If you switch on the light in a dark room, it makes no difference how long it was dark because the light will still shine. Be teachable. That is the whole secret.

You must dare to disassociate yourself from those who would delay your journey ... Leave, depart, if not physically, then mentally. Go your own way, quietly, undramatically, and venture toward Trueness at last.

The world consists of imaginary people, claiming imaginary virtues and suffering from imaginary happiness.

The outer storm ceases the moment the inner storm ends, for they are the same storm.

Don't try to be unafraid. That is impossible. Rather, go ahead while being afraid. That is the entire secret for abolishing fear. The Supermind teaches us to have no self-concern at all. Whatever happens to you, act as though it happened to someone else.

All heartache is caused by wrong viewpoints.

It is a thousand times more sensible to climb one foot up the
mountainside than to chatter for years about the mountaintop.

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

Cruelty practiced as a matter of social principle or public policy, and presented to the community as a means to a higher goal is the most obscene and decadent phenomenon of any civilization.

Don't think that you must involve yourself with complex intellectual philosophies. Don't try to be profound or educated. That only wears you out. Just be simple. Let everyday life be your teacher.

All we have to do is to receive what we are given ... We are given the naturalness to love someone, to be calm in crisis, to ignore self-defeating suggestions, to be pleasant, forgiving, tender, helpful, unworried, brave, energetic.

Resistance to the disturbance is the disturbance.

When you are genuinely strong, you neither attack nor defend and so retain your energy.

Happiness is liberty from everything that makes us unhappy.

The answers come when you are quietly willing to be without them.

We can accept God becoming Man to save Man, but not Man becoming God to save himself.

A false path must be tensely and angrily defended by those it has deceived.

Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn, and you will.

Be very careful that you do not unconsciously assume that nervous tension is power. This is vital. Watch yourself the next time you work toward some goal. Look very closely to discover tense feelings and nervous thoughts whirling around inside. Do not let them deceive you into assuming that they are creative forces; they are not. They are thieves of genuine powers. As always, your awareness of their thievery is your first fine step toward casting them out.

The terrible immoralities are the cunning ones hiding behind masks of morality, such as exploiting people while pretending to help them.

A person obsessed with the need to be happy will never be so. The obsession is the obstruction.

The reason why most people are frustrated is because a lie cannot be turned into a truth.

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

Instead of fighting your problems, picture your way out of them.

We can become slaves to things we don't understand

It is utterly useless to try to change the outer world, for it is but a reflection of inner causes. The true seeker seeks to change himself.

Persistence prevails, like a stream that is temporarily blocked by boulders and then collects force enough to overflow onward.

Just as surely as distress must follow self-deceit, healing must follow self-honesty.

If heaven existed as a physical building on earth, human beings would remodel it to make it right.

You cannot stop destructive actions by others, but you can stop your own destructive reactions to them