The first five Questions & Answers were added 9/1/10

Question: These teachings state that we can become free. It seems to me that I’m already free. What do you mean?
Answer: Are you free from psychological suffering? Are you free from anger, jealousy, anxiety and other negative states? Do you go about your day happy, knowing that God is truly in charge of this life that you’re living? Or do you feel a haunting and compelling need to protect the things in your life from being taken away from you — like money, people, power, possessions? Is that freedom? We must earnestly ask, “Who is this person that these things can be taken away from?” Any description of this person is not a description of your True Self — your Kingdom of Heaven within. There are no words to accurately describe the True Self — it is something that must be lived by you. As Vernon Howard wrote in There is a Way Out, page 104:
“Describe to me the nature of this new life.”
“Describe to me the taste of a peach.”
     Freedom is like that. You must taste it for yourself. You must see what it is not and it is not worrying about a past or future event. It is lived in the present moment, consciously.

Question: I’ll have a higher insight that I know does not come from my mind but then I’ll fall back into depression. What’s going on?
Answer: What you’ll encounter when truly working on yourself with these principles is that a period of light will be followed by a period of darkness. It was once explained that when you start out, the periods of darkness last for a long, long time with relieving insights coming at short intervals. The further you go, however, the longer the stretches of light become and the shorter the periods of darkness until you are living 100% in the light. The key is to persist during the periods of darkness. Do not give up. Do not give in to the feeling of being overwhelmed and helpless. God wants you to succeed. But the reward will come on Truth’s terms, not on our terms. The light comes because we’ve gone through the wrenching process of giving up what we call ourselves. Spiritual success hinges on the willingness to leave the old nature behind without knowing what will replace it. If we’ll do this, the empty space will be filled with Truth’s light.

Question: Why do these teachings continually emphasize being aware and awake and staying in the present moment?
Answer: “Instead of falling asleep and becoming more of yourself, stay awake!” This is the way out of all problems because what we call ourselves is the problem maker. Staying awake where higher help can reach us is what our hearts really want.

Question: What does it mean to be saved?
Answer: Can you see that there is something wrong with the world and with your life in particular? Honesty and self-study will reveal that a sinister force within is lying to you day and night. Its purpose is to hurt you and to prevent you from rising above yourself. This force does not want even one human being to escape. One of its lies is to place the blame outside — to point the finger at other people and events for the choices we ourselves have made. To live an authentically free and happy life, to make it out, to be saved, we must take full responsibility for our thoughts, feelings and actions. We cannot blame anyone for anything but must come to the freeing realization that the inner determines the outer. The inner state is like a magnet that attracts people and events to itself. Work to release negativity and to raise the level of your state with these workable principles and all will be different. For example, do we need fear or anxiety or anger? NO, of course not! But we must face the fact that if we suffer from these painful and destructive emotions, we’re somehow inviting them into our psychological home. We’ve been hoaxed into believing they are our friends. To be saved means to boot out all of the nonsense so that it can be replaced by genuine celestial guidance. While this is bad news for the artificial nature that’s controlled us for so long, it’s wonderful news for who we really are.

Question: My friends say I don’t need this. They say what I need to do is to believe in Jesus because the bible says we have to believe to be saved.
Answer: Haven’t you met a lot of people who say that but who are still secretly sad and hostile? Notice people, people of all ages, when you go out into the world. Notice the facial expression of those elderly people as you pass them in the grocery store. Do they look relaxed and happy or do they look defeated? Just believing is self-deception and is an excuse for not doing the hard work required to wake up, which is what Christ really taught. Did he not say “Awake, awake, thou that sleepest?”
     Nothing that is worthwhile is ever going to be attained without work. We understand this in relation to our efforts in daily life — on the worldly level — but why do we think that merely saying we ‘believe’ is going to result in spiritual awakening? In this work, we’re told to not believe anything but to prove the validity and viability of everything we’re learning here for ourselves. Truth offers us ample encouragement. For example, when trying to be aware of what’s going on both inside and outside of you, have you personally felt a sense of true power in awareness? Awareness and thought are very different states. Thought is circular and repetitive; awareness is alive and vibrant. As Vernon once said, “Why believe when you can know?”

Question: Sometimes these teachings seem to be too tough on us.
Answer: It is the false self, the egotistical self, which is insulted by these spiritual facts. Who we are in reality is someone else entirely, someone who is not afraid of anything in this whole world. Although undeveloped at present, there is an authentic part of us that loves hearing the truth and responds with delight. This is the part Vernon is trying to reach but because our resistance is so great, shocks must be given to awaken it. Though people search the world over, happiness can never be found without discovering and living from the true self within. It is an illusion that any success in this world can make us content. All of us have known people who, when they reached the height of success, became exceedingly depressed because the promised reward turned out to be an empty package.  Still, this teaching will never be popular with the masses; in fact, the truer the teaching, the fewer the students.

Question: I am beginning to sense the shallowness of the so-called rewards of this world, but still feel compelled to try to achieve public popularity and success.
Answer: Realize what a dreadful price you pay to society for its smiles and pats on the back. If you were elevated to the greatest level of public popularity ever achieved, it wouldn’t reduce your self-doubt one bit. Never fall into depression because you fail to win accolades or wealth or excitement. God doesn’t care one bit if you succeed in this way.

Question: I recently was very hurt by the betrayal of someone close to me. What should I do?
Answer: Know that the pain does not reside in the situation itself. What causes the hurt and the shock and the disappointment is the expectation that the person should behave differently, should behave in a decent way toward you. Each one of us is perfectly capable of ceasing to live in fantasy by beginning to understand that lost human nature can do nothing but betray. The only thing that will never ever hurt or betray you is the truth itself. Truth will explain, inspire and heal in a way that the ordinary solutions of this world never can.

Question: Recent events in the news are shocking and scaring me.
Answer: Because we have a physical presence on this earth, it is very difficult for us to understand that the real rewards of this life are spiritual, invisible. No matter what horrors are going on around us, there is a higher power within that can transcend it all. We are not at the mercy of a society gone mad.
     Never forget that God is stronger than anything that happens to this planet. If we carelessly fall into fear from what we see, we are feeding the negativity, both within ourselves and in everyone around us. The feeling of helplessness can disappear but we must cooperate in our own rescue. That means making an intense effort to see what is really going on.

Question: It seems as if pursuing Truth will take a lot of my time. Why can’t I just work with these principles when it’s convenient for me?
Answer: In order for our true nature to be liberated from the chains of the false personality’s demands, we need to make an unshakeable inner resolution and commitment to understand all of these things. In reality, we are in dire need of Truth’s help. To ever be different, to change our nature, we have to give up something. What we are now must vacate the premises to make room for the new. The beauty of Truth is that it can go wherever we do. This work is not just something we must take time out for in our busy day from a sense of drudgery. As a matter of fact, once we begin to fully realize what we’ve made contact with here, the real adventure starts. The tendency is to live a divided life in which there is ‘my life’ and then there is Truth. Working when we don’t want to work provides the chance to put our petty little life and concerns aside to gain something of real value. Start to use every opportunity to apply these spiritual teachings as you go about your everyday affairs and the division will start to fade. When you walk into that business meeting, for example, vow that you will use it as an opportunity to learn everything you can about yourself by alertly watching what goes on. Perhaps you’ll remember the higher principle of not being concerned with results and that will make all the difference in your feeling toward the meeting’s outcome. The false nature will feel threatened that it’s under scrutiny but do it anyway. This is the path to real self-wholeness.

Question: I have heard that awakening can take place in a matter of weeks or even days. Is this true?
Answer: There is no such thing as instant salvation. To use a worldly example, would you expect to become a medical doctor in a matter of weeks or days? Of course you wouldn’t. You would know that to gain a certain level of expertise in this field would require a long period of study. It is the same in the spiritual world. We’ve been under the spell of our own habitual nature for so long that it will take an extraordinary effort to begin to truly ask God to help us break out. We must do this over and over again. But as we go along, it becomes our great pleasure to rid ourselves of delusion and to get ourselves out of our own way so we are in a position to receive heavenly impressions all day long.

Question: When I’m in the middle of the crisis, why can’t I remember my spiritual lessons?
Answer: There are a lot of reasons, but first and foremost it’s because we don’t want to. No, the false self asserts, I want to do this work, I want to obey right instructions. But as Vernon has often said, we fail to turn to higher truths because we’re having too much ‘fun’ being the center of our own attention, the star of our own dramatic stage performance. To truly grow, we must get off the stage altogether. Perhaps there is a part of us that loves what we’re hearing, but another part wants its own way and wants to only pretend to be a good and obedient student. This is a fascinating thing to observe and can lead to the realization that there really is a very dark force that will do anything and everything to stop our escape from living as we always have. This is not a gloomy or frightening perception at all, but a good and bright revelation. How can we know what spiritual riches await us if we do not thoroughly know the nature of the enemy?

Question: Why can’t we see more? Some people seem to have no “eyes to see or ears to hear.”
Answer: Watch how people actually see only what they want to see and nothing more. Then see it in yourself too. As the world increasingly spirals downward, it seems safer to hide one’s head ‘ostrich-like’ in the sand. But of course this doesn’t work. No matter how many times we turn our attention away from reality, the deep-seated fear is still there, isn’t it? Likewise, the old nature really has no wish to see its own wrongness, hostility, defensiveness, so it finds endless distractions to blind us to the pain. Do some work right now and consider what some of these distractions are. Keeping busy, pursuing the trivial, never slowing down long enough to watch our own thoughts and feelings, obsessing over something, using alcohol to dull the senses, to name but a few. Vernon Howard said, “I’m trying to get you unrepressed!” and we unfortunately are fighting against that kicking and screaming. The way out is to stay with the pain, to face it completely and to release our fear of seeing more deeply. Never, never run away or it will never go away! This is how to have a truly new experience. There’s no condemnation or judgment here, none at all. We’re simply watchful and aware of the inner states passing by and as we do this, the dawn starts to break. We realize that beyond the tyranny of the pain is the New Life we have wanted all along.

Question: What is Truth?
Answer: That is like asking “What is God?” It can’t be explained in words but we can join Truth by discarding all that is false within. Then all is well forever.

Question: Why doesn’t everyone want the pure truth?
Answer: Most people prefer to remain where they are, while believing they already know and that they know who they are.  They go on blaming the exterior world for their difficulties instead of learning to do the right thing, which is to change the inner. This is the cause of all earthly woes, including war, but they will fight anyone who tries to disturb this identity (their ego) and will never know what they could have had. We can be different. We can choose to go all the way with this.

Question: How can we tell a true teacher?
Answer: Unless he continually urges us to work on ourselves by trying to wake up, to be aware, to turn our attention back on ourselves, to watch what is going on inside and to be honest about our actual inner condition (which is much different than the picture we have of ourselves), he is just another phony teacher. A true teacher doesn’t believe in the artificial identities we have built up for ourselves and doesn’t go along with them. He knows we are suffering from what we are hiding from ourselves and will help us to see it in order to be free.  He will also help us not to be deceived by the exterior performance of others. He knows that everyone is especially terrified and confused when first hearing the truth and though right encouragement is given, there is no compromise. False teachers, not having first found the inner treasure themselves, are very shrewd at deceiving the masses. It is much worse than we think. But those who really want to know can begin to discern the difference by working according to these principles. All of this is good news but to see how good it is we first must see how bad it is.

Question: What if none of my relatives or friends supports my interest in these teachings?
Answer: As long we are more concerned with and attached to worldly things rather than focusing upon our own spiritual aims, we will be in danger of being dragged away from those higher aims. Until we’re living from real self-command, our relatives are often those who can ‘push more of our buttons’ than anyone else. We grew up with them; our sense of ‘I’ is strongly attached to them. We continue to believe we are still that small child or that person we remember, or the spouse, the mother, the brother, the sister or whatever label we place on ourselves. But truth reminds us we are not these identities that tell us how to feel, how to think and how to behave. True freedom lies in getting free of all of these identifications and the emotional baggage attached to them. The incredible fact is that their dissolution rids us of the fear of disapproval and rejection once and for all, allowing a genuine enjoyment of our human contacts and relationships for the very first time.

Question: People attend New Life classes but is New Life a church or a school?
Answer: New Life is both. In a higher sense a church is a place where people gather to make a connection with God and that is certainly true of New Life. Anyone who has been to a New Life class, however, will not mistake it for a conventional church service. There are no people in robes, no religious ornaments on the walls, no statues in alcoves, no choirs, hymns or group prayers. New Life is a school for higher spiritual education where you learn that none of those things have anything to do with contacting God. With persistent effort, called ‘The Work’, you’ll come to understand the real purpose of your life and why you’re here on this planet. You’ll see that you can actually enjoy life instead of suffering from it but you’ll be asked to give up your old dark nature as the price. Incidentally, there’s no degree awarded in New Life classes because you don’t graduate from the Truth, you become one with it.

Question: There are areas of these teachings that I simply do not understand and this is causing me stress and frustration. What do I do?
Answer: It is great to admit you don’t know. To know you don’t understand something is a big, first step. That in itself is not a problem. Now don’t go on to make it a problem, to misunderstand. Stop right there and stay with that. This is a perfect example of the false ego-self trying to get an identity — “I am frustrated” — and therefore causing a difficulty in order to get a thrill, a vibration out of it. You only add more difficulties and pain by thinking and stirring up the waters. Just quietly watch and stay with not knowing. Let understanding come to you. It can’t come when your mind and emotions are full of “me” and “my stress.” If we already understood everything, why would we need Vernon Howard’s explanations to understand and receive the truth? We are like the child sitting in the highchair screaming “I want my food now.” We have to give up our childish demands and wait on God.

Question: I have heard things like this before. What makes this different?
Answer: We have all heard higher truths and maybe we can quote them glibly, but applying them will require all the help we can get. As we learn to see and drop the falsehoods that have made us unhappy, dark forces will use new and more devious means to prevent progress. The dark forces we are up against will give you 99% truth in order to deliver the 1% of falsehood that will stop your final spiritual success. Only a 100% pure spiritual source can give you the warnings about self-deception that will protect you from start to finish. Vernon Howard is a 100% pure spiritual source.

Question: Why are Vernon Howard classes not held in fancy church-like settings, with men in beautiful robes conducting the classes?
Answer: If something is real, it never needs window dressing to convince people that it is real. If there is something in you that longs for the higher life, that small part will know that these teachings are genuine guides to the way out and that is all that is necessary.

Question: Why are my prayers not answered?
Answer: Actually, they are, but because life works in a different way than we imagine, we don’t see that the cause of what we get is the result of our actual inner nature. By raising our level of being, we can request new and better things. How? Stop fighting what life brings. We have to stop blaming outer people and events. The inner determines the outer. As Vernon Howard said,  “When you rebel in the wrong way against society, any other human being, against conditions, you are doing the very thing that keeps those conditions in place.” We are either working on ourselves and going uphill or going along with our old mechanical reactions and sliding downhill. What we really want is freedom from all that is wrong inside including the big phony actor. Then we will actually have a New Life — something real and lasting. And yes, we know it is right to keep calling on something for help that is not a part of the darkness.

Question: Why is it all so scary?
Answer: We have it backwards. It isn’t scary to who you really are. It is scary to the false parts inside that presently control your life and that are terrified that you will wake up and go to work to boot them out. These voices adamantly protest all along the way, but if you continue, some day you will see that this is the only real friend you ever had, because it is the only thing that can help you to win your own life back.  And as we persist we begin to think, “How lucky can I be to have found this and stuck with it?”

Question: What does Mr. Howard mean when he says don’t plan your life?
Answer: On the everyday social level it’s fine to plan your life. We have to be good householders and take care of our day-to-day responsibilities. The psychological planning is where we go wrong. We constantly engage in mentally planning for future happiness, like trying to get someone into our lives or out of our lives or looking for security using our ideas of what security means. For example, perhaps we believe that if we get the right employment, we’ll make a reasonable amount of money and feel respected in this society. But this type of planning can never provide the true and lasting contentment our hearts really yearn for. What we gather to us from the outside world can never be used to convince ourselves that we’re happy inside.  At some point haven’t you gotten what you wanted? And doesn’t a part of you know that it didn’t bring you authentic security? Anything that represents happiness in the future can’t work because true happiness can only be in the moment with a calm, quiet and aware mind that does not need anything outside itself to tell itself that it’s happy. Happiness is a state of being where trueness flows through us and directs us with ease and purpose through our days.

Question: Truth seems to require so much from me.
Answer: All Truth wants is for you to live a free and happy life. These teachings help us to understand why we have all these headaches and heartaches and how to get rid of them. We do not have to give up anything except what is hurting us. The truth of how we hurt ourselves is in plain sight, but we cannot as yet see it. Go to work with every bit of self-honesty you can muster in order to understand more deeply how the negative states that we so carelessly invite into our minds and emotions are interfering with our ability to live a decent, contented and truly free life. Each new insight will provide right excitement for uncovering the next needed revelation!

Question: I need practical solutions for dealing with daily problems with people and money; I don’t have time for pursuing the lofty.
Answer: Stick with these principles, apply them to your daily personal life and watch how old problems begin to disappear. The only proof you need is to investigate and experiment for yourself.

Question: How long does it take?
Answer: Your only requirement is an open mind and a willingness to learn and you will find help and relief at the very beginning of your studies. As you continue, you will find more and more helpful insights along the way as the progress continues. You won’t want to go back to the old ways of dealing with situations that used to drain your energy and time. The New Life will be yours forever.

Question: Won’t we become a dull person if we don’t allow ourselves to experience life with the full range of emotions we were given?
Answer: We were given feelings and thoughts as part of our human nature. However, there are valuable thoughts and feelings, and there are destructive thoughts and feelings. Unfortunately, we’re spending most of our time giving way to all sorts of negative states, calling them right and necessary. The ability to use the mind and the emotions rightly comes from an intense wish for a higher purpose in life.
     Try to see that something has taken possession of us and feeds on our mental and emotional energy. It twists this natural source of life into something wrong and destructive and worst of all, we believe that it is us. It is NOT. It is our great pleasure in this class to boot this wrongness out! What is left is a New Life that God is just waiting to give us.

Question: Vernon Howard said he was an ordinary man who found the extraordinary. What is meant by ‘the extraordinary’?
Answer: The same as the Kingdom of Heaven within, freedom from pain and suffering, uncovering the truth, which is hidden beneath numerous false identities and pretenses that we take as us but which in fact imprison our essence or spirit. Vernon once said if he could put only one sign on the New Life building, it would be, “There is something else.”

Question: What does it mean to be a spiritual detective?
Answer: It is a beautiful state where there is no judging, no condemnation, no set idea about how life should unfold according to the demands of the old nature. The spiritual detective is ever watchful, alert and open to facts about the inner states he is observing. There is no pushing away of what is found. He is unattached to the results of his experiment. He sees clearly without mental judgment what the cause and effect of certain actions are. For example, weakness is accompanied by other low states like fear, nervousness, guilt, irritation, etc. Through trial and error he begins to see for himself that personal weakness is destructive and harmful. Eventually this pure watching can take him all the way home to spiritual wholeness.

Question: I’m afraid by following these teachings, I’ll lose my friends.
Answer: It depends on what you and what they want. Certainly we are social beings. Friendship on the level of this world is often based on things we have in common like a love of sports, cooking, raising children, etc. But something different happens when we begin to question our lives in a new way. We found these teachings when we wanted something more — an authentic life — free from suffering, heartache, problems. Others like you found them too. It is this growing inner spiritual aim that draws to itself like-minded people with whom you have only things of value in common. As you follow these teachings, you’ll find that old friendships may fall away of themselves only to be replaced by a dawning understanding of life that provides all the comfort and understanding needed by the developing spirit.

Question: What are Vernon Howard’s credentials? Does he have philosophy or psychology degrees?
Answer: Vernon went a billion miles above and beyond the conventional credentials of this world. His book The Mystic Masters Speak reveals how widely he explored men of true wisdom, but his own awakening lifted him out of the world of words (though he was a supreme master there too) into a world of direct perception. Thus he inspires us to break free of the burden of memorized thought and to receive Truth directly.

Question: Is awakening a sudden experience?
Answer: No, awakening requires the long hard work of uncovering and recovering your natural essence. It’s a lengthy but necessary process, because the more F.P. (false personality) you have covering it up, the more work and the more resistance. There comes a point where you must turn completely toward heavenly help and it will be done for you. But not in imagination. Self-deception is our constant foe, always justifying our vanity and wrong behavior. Be still and listen for the true voice within.

Question: Isn’t there a gradual and increasing awakening of people all over the planet?
Answer: No, the hypnosis is becoming worse and the sleep deeper. Society’s propaganda has greatly increased in the last few decades. The myth that there will be a mass awakening is part of the fantasy sold to the millions to keep them imagining that they are all right the way they are, don’t need to change and are already on a higher level than most. We have been tricked long enough. The game is fixed. Get off life’s mad merry-go-round as Vernon Howard put it.

Question: Sometimes these teachings seem full of contradictions.
Answer: Isn’t Truth fascinating! It is far above the mind of opposites. We were trained, especially in schools and universities, to debate, to look for the opposite point of view, to argue about every little statement. This is on the mechanical level of thought that leads nowhere. Truth has no opposite. If you truly want to find understanding, answers about God and Reality, you must go to a higher level yourself.

Question: Why is Vernon Howard so negative?
Answer: I’m very glad you asked that question. People actually think that Truth ― including what Vernon teaches ― is out to hurt them but it is only out to expose what has been hurting us. Can that be negative? But to begin to sense this, an individual needs more insight into himself. A part of him must begin to suspect that he simply does not understand what is going on inside, though the false nature will try to convince him that he does. As Vernon puts it, “The healthy information you must acquire, the right information, at first seems to be the enemy.” The part of us that resists these teachings is the real enemy and knows it will be defeated at the hands of Truth so it desperately fights to hold on to us. It doesn’t want to lose a single soul. But anyone who continues to listen with an open mind will sooner or later be ever grateful for persisting in these studies despite everything.
     Vernon Howard was fierce against the wrong parts of us but a conscious man cannot be negative. His strength was coming from a higher place. You could feel it in his presence during his lifetime and you can feel it now on films and recordings of his lectures. He is fighting for the essence within ― for who we really are. But Truth does not and cannot force itself on anyone. It is up to the individual to choose between the old life and the new and bright life that awaits us if we will love what we’re hearing.

Question: Why does so much emphasis seem to be placed on what is wrong with us? Isn’t it helpful to also remind ourselves of the good things in us?
Answer: Truth wants us to see things, including ourselves, as they really are. The reason we have every problem we’ve ever had is because we still see things the way we want to see them, not as they are in reality. It is the beginning of real sanity and decency to see that we’re really not at all the way we like to think of ourselves as being. No man can be truly helped until he at least begins to sense that he is in urgent need of help.

Question: Now that I’ve been working with these principles for awhile, it seems that things are much worse than I had imagined, both in myself and others. Is this a correct view?
Answer: Actually things have always been as bad as you’re now sensing. It is simply that your awakening awareness is now revealing for the first time the reality of how things are. Few wish to see the emptiness of others’ lives, let alone their own. But do not despair, Vernon Howard  told us that a deeper look into hell is always equaled by a higher look into heaven. You are on your way out!

Question: These teachings seem to emphasize personal development over helping others. Is there not something to be said for helping others?
Answer: No one can give to others what he has not first truly found for himself. The world is full of people who spread badness while calling it goodness. Honestly now, what have you given to yourself up until now in your own life? You have enough to do to save yourself. Dedicate your life to finding what is real and true. Then you will have something real to offer those who may approach you.
     Here is a special lesson from Vernon Howard about helping others entitled Unearned Benefits: “It is extremely dangerous to give people unearned benefits. It first destroys the receiver of unearned benefits, then it destroys the society that gives out unearned benefits. The receivers destroy the givers and themselves. It is an absolute spiritual law that every benefit in life must be individually earned.”

Question: What is the proper sequence in which to study these materials?
Answer: We are used to studying programs that start with the fundamentals and then proceed to the more advanced material. But authentic, workable spiritual principles are not like that. You need not follow any sequence; jump in anywhere and if you’re sincerely willing to work with the principles, you’ll immediately find help, new understanding and relief. Often, when we choose a book or lecture whose title appeals to us, it contains exactly what we’ve been looking for. This is not an accident because a genuine prayer for higher understanding is always answered.

Question: Why does Vernon yell like that in his talks?
Answer: Because our psychological walls are so very thick. Only strong talk will begin to break down the buffers and barriers we have erected around ourselves and our PDF’s (Precious Darling Feelings, as Vernon Howard called them). What distinguishes a true teacher from the many charlatans is whether or not the teacher forcefully exposes our wrongness. If you are never urged to turn the light of attention onto your own behavior, you will never change. False teachers blither and blab with high-sounding words like “harmony” and “love”, but Vernon Howard actually taught us how to reach those states.

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