Walk Yourself Awake
  I am going to give you an exercise to take home with you, which will uplift your mind, spirit, which will give you a new way to think toward yourself and toward your life here on earth. We could call it Walk Yourself Awake. I’m going to explain it in detail, and write down notes because I want you to get every step clearly of what you’re going to do. It will do so much for you if you will have an interest in it and practice it all the time.
  First of all, be alone in a room in your home or wherever. You MUST be alone in the room. Even if you have someone who’s friendly there, you’re going to have to give all of your attention to what you’re going to hear when practicing this, and someone else even being there, even if they’re silent, they distract your attention. You’re thinking about them, what they’re thinking about you, when you should be practicing the exercise completely, wholeheartedly.
  Now you’re in this room. You’re going to walk at a selected starting place from one end of the room to the far end of it on the other side. You’re going to walk from your starting place to the opposite wall, turn around, pause a minute, and then you’re going to walk back to where you started. Now on your first trip across, you’re going to let yourself think anything your mind wants to think. You could be aware of your thoughts and you should be, but just be a watcher of your thoughts and don’t try to fight them, don’t judge them, don’t feel that they’re attacking you. Just let your mind think anything it wants to think on your first trip over and back.
  All right. Now, this exercise has a second half to it. This is a two set exercise. The second time you walk across the room, pause, and come back, you’re going to do it in an entirely different inner spirit. You’re not going to think at all. You’re not going to let your mind wander where it wants to, as you did in the first walk. Instead, you’re going to work hard at understanding what it means to be a conscious, aware human being. You’re going to be spiritually awake, alert, to your inner state as you cross over and back again. If a thought creeps in, push it aside and go back to just knowing that you are walking across the room and back again. Just get a sensing that there’s this physical body, NO, NO, NO. — You’re not to think, “I’m being aware.” If you think you’re being aware you’re not being aware, you’re in contradiction. This is why it’s important to catch any intruding thoughts when they jump in — as they will — to try to tell you that they are a state of seeing, of consciousness, of knowing.
  So you’re walking across the room and you pause at the far end just long enough to remind yourself of what you’re supposed to be doing, because you’re likely to forget so easily what you’re supposed to be doing. You’ve forgotten that the second trip is supposed to be different from the first trip. So, I’ll state it again. Just relax and REALIZE that this physical body is crossing the room and coming back again. I will use all the words there are possible to describe an indescribable state. Just KNOW what is happening to you in that room. You are to walk back and forth without SAYING “I’m walking back and forth.” ‘Cause if you say it, you now put yourself back into the picture, your false self back into it and you won’t have gained what you’re trying to gain.
  One purpose of this exercise — which you must do over and over and over — is to begin to detect the difference between the two states. It will not come to you the first time you try it. You must do it over and over and over again and maybe a session would consist of you doing both sets maybe five or six times or something like that. At the start, on your first mental trip, you’ll wonder what it’s all about. You’ll be thinking about the second trip, and I said that’s all right. Just be thinking. But know that you’re thinking! See, for example, the sudden shifts of your attention. Think of the hundreds of things you can think about in just that one short trip. Just know you’re thinking, and for a long time thinking will be in charge of you.
  Now one day, as you’re on your second lap of the trip, something will come to you. You’ve been trying to NOT think but to allow spiritual consciousness to be with you as you cross. It will come to you on one of your trips that there really is a different kind of “me” than the mental “me.” It was the mental “you” who took the first trip. Now, you’re AWARE of that first trip, because you’re on the second trip in which you’re trying to become aware of everything. Your attention on the second trip is not centered around “ME” and what “I” want. On the second trip you’re not to say, “I want to wake up, I want to wake up.” When you bring “I” in it you’ve brought in all the past. Instead, you can think about it in the proper way. You can say “there is awakening, there is such a thing as spiritual seeing, and I want that.” That’s not wrong to have that desire. But what I’m warning you against is the old ego nature that doesn’t want you to wake up — inserting itself when you’re on the second trip — and you get chattering about yourself. “Oh I wonder if I am doing this right.” “I wonder if I should do it five or six times?” “I wonder if my wife in the next room wonders what’s going on?” Really, all sorts of crazy thoughts can come into your mind.
  One day, the dawn will break because you have been faithful to God, and that’s what you’re doing. God will be faithful to you. You see, spiritual consciousness IS God. God is conscious; Satan is unconscious. At a certain time when you’re not thinking but just watching yourself go back and forth, a little message will come into your mind and it will come into your heart — instead of a thought talking to you like there is now, there will be — YES this is accurate, listen to this — there’ll be a higher spiritual power talking to you. Consciousness, awakedness, awareness, seeing and living in the higher, will come to you. Remember, help has to come to you. All you have to do is yield to it.
  Practice this exercise very often. Watch the whole thing that happens and the day will come when you will KNOW that you don’t have to live in that first, ragged, third-best type of human being. You don’t have to live in that kind of nature at all, because you’ve got your first glimpse of the spiritual nature, and you will be interested only in that. You’ll want above all to know what it’s all about, which you’ll find out as you practice this exercise. Go to work.
  (Taken from a talk by Vernon Howard in 1991)

Remember Something You’ve Forgotten
  Vernon Howard gave this delightful illustration and exercise: Once upon a time a poem was written. A marvelous poem called “Recessional” written by British author Rudyard Kipling. It became immensely popular because it had a spiritual message.
  In addition, the poetry and writing are excellent. For example, there is one line that says, “God gave us dominion over palm and pine.” The British Empire was mighty in those days, and had conquered a good part of the world from palm to pine — “palm” representing the warm countries and “pine” the cold.
   The poem told of man’s conquest of other men. And it has this beautiful and marvelous lesson:

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet. Lest we forget, lest we forget.

  That’s the theme of the poem. We come into the world and make our petty little conquests. We set ourselves up as the conqueror of our own little home, our family, our business. This is parallel to Rudyard Kipling’s reference to the British Empire conquering and having dominion over palm and pine.
  The lesson is we’ve forgotten where we belong. The naming became the power in our lives instead of the power of remembering. Remember God? Remember who you’re supposed to be? And remember that you didn’t create yourself; therefore, you do not have and must not have responsibility for what happens to you. Wouldn’t you think that the Creator of the universe would be more qualified to take care of you than you? Then why don’t you let God do it?
  Here is an exercise to help you remember where you really belong. You’re going to have a determination to remember something you’ve forgotten. You’re going to look out at the world and you’re going to remember how many and how varied are the negative and corrupt influences that are pointed toward you and taking you over. You are to remember how negative everything is in this world. Take advertising. It’s quite appealing at times with pretty girls and apt phrases. Of course, the motive is to get your money.
  Listen to people talk. Do you hear anyone conversing on something that is of authentic value to them? No, they have forgotten. What we’re doing here in class is remembering that we forgot.
  We’ve forgotten what is true, what is kingly and truly permanent. Don’t settle another second for any impermanent life, which is all society has to offer.
  To be who you really are in essence is the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. You can come home right now. Do it.

You Never Have to Create Anything
  Vernon Howard gave us this very practical exercise as follows:
  Here is a healthy helpful exercise which will enable you to do more with what you hear and read in the spiritual world. This exercise can be carried on almost any time wherever you are and it can also be going on in your mind when you’re going somewhere, or you can write it down. Do it both ways. It will be very instructive to you and you will definitely see results, because you will learn how to use all your natural human powers.
  Take any simple, short fact, truth that you like in particular. Get the main thought first and then expand on it. In other words, explain the selected thought to yourself. And with delight and increasing efficiency, you will find that you will be able to say more about it than you ever did before.
  Let’s say you wrote down, “I need not create my own world.” Then the contrary idea will come to you that you have indeed been trying to create your own world — your own world of inner comfort and power, of getting along in some way. But no more! You need not and you must not create your own psychological spiritual world. So then you add, “I need only enter it.”
  Instead of getting up in the morning thinking that you have to create the sun and the earth and the sea; instead of getting up to create them, you just enter them, don’t you? You enter what is already supplied to you.
  Now, when you have done this lesson thoroughly in spare minutes, you will discover more and more, and you will understand what it means that you don’t have to create your own world because you’re not doing it anymore.
  You can depart anytime you want from the stress and strain and vanity of thinking that you have to create your own life.
  Your spiritual nature has everything; therefore, there is nothing to create. The real world, the pure world has always existed. Therefore, if the real world is timeless, if I can understand to a greater extent what it means to live in the timeless world, then I will enter it. And my time thoughts and my time naggings and my time memories will no longer be able to enter my timeless world, and I will be a free and happy human being.
  Take this exercise. Do it over and over, and I will guarantee you this: the more you do it, the more interested you will become in doing it because you are getting the gold from it.

Stay Home Psychologically
  Can you imagine a carpenter building a house without hammers, saws, drills and all the other necessary implements? Of course, you can’t. He needs all the tools on hand to build the house. To build our inner house, Vernon Howard supplied us with a great assortment of spiritual tools. One of those tools was exercises.
  Here’s one of the helpful exercises: “Stay Home Psychologically When Speaking with Others.” We talk to people all the time, don’t we? That includes family, friends, coworkers and so on. When we speak to others from now on, we can stay apart from their lives. They’re reaching out to pull us into their lost desert.
  Let’s say we go to the supermarket and meet someone. We look up at that person and almost immediately there’s automatic nervousness when we make eye contact. There’s no reason to allow ourselves to enter their world. This is the same as losing our world.
  One reason for getting wrongly involved with people is because we want something from them. If we didn’t want anything, our speech, our attitude, our facial expression would be different. But being perpetually insecure and nervous, and because we are desperate to use any situation to get at least one brick off our back, we get involved.
  They can entice us because we’ve surrendered to them in order to tell them our troubles. When we met that person in the supermarket, the first thing we nervously blurted out was about the near collision we had just experienced. “He came right around the corner. The policeman said it was illegal. He came real close...”
  It’s wrong and hurtful for us to continue to chatter and tell people our griefs. We must not enter another person’s world, but stay strong, alert and aware whenever we meet anyone. Stay at home psychologically.

Review Your Day
  Vernon Howard told a story about a man who every day had to walk through a dark valley where he was always attacked by monsters. The pain and misery from these attacks was almost unbearable. Then one day he decided he would study the monsters and himself at the time he was being attacked. In the evening he would reflect on these experiences and see why they happened. For a long time he did that and he eventually became a wiser and happier man.
  Just as the man in the story studied himself, we have also to do that. I call this extremely helpful exercise “Review Your Day.” Here’s how it goes:
  We have many experiences daily. Some of these we grab onto and can’t let them go. It’s those experiences in particular that come to mind when we review our day.
  When a troublesome event happens and we become identified with it, we don’t see it clearly. We are apt to blame outer conditions, other people and so on for what happened. But in the evening when we’re quiet and reflective we see this event was troublesome only because we were identified with it.
  Because of the way human nature is, very minor events can take on major proportions in our minds. For example, I say something I think is very humorous but the person to whom it is said glares at me in anger. Although I apologize, the other person is very hurt. Not only does it create resentment in the other person but it consumes my thoughts. Try as I may to forget about it, the hurt and anger on the other person’s face keep coming to mind. It torments me. Upon reflecting on this in the evening, I make an aim to think before I speak in the future.
  All our discoveries about ourselves are valuable, but some more so than others. For example, images that have been with us almost all of our lives are extremely difficult to see. Let’s say I hear a lighthearted comment about me such as, “Oh, there’s the do-gooder at it again.” This really burns me up and I can’t think straight. But on pondering it that evening, I see I was playing the role of a “do-gooder” and it was indeed only an image. By not playing out this role, I can become a more real person.
  There are so many marvelous enlightening things to see in ourselves, which will make us lighter as we walk through life. The “Review Your Day” exercise is one tool to do just that.

Action and Reaction
  Vernon gave us this most practical self-acquaintance exercise which we can use anytime.
  Here’s an exercise to practice for at least the next seven days.
  The action part is what you see with your eyes as you go about the world. The reaction part is what you do with your mind as a result of the action of observing something exterior to yourself. You go shopping. You go out into the front yard and you observe something with your physical eyes. That’s the first step.
  And then the reaction, that is, what was your reaction to what you saw? And you’re to know both what you saw with your physical eyes and what you responded, what was the nature of your response to what you saw?
  Now, you’re not to react to your reaction. You’re to leave it alone so that it flies away all by itself. But you’re to see it before it flies away. For example, you might see an ad for maybe your favorite dinner advertised. You see the ad and then you see what went on inside of you as a result of it. “I want that for dinner tonight.” Or, “I had it three nights ago.” Just see the reaction and then let the reaction go. Don’t hang onto it. Don’t try to get a sense of excitement, of possession, of identity over it at all.
  Or maybe you see an accident and then you watch your reaction to that. A little bit of fear or maybe your major reaction was, “Well, I’m going to drive a little more attentively after this, after seeing that accident.” Notice what you see, then notice how you responded to what you see, and then let the response go. This is self-acquaintance at its best. Do that all the time and this way you will not unknowingly identify with or be caught up by what you see with wrong emotions and wrong reactions.
  Eventually, you will have proper reactions instead of the wrong ones that now take you over because you were not conscious of them. Look at the world, look at a particular event or a particular person, then notice your response and then let it fade out and start all over again.
  All right. Everyone come awake right now. Know where you are. Don’t be gone in the riotous thoughts of your mind. Come wide-awake. Be aware of yourself and of the exterior world at the same time. Have the flashlight pointed both outward and inward. Come wide-awake now. Now stay that way.