April 2016

DON’T COVER PAIN WITH PLEASURE
     Question within everyone: Do I have a chance to make it out? We know something is dreadfully wrong.
     The answer is YES! God says, “I will show you that you can make it out.”
     What is our aim? Vernon explained that with a story about an office building:
     On the lower level, people were low paid. On the 100th story, the man gets a big salary. He is in charge of hearing all the bad news without batting an eyelash, without emotional, personal comment.
     No reaction is the right reaction. No reference to self causes you to see you’re not the false self. The experience stops at the mind and doesn’t go into the emotions. Be so daring that you’re willing to let go of yourself, of your vanity, a little at a time, by simply relaxing from it. All news is good news because your spirit does not live on the level of this earth.
     Now comes your work: See those hostile emotions. The awareness of this battle is progress itself. The mind operates in opposites. The mistake: When you get a pain, worry, grief, your mistake is to cover it up with pleasure. Important: Don’t cover pain with pleasure. Don’t repress pain. You try to fight it. It’s all an unnecessary struggle and battle. Don’t cover that worry, for example, and don’t protect yourself from a comment.
     Not knowing what to say to yourself is good, not bad. Catch yourself at the moment of the crisis. You must be alert and not be gone — or you don’t purify the moment. Look in and see your reaction. Your mind can’t do it. You see it happening and the light that’s in you will come in and not permit darkness to take you over.

YOU GET BACK WHAT YOU PUT OUT
     Vernon introduced this law with the following story summarized here: A family went down to the beach one day to enjoy themselves. They put their blankets and toys out on the sand... When they were settled, the children, who were perhaps ten or eleven, went down to play in the water while the parents watched.… After awhile the father went down to the water's edge and talked to the children about the seagulls flying...and the ships way out at sea.

Then he said to his son, "Now take that little wooden boat you have and toss it out into the ocean way beyond the waves and let's see what happens." So, with all his might, the son tossed the boat out into the sea, and soon the waves washed it back.... Then the daughter threw her yellow rubber ball out and the three of them watched as the water and waves gradually brought the boat back to the shore again. Then the father said to them, "You got back what you threw out. That's very interesting in that the waves never lie. And I want you to remember that for the rest of your lives."
     Years passed and the boy and girl went out into this world — a place where there are very sad people and very malicious people and very confused people. They too became sad and confused and had problems. Many years later they met and agreed that it took them a long time to understand what their father meant when he said the waves never lie. The lesson he was trying to teach them is an invisible law, the law being you always get yourself back. He had given them a physical lesson to remind them that they got back exactly what they put out.
     Vernon then explained: Now this invisible law that you do indeed get what you give is very offensive to millions of human beings around the world, because it means that they're going to have to see what their nature put out into the world and therefore, they asked exactly for what they got in return. You might as well get it thru your mind and your heart and your spirit right now, that because the waves never lie, you can't deceive them. Whatever your actual nature is, what you possess as a nature is what you are. And your imagination or your self-flattering images calling yourself something else doesn’t change a thing. You are under the invisible law absolutely, 100%! Whatever you throw out into the world, you're going to get that back! Now you see how there's no excuse for any human being complaining what the world does to him because the world never ever did a thing to him. He did it to himself by getting back what his actual nature was.
     But do we see the problem? People don't want to see invisible laws because they might just expose something in them that they don't want exposed. Now let's get a little closer. If you get your feelings hurt by other people, you have feelings that hurt other people. It's the same thing. If your very nature is something that throws out from itself offensiveness into the world, this is exactly what you're getting back because you're getting back the only thing you possibly can have, which is your own nature.
     Now you tell me, what do you possess outside of your actual nature? Nothing! Here's the mistake. Here's where everyone goes wrong and if you don't correct it, you'll continue to go wrong.... All suffering consists of being what you presently are — your own nature. You can begin to see how you misuse your imagination in order to make yourself feel good by putting flattering labels on top of the negativity. Actually see yourself do it and you'll begin to break your division. But we don't do that because we're afraid that if we take the label away, we'll see ourselves as we actually are, which is unacceptable to our vanity.
     In just the few minutes that we've talked tonight, you've heard one of the most powerful of all invisible laws. And if you will not shy away from it, if you will look at yourself during your daily contacts with yourself and other people, and if you see where you get hurt, you will know what you're giving out into the world. What's the motto of this class? “If you can take it you can make it.” Can you bear the pain of seeing what you're really like inside? It won't do any good at all to put a fancy label on all these dark things inside of you and sending them out into the ocean and saying that you're loving when you're not. All you're going to do is suffer from self-deception. Now look, what is simpler, what is plainer and what is more practical than for you to see that? What do you think these classes and lectures are all about? They are all about you knowing how you actually operate and where you make your mistakes. The understanding of what we talked about is the work. You don't have to strain at it. You have to stop calling your delusions reality. I recommend you write this down: "I always get myself back."
     ...You had better resolve now to begin to grow up and not be offended by what Truth is trying to tell you.