May 2016
REMEMBER THE EXERCISE
Now this is your exercise for the next two days. Catch yourself right in your behavior at home or out in the café if you live alone and ask yourself, “Why am I behaving the way I'm behaving right now; what secret motive is there behind it?” The only answer to that is you begin to slow down your mind through the techniques that we've talked about here so that you, the illusion of you begins to slow down.
You finally got smart, it took you long enough, you finally got smart and you got up in the morning and you say, let's see now, what particular inner exercise shall I have today? Well, I'm going to remember when I walk out the door. Oh I forgot. Well you remembered that you forgot. That’s good.
YOUR FIRST DUTY IN LIFE
Now I’m going to illustrate all this business of self-conceit, which includes unseen arrogance, always ready to strike out. I want you to see the connection between self-conceit, self-vanity, and self-unhappiness. If you see it, you won’t want to be conceited anymore so that you won’t be unhappy anymore. But you must see the connection. And I’m going to describe the world to you now as the world reacts to the heavenly voice, heavenly power, to God, Truth, Reality. Try to see that there is something going on above this world that wants to reach this world in order to correct — not the masses of humanity who despise truth — but hopefully is trying to reach you.
Here’s the story: there was a very poor dry desolate country and everyone who lived in it was poor and dry and desolate inwardly.... and because they were poor, they were unhappy. And oh yes, they were also very conceited. Don’t think that just because someone is poor that they’re necessarily nice people; they were bad people.
A nice, compassionate, loving king who lived in an adjoining country sent them an invitation through his ministers and ambassadors who said to the poor people, “In the land of the Royal King miles from here is an abundance of everything that you really want and need.... There’s an abundance for all to take back and use, and if you take it back you will be happy. So you don’t have to be concerned with anything else; you must be very much concerned and interested in changing your life. That is a spiritual rule. Your first duty in life is toward your inner development and nothing else, absolutely nothing else. Don’t be tricked into thinking there is anything else but the first rule is your self-transformation.”
So people were excited about this and they started to move toward the country with their baskets and their wagons to get the good things in the other country and sure enough, there it was, everything they needed. And the minister came over to each one of them and said, “Now take all you want. There’s no end to the wealth that you can take back and have for yourself. Take it freely. However, there is one thing, and I want you to remember what I’m going to say next. When you take the goodness and the wealth and the abundance back to your country and use it, you must always give credit to the good king of this land.... It is essential that you give credit to the king and to the king only. If at any moment you give credit to yourself, if you say ‘I earned it by making the journey or I created it or I talked the king out of it with my cleverness,’ if you ever show any conceit, any vanity, any self-credit, if you take it within yourself and brag about it to other people, the riches will vanish right where you are. They will be real to you only as long as you understand from your hearts and say with words that the only source of supply that you have is the king. You must never take credit for yourself in any way at all.”
Do you see the significance of what we’re talking about? Most people, when they were told that spiritual law, nodded in agreement. They wanted to get the goods and run; they wanted to stay conceited. They failed to pass the test where when they met the embarrassment, the shock or whatever. They failed to want to understand it. Conceit reigned inside of them and they nodded in agreement, and they took the goods back. And when they started bragging about it, either within themselves, silently, secretly, or to someone else, it vanished; and they went back to their poverty and they went back to their misery.
A few people understood why it has to be that way, because they understood...that they were simply receivers. They didn’t create anything. They understood that they were not originators of anything. All was a gift from the higher land. And understanding the marvel of that as opposed to the conceit of the other people... they wanted to do nothing more than to quietly and to truly, humbly, give credit to the king himself.
...You want to get something, and you also want to think that the getting has something to do with your merit, with your strength, with your wisdom, with your individuality. All that has to go. Everything connected with conceit must vanish. Now please, understand that you are only a receiver of what has already been created. I want you to know that this is a thousand times more difficult a state for you to achieve than you now see.
You must realize how hardened, how subtle, how concealed conceit is. “I, me, mine, I did that, I can make you angry; I can be happy if I get this or that.” The life of practically every man and woman on earth starts with “I.” And that is conceit and that is why, ladies and gentlemen, when you get a glimmer of spiritual truth and you take it back home with you, it vanishes; it doesn’t stay with you.
Now that’s marvelous for you to see...trying to hold your life in place is folly. What does that mean? Very briefly, trying to hold your life in place means to rush through your mind as many thoughts and emotions as you can, to give yourself the surface appearance, the illusion of you being a self-creator. You don’t have charge of anything.... Be very, very suspicious of how hidden conceit has robbed you and does rob you every minute of your life of living very quietly, very calmly.
