May 2019

CONSCIOUS KNOWING
     I better just say a few words about that horrible monster, vanity. Let me tell you, first of all, that when you are vain you don’t know you are. Vanity is always unseen, unconscious, hidden inside yourself. And even if someone says you’re vain, you won’t see it.
     You might resent them telling that you’re vain and why did you resent it? Because you know it’s true, but there’s a difference. This is a very fine line I’m going to draw here.
     There is such a thing as conscious knowing, which is not a part of your mind but a part of the Spirit of Reality. There’s also a sensing which is part of the intellect but not beyond it. This is why, when you’re accused of something bad and you did do something bad, you get angry because you know it’s true. But you don’t want to admit that it’s true that you did something that you should not have done.
     So you do have inside-sensing. That’s a good word which means repressed knowledge of your actual lost condition. And that you do live in a world of shadows and you must bring that up to consciousness. And you bring it up to consciousness by taking your lessons home and studying them. You learn the lesson by knowing, through personal observation, that you can’t do the lesson you know. You know the lesson but you can’t do it. You read the book on how to drive an automobile but if you got in an automobile and tried to drive you’d get in a wreck.
     That’s what happens to you. You take the intellect for the spirit and the hideous force of vanity is in back of that. And vanity serves as a substitute for Reality.
     You know very well that you can’t drive your car through life properly without getting into accidents, wrecks inside. You know it. However “that’s a shameful thing to admit to anyone that I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.” So you put up a picture of yourself driving the car and call it real. It’s an imagination that you can drive the car. It’s an imagination and vanity that you’re sensible, that you’re spiritual, that you know all about inner subjects and you’re a good knowledgeable person, in charge of yourself. You’ve substituted dangerous vanity for safe Reality. When are you going to stop?
     I tell you, ooh, no question about it, it’s a rough business to come to a place of truth like this is and have your vanity knocked down. To tell you, to make you see, that what you’re claiming for yourself — the virtues, the strength, the wisdom, the knowledge — is non-existent.
     To generalize it a little bit, you’re compelled frantically and nervously to tell yourself that your life and way of life is OK. You put the label on it, then no need to change right? “I don’t need anybody to tell me anything. I know it. I’ve got it.”
     Those highways in the physical world are filled with crashing cars and hurt human beings, but that’s nothing compared to the crashes and smashes and the injuries and the fatalities that go on inside human beings who say, “I know how to drive my life.” And that’s their vanity talking. Vanity doesn’t know how to drive through life. If you knew how to drive through life, you could go out of here and never ever have another problem, another grief, another worry.
     You’re simply saying that your life is all right but inside it isn’t. Will you please know that! Come on. Never mind the blows. Be a true spiritual warrior. A lot of parts of you don’t want to believe there is pure truth here. I’m telling you, decide for yourself with the one little part that knows that everything here is healthy and good for you.
     What you have to do is to know you’re in the shadow world and to stop enjoying it. It’s a false enjoyment. The shadow world wears you out and makes you tired and unhealthy and scared. Let us show you how to turn around and go into the light.