The commentary series below is focused on a particular negative emotion, painful feeling, negative trait or  state of human beings that causes us tremendous pain and suffering. Perhaps you will recognize that you yourself have had personal experience with this condition. You’ll find the explanation of how it causes suffering and how it produces detrimental effects in your daily life. You will also be shown how Truth can help you to lessen these effects and how you can eventually eliminate them from your life altogether. A new negative characteristic of human nature will be gone into each month. It will be great fun to explore these things in order to help us see through them and to be rid of them.

How to End Suffering Articles 2

  • by Karen West
         Laziness is defined as the quality of being unwillilng to work. On a worldly level, human beings have learned from the environments they have been raised in and surrounded by since childhood. Those environments have formed how that human will live his or her life on this earth. As children, we really were at the mercy of these influences, which might not have been very merciful. Yet, even as young people, we saw things that we knew were wrong but didn’t have the ability to change.
         We may have been taught to have a sense of self-responsibility growing up or perhaps we learned to rely on others, to one degree or another, to do our work. In the latter case, living from an attitude that we‘re owed something will never work. The false nature wants the easy way out. It doesn’t want to put forth much effort to understand life. It is lazy and wants others to take care of it. Responsibility or the willingness to be accountable for our own actions is resisted. The artificial nature thinks it is clever to have others do what it should do. But being lazy creates great suffering and prevents us from having the new life that we could have.
         Spiritually speaking, it is essential for a person to develop self-responsibility. Worldly actions to support ourselves, paying our own bills and being good householders, though preliminary steps, are essential because we can then go on to be responsible for what God has given us. It is a spiritual law that if a person is given unearned benefits, it harms both the giver of the benefits, and the receiver of the benefits.* Both are living out an imaginary dream in which the false nature is all-powerful and they wrongly believe they are taking care of life on their own terms. One group is getting perceived goodies without actually having to work for them and the other has a self-image of being a ‘good’ man or woman. What an affront to God! In reality, all good things come from God. But people try to take credit for and completely forget that there is a Higher Power in charge. Like God doesn’t see this? Besides, it is a spiritual truth that only when a person raises his own level (with light from God to see and to let go of the darkness inside of himself) can he can really help others. Vernon says, “You have to face your responsibilities to evolve” and “Your first responsibility in life is to live a life of Truth.”
         Spiritual treasures are only given to workers. Vernon Howard talks about the workers, the loafers and the  saboteurs. He explains that only the workers are dedicated to trying to contact the Kingdom of Heaven within. They have the best chance to experience genuine awakening. Loafers can become workers but saboteurs have no chance.
          Rather than letting the earthly life consume all of his or her time and energy, a worker comes back to conscious awareness of thoughts and feelings as often as possible because that is where the light comes from. Laziness is spiritual sleep. We were never taught as children to watch the thoughts that come into our minds. Now, we can stop being lazy and learn. These teachings can change anyone’s life — and all for the better. Interestingly, when a person really puts God/Truth/Reality first, everything that really matters is taken care of for them.
         Rest is important and necessary but the spiritual mountain awaits our climbing. There is always more to see in the higher life and the experience is the most fun a person can have. We must never stop. It is a life journey up the mountain, dedicated to letting the unnecessary fall away. Vernon said that Christ was on a spectacularly high level, which allowed him to do the miraculous things that he did.  And Christ said we could do even greater things than he did. What are we waiting for? One of the biggest lies of Satan is that we have to die in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
         Let’s go to work!  The spiritual banquet and all good things await us. Suffering only exists outside the Kingdom of Heaven.
         * A Treasury of Trueness, #889.

  • by Moe Janosec
         Vernon told us when we feel bad, to know we feel bad. And then track it back, to see where the disturbance originated. Many times when I find myself in a negative state it’s because I expected something different to occur than what actually did. I preferred or even demanded that something different happen. And it can be almost anything. At first glance expectation may seem to be a more minor negativity or form of suffering. But it’s often not so because expectations are actually based in a nature that not only expects, but demands, that its wishes and desires be met.
         These underlying demands that manifest as expectations can even take the form of wanting things to go just the way they’ve always gone. I had a humorous reminder of just such a thing when I was waiting my turn to order a sandwich at the local sandwich shop. A woman ahead of me had ordered three meatball sandwiches and I joked a little with her that it was a good thing I didn’t want a meatball sandwich, because that was it for the meatballs — they were now all gone. And then we both admitted we almost always ordered the same sandwich when we came in. By way of explanation she then blurted out to me, “I hate change!” Don’t we all? That’s how it is as long as the false self is in charge. Its expectation is always for things to go smoothly, with no shakeups or shocks. No thwarted demands. No unwelcome changes.
         We’ve been told that Truth is always one with change. That makes intellectual sense to me, but I’ve got to work much harder to allow that higher nature to actually come to me, to be in charge of me more and more. It’s exciting to ponder the possibility that I can get to the point where I remain rightly in charge of myself in all circumstances, to the extent that no event can shake me.
         Demands and expectations come in all shapes and sizes. Hoping society improves. Demanding that others behave above their actual level. Expecting the absence of challenging physical aches or pains. Insisting that others react to me in a pleasing way. And so on. Vernon addresses one specific form of this kind of suffering in There is a Way Out, Chapter 5, “Feelings of Rejection,” when he says: “The real cause of your rejection was your expectation. Most people fear to live without expecting agreement from others, but you must not be like most people.” Expectations always involve wrong thoughts which lead to painful and shaky emotional vibrations. These states also try to pull imagination in, which is not real life at all. They’re something I must work to rise above if I’m ever going to get out.
         There can be a right separation where I can see the entity operating in me that didn’t get its way, that didn’t get its demand fulfilled — and be a dispassionate observer of the whole situation. Instead of being taken over by reacting negatively, then losing energy, the observer detaches the false sense of self from whatever happens. When I fail at this, it’s a good reminder of how I don’t accept the higher help that is always available. As if Truth can’t handle whatever the situation or circumstance may be! The whole key is to be as alert and conscious as possible to what is going through me. And then I can rightly take what comes my way, whatever it may be.

  • by Judith Anderson
         This article will focus on a common type of stubbornness: the obstinate unwillingness to let go of the familiar and to welcome the inevitable and ever flowing changes of life.
         A visit to the chiropractor recently revealed a nice connection to our inner studies in this regard. We hadn’t been to Durango for an adjustment in weeks, and afterwards there was a painful reaction to the crunch. ‘Dem bones did not like being moved out of their rut. The connection to psychological change is that the old nature too has “settled” and has tremendous resistance to being different. It prefers to remain hardened, frozen, crystallized like rock.
         As mentioned last month in Gary’s article on Resistance, it is our resistance to life that causes the pain. Change itself is not the enemy. Rather, the adversary is the objection to Reality, to events as they occur. The unexpected and unplanned is not a foe. But we see it that way in our “delusion of control,” demanding to keep things as they are, or people as we want them to be.
         Though the old self says it wants to change, it is stubbornly “set in its ways” and has no real wish to be transformed. Just try to change one little habit, for instance your morning “coffee ritual” or whatever it is you do after getting up. As an exercise, as we recently did in our Pagosa Springs classes, try this for a week and watch the mind scheme to cheat on its resolve to do something new for a change.
         The artificial nature hates change and wants to retain its routines and have its own way. We revert to the familiar habits, opinions and distractions from an inability to handle life’s changes as they come. We fight and argue and oppose with “it’s my way or the highway.” That’s why giving up something is called a “sacrifice,” for to let go of the old is to lose part of “me.” If we didn’t value it, it wouldn’t be hard and cause us suffering. If we observe it faithfully, as we’re instructed, we soon realize it is painful, not pleasant, to get our way.
         My new neighbors recently sold their big old family home and downsized to a small place. The wife/daughter/mother/grandmother was in torment parting with all the accumulated stuff of a lifetime. They even put their 17 Christmas trees into storage, unable to give them up! This seems ridiculous to an outsider who is not identified with their memorabilia, but believe me, we firmly grip our own attachments, our own past and identifications. Who wants to be a nobody?! And that is the reason we experience inner psychic change as difficult and painful.
         To change in a spiritual sense means an upheaval, an earthquake, a profoundly deep inner wrenching that cannot occur superficially. For it means giving up me, my old ways. And those old ways will object, will scream NO. Those are the screams of the dark demons being torn from the grip on their victim. We must see them, hear their screams and then ignore them and march away.
         On the other side of giving up, of seeing through the false attachments, is a huge lifting of burdens. How freeing to not have to protect a non-existent entity! Observe that false self dragging around its enormous baggage of regrets, guilt, fear, bitterness, hurt and Christmas trees. It is heavy, while the newly emerging true self is Light and Life.
         Let’s welcome change! We can cheerfully work to end the self-inflicted suffering in change by giving up our beloved negativities, opinions, demands — and come awake. After catching wrong thoughts, quickly cut them off and come back to the present moment. What am I doing? Where am I? “Now” is a friend. “Value the present moment.” It can handle the daily routine or the unexpected change. It is freedom. From what? Why, the heavy baggage of my old stubborn self, of course.

  • by Jeff Fisher
         The dictionary defines guilt as feelings of deserving blame, especially for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy. It could also be a feeling of deserving punishment for perceived offenses of the past. All of us have felt guilt at one time or another in our lives. There have been times when I am driving to work on the freeway and another driver cuts me off. At that moment, if I am ‘asleep’ or unaware, feelings of rage will take me over and I’ll have dark thoughts about the other driver. Afterwards, a tremendous feeling of guilt comes up that tells me I should know better than to have had this reaction, or that I should not have these thoughts at all since I have been a New Life student for a long time. Guilt can wreak havoc on our whole day, let alone our whole life. Millions of people have past regrets and a heavy sense of guilt buried deep within them which they don’t even see. This makes these states very dangerous because they are drainers and tormentors that are hellish to live with.
         One of the things Vernon gave us is the wonderful exercise of instant recovery, of starting life all over, which means bringing your attention back to the present moment. If done correctly, all harmful feelings vanish because there is no negative thought in the awareness of ‘now,’ and if there are no condemning thoughts or judgments, there is no pain. In the beginning it takes a lot of effort to do this, because we are so conditioned to react with hostility, we’re oblivious to the thoughts when they take us over.  It’s like a dark cloud of negative energy that’s within us, which we must dare to look at so that we can see how destructive it really is.
         If we are totally honest with ourselves, we will see with a tremendous shock that we do not want to give up our painful guilt. It’s like an old friend that we’ve tolerated all this time because we would rather feel contentious emotions than face our inner emptiness, which is terrifying to the ego. Guilt is one of the tricks used by society to keep everyone afraid and to prevent them from knowing that there is a way to escape the insanity of this world.
         I once put myself in a dangerous situation because I said yes to doing something with my friends. I wanted to say ‘NO,’ but felt guilty that I would be letting my friends down and that I’d be known as a coward or as someone who was weak. Being young and insecure, I wanted to fit in. This  put me under the influence of wrong people, who I now realize didn’t care at all about my well-being and wanted to manipulate me by making me feel guilty. There is something higher in us that is completely free of guilt, but we must be willing to see through the trap, the hoax that guilt is nothing more than darkness masquerading as light.
         Vernon once gave a talk about the Cosmic Sheriff. The story was about an outlaw who was always running, and no matter how hard or how long he ran, the sheriff was right behind him. After many years, the outlaw began getting tired and weary, and decided to give himself up and surrender to the sheriff. He let the sheriff take him all the way back to town, all the while not knowing what would happen to him. You can imagine the fear, guilt and uncertainty that captured his mind and emotions on the trip back. But as soon as they arrived in town, the sheriff gave him a spiritual pardon!
         This is what we all must do if we want to be rescued from our pain. We must get so tired of fighting our suffering that we give it all up and allow the light of truth to dissolve it. No matter what you have done in your past, if you will surrender to the light of truth, you’ll live a New Life where every day is pleasant and free. You will no longer be punished by thoughts of guilt or shame. Even if someone comes up to you and reminds you of something wrong you once did, it will have no effect because you know that what did that destructive thing was not the True Self. It was something that was done in your name by the false nature. The real you can never do bad.  And always remember this encouragement from Vernon: “Truth never condemns you.” It only wants you to come back to your spiritual home where all is well.

  • by Katherine Pascal
         When I arrive early to my doctor’s appointment, the doctor keeps me waiting beyond the appointment time. I am bombarded by dragon thoughts. Why me? Why can’t people keep their appointments? What a maddening world to live in. Is it wrong to be early? Turning to these dragon thoughts for answers, I discover no answer at all. By seeing and separating from these thoughts, I will find that all these thoughts are false. These irritable dragons have no meaning in a higher life. Wanting a higher power to be in charge of my life, these creepy crawly invaders no longer cause me endless suffering.
         I must see events as facts and not exasperations. When someone makes a promise and breaks his word, that’s a fact. At work the meal wagon is on vacation on the very day they bring my favorite meal. A fact. My mental addition of self-defeating thoughts produces an annoyed, grumpy me. This is a fact. There is a higher way to react. I can stop, watch, and realize that adding resentful cross-thoughts is the problem. Being cantankerous is not doing something about the difficulty. Seeing the blundering me interfering with the problem is the Higher Way.
         Irritation is a valuable study. I can investigate my body at the moment I am irritated and see the harm it’s causing. My face is strained; my movements are erratic, jerky. My neck is stiff. I am unaware. I can be aware and free myself to engage fully in the next moment. I can catch huffy reactions, watch them, drop them. What an opportunity to just say NO and regain my life at that moment.
         I am enchanted with Vernon’s principle of easy flow. Irritation is blockage; it interrupts life’s stream. It is an obstacle. Where did I get the idea that I know how everything should work in my world? Has life ever always gone my way all the time? I can just let life happen anyway it wants without cross and irritable me ruining life’s flow. By letting go of the grouchy me, I can live a relaxed life.
         We can work to get rid of all our irritations. The coffee pot stops working. I order a rye bread sandwich and get whole wheat. The phone call I expect is delayed. My favorite market closes. Despite anything that happens, I need never be lost in irritability. It’s always right to see what’s wrong. That’s Success! It’s fun to see what’s wrong because we know that seeing is freeing. We want to wake up to a new life that can handle all events easily, perfectly, painlessly. Just as our physical wounds heal through a natural process put in place by God, we can allow God to enter our lives to heal the mind, emotions and spirit. Thank you, Vernon Howard.

  • by Gary Blatchford
         At this moment one of two things is happening: you are moving upwards spiritually, or you are moving downwards spiritually. Vernon Howard said an individual’s state of higher understanding is never static; it is either growing or diminishing. However, there seems to be another position in which a student convinces himself that he has reached a “comfortable” level of understanding and can now relax the intensity of effort and just coast along. But this is stagnation, this is suffering. You have, as Vernon said, “settled” for yourself as you are.
         This seeming third position is an illusion, a trick of the mind and will have you slipping downhill quickly if you fall for it. The mind could insist that you have done enough work, that you can rest now. Or it might say that you can work tomorrow but not today, not in this present moment. Or, it could even have you believe that you’ve reached such an advanced state of self-development that you know it all. Vernon Howard himself said that he never claimed to be on the mountain top. If he said that he would be cutting himself off from reaching new heights on the spiritual mountain. He was going to keep climbing and gaining new insights and inspirations every day.
         Here are some ways to counter stagnation:
         Read a passage from a Vernon Howard book or booklet every day. It’s good to do this at the same time each day, for example, early in the morning before work and/or in the evening before you go to sleep.
         Listen to a Vernon Howard talk on CD or MP3 CD or watch a video on a DVD or Blu-ray on a daily basis.
         Put a small message on a post-it note and place it on the fridge or a mirror which will serve as a reminder of your spiritual aim for the day. One example would be: My aim is to wake up. Another would be to remember that worry is darkness masquerading as light.
         Shake your head to snap the spell of hypnosis. We tend to be hypnotized by the world and sudden awareness breaks that hypnosis.
         Look up. The looking up reminds you that there is something higher that is trying to help you.
         Relax. Stagnation involves tension. Relax the shoulders and the rest of the body. Also practice letting go of thought and relaxing the mind which always wants to be tense.
         Watch your emotional states. As you watch sadness or depression these states will begin to fade and fall away. The energy that was being wrongly used in negativity will then be freed and can now be used properly to aid your upward journey.
         Pick a spiritual exercise to work with for an entire week. A helpful exercise we were given in a recent class was to not mechanically follow the moods of other people. This is one way to take your own life back from societal influences.
         There are many more ways to go against falling into a state of stagnation and the tendency to “rest” at your present level. Come up with your own and never forget that in order to transcend the false nature and to wake up, consistent super efforts must be made.

  • by Lupe Gonzalez
         One of the directions we’re given in New Life classes is to leave people alone. Although this would seem to be a simple, commonsense rule and most people would claim that they follow it, human nature is actually quite intrusive. The dictionary definitions of the word intrusiveness include aggressiveness as evidenced by interfering in the affairs of others, advancing yourself or your ideas without invitation, being pushy, meddlesome, overbearing or bothersome.
         What does it really mean to leave people alone? A few of the more obvious characteristics would be to refrain from unnecessary blabbing, to not force yourself or your company onto other people, to not ask wrongly inquisitive or prying questions and to respect others’ personal space.
         But leaving people alone covers a lot more than the obvious. There are also more subtle, cunning forms of intrusiveness that may not even be noticed as intrusions. Some that I have observed personally have a lot to do with attention-getting, like when someone walking into a room makes a big commotion or a person slams a door or abruptly drops their keys on a surface, thereby making a sharp, loud noise that disturbs the atmosphere in the room. These acts could indicate carelessness, but they could just as easily be deliberate attempts to broadcast anger or displeasure or to create a sense of power or dominance. We also use our facial expressions, gestures and body language to negatively intrude into the minds and emotions of other people.
         All forms of intrusiveness are attempts to elevate the false nature and to bolster the imaginary self-images we presently live by and protect. That is why this work is all about going against the false self. Knowing that others have intruded on you and that you have intruded on others, sometimes in subtle but devious ways, can clearly be seen and understood but the seeing and understanding require consistent self-noticing on our part. Everything always comes back to self-observation. Awareness is the key so that we neither fall into mechanical intrusiveness nor do we weakly allow the obnoxious behavior of others to invade our psychic space. Awareness of how these offensive acts hurt everyone involved can be of great help in learning to drop them.
         In A Treasury of Trueness in the section entitled ‘Blabbermouthery,’ Vernon gave an exercise in going against the tendency to always “put our two cents” into the conversation. He said, “Deliberately rob yourself of the pleasure of making that remark.” Stop listening to the noisy mind that insists we are required to “contribute” to the discussion. There is no genuine need to habitually and forcefully impose our ideas, thoughts, moods and feelings on others.
    We must work with these principles to begin to feel how valuable they are. Vernon says to not believe anything anyone tells you, but to find out for yourself if what you are hearing is true. We’ll find authentic relief in leaving other people alone and in making the spiritual aim to elevate, rather than to disturb, every place we walk into.

  • by Moe Janosec
         Many people awaken in the morning and the first thought that comes to them and assaults them is, “Do I really have to get up and say and do all those same things I did yesterday? And the day before that …”
         We’re going to have to want to slow down our thinking enough to see that this is the kind of thing we’ve been allowing to happen inside us all our life. And once it gets going, it doesn’t want to stop. It wants us to feel bad, to dread the upcoming day.
         We’re familiar with outright fear overtaking us, but I’m referring to dread here as a milder version of fear that often lurks just under the surface of our awareness. And it often lingers for an extended period of time. One definition the dictionary gives for dread that closely describes the negative state I’m referring to here is: anxious or fearful anticipation.
         OK, so it’s anxiety again, our old familiar “friend”. Being fearful of something in the future is what anticipation is half the time. The other half being, of course, hopeful anticipation of something exciting or pleasant happening to us. So, I’ve allowed a state into my psychic system that has me tensely separating myself from the here and now, the present moment.
         I’ve done that because I don’t want to fully face the emptiness of being without something, anything that will prevent me from feeling my essential emptiness. So I choose things to distract me - in this case dread of the upcoming day. I must act on a higher preference to refuse negativity as many times as it takes, and to stay with the resulting emptiness over and over again, until something different happens. Vernon has assured us that what will happen is the entrance of a higher nature.
         We’ve been given literally hundreds of exercises to help us drop wrong thought, but it’s up to us to use them. It’s going to take a lot of work to allow all our buried negativities to rise up to the light of awareness and finally be dissolved.
         Mr. Howard once said something to the effect of, don’t you know you’re supposed to enjoy life? This can happen, and will happen, when I’ve attended to my spiritual studies and exercises to the point where I see all negativity as the vicious lie it really is. And remain empty of it and rightly unattached from it. Then our natural state of alert, calm poise can come in and be our moment-by-moment guidance and inspiration.

  • by Kyle Rickert
         Recently I heard a talk in which Vernon Howard gave the exercise: “You will not criticize anyone or anything for the next few days. Make a list of every time you criticize yourself or others. Not just with your words, but with your mind, with your body, with your gestures. You criticize yourself, and you even criticize God. You didn’t get that small thing in your life, and that is your God. It didn’t go your way and now you are critical because it didn’t happen for you. See that being critical makes you feel good in a wrong way, and you have to keep that going so that you keep getting this false thrill.”
         Someone cuts in front of you in the line at the grocery store with a huge cart of groceries and the criticism comes up in your mind instantly. You can’t believe that people are so rude in this world and the ego chimes in and reminds you of what a superior person you are because you would never do anything like that. You try to elevate yourself to feel like you’re better than other people. We also criticize ourselves because we don’t live up to our own expectations. There’s a voice in your head, maybe it’s the voice of your parents coming down on you for making a mistake. Or maybe of a boss you just could never please. I’ve seen myself even thinking that these voices are just motivating me to “be a better person”.
         None of this really feels good, which should be our first clue that this endless circle of criticism is doing nothing to help us. It is a bottomless pit of negativity that is taking us away from our opportunity to be in the light every moment. You can see the heaviness in people’s faces, laden with the defeat that their own minds are creating.
         So, we try the exercise to not be critical for a few days. And Vernon says because the mind works in opposites, it will then try to be a “nice or accepting” person. There are people who go around forcing “niceness,” and working very hard to keep this persona intact. We have all seen when the mask falls off and they reveal that they’re not at all the nice, kind man or woman that they’ve contrived to be.
         An exhausted, desperate person lashes out at the world. But Vernon talks about a third way to live life. Not being critical and not pretending to be nice. This third way brings with it a lightness and understanding that can be perfectly content in every situation. It doesn’t need to feel superior to others or pretend to be the loving person who secretly resents the people they interact with. I’ve personally experienced how exhausting it is to deal with any of the ways that criticism comes in. It’s the overthinking mind that’s blocking God’s energy from reaching us and giving us an understanding that is above all of the heavy thoughts. What a relief that there is another way to live life. It takes work, but the reward is to be given true life.

  • by Moe Janosec
             A few days ago, I headed off to keep an appointment to get my hair cut. Because after all, even though no one I know would exactly consider me to be a style icon, I do prefer to be somewhat well-coiffed. So, as I started off, I looked at the clock in my car and the thought came to me that I was probably running a bit late. After wasting no time at all in the first part of my journey, I checked the clock again and realized that I would have no trouble arriving on time. In fact, I would even be a few minutes early.
         The interesting thing about all this was noticing that something in me wanted to continue hurrying after realizing I had plenty of time to get to my appointment. It was very insistent. And that simply made no sense at all! I then made a conscious effort to relax, to be more aware of my driving, and to say “NO!” to this state that had taken me over on the first part of the drive.
         We’ve all heard the expression “Haste makes waste.” It often does just that. The definition of “haste” includes the phrases: “out of breath from haste”, “rash or headlong action”, “undue eagerness”, “mad rush” and so on. These do not sound like good or helpful states and they are not.
         Exercise 11 in the Practical Exercises for Inner Harmony booklet tells us, “Slow down. Relax. Dare to deliberately disobey those inner screams that demand you rush nervously around.” In that same exercise it also says, “Remember, life is not a race for you to win; it is a school for your Higher Education.” So, do I want to live a relaxed, rightly carefree life or don’t I?
         Now the thought may arise, surely there are more serious shortcomings I could work to abolish? At first glance this may appear to be true, but there is a very odd, pervasive state that tries to take over human beings and ruin their day - a very mechanical flow of which mindless hurrying is often a part - and it does no one any good at all. Slowing down, not just physically but also mentally, will make us much more aware of this. We may be shocked at just what an insidious hold this mechanical flow has on us.
         We all likely know of someone, perhaps the person in our mirror, who has injured themselves physically when they’ve been in a mad rush. When an error occurs that is visible physically, there is first an error psychologically, behind the scenes, that led to the outward, physical error. And a prime culprit is often impulsive haste.
         The point is for me to see clearly as an individual how unnecessary and destructive this state is. And to then set about energetically eradicating it from my life. Vernon Howard told us that don’t you know, you’re supposed to be enjoying your life? Haste is the thief of a rightly casual and cheerful life, and if left unchecked it can literally ruin our day and worse. But it can be gotten rid of, which is great news!

  • by Karen West
         Vernon Howard has said that a student must first be a good householder prior to starting the spiritual climb. Being a good householder is an important first step. It means to be self-responsible on the level of everyday living and to be able to deal with ordinary efficiency in daily affairs. Without doing this, a person will not be able to  take responsibility in his or her spiritual life.
         A genuine spiritual life is one in which a person begins to develop gratitude for the opportunity they’ve been given in this physical existence, the opportunity to transcend this insane world and to live in harmony with cosmic laws. It’s one in which someone can begin to see that they did not create their own body, their own life and that there is a Creator who has and who continues to take care of every living thing on this earth. They can start to sense that God, Truth, Reality has all of the True Power. On the Southern California New Life class kitchen wall, a Vernon Howard tidbit states: “THERE IS NO POWER IN THIS WORLD WHATSOEVER.”
         Vernon Howard often reminds us to “come home to yourself” and see what is really going on. This instruction is given to encourage us to be consciously aware of where we are in a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual sense. To recognize where the body is, what thoughts are going through the mind and what emotions are going through us too. If we observe negativity, suffering, complaining, which we will, we’re being irresponsible by ignoring higher instructions because there is nothing stopping us from dropping the negative thought or emotion the minute it comes up. By doing this more and more, it helps us to put God first. We may even arrogantly “think” we have acted “responsibly on a worldly level, but by being spiritually asleep, we haven’t taken responsibility for following heavenly instructions so that we can experience what Truth wants to give us. But even in this state, God, Truth and Reality does not judge or condemn — it only patiently waits for us to see our error.
         The further up the spiritual mountain we go, the more we sense the immense value of waking up and the more deeply we understand how stupidly and carelessly we’ve misused all of the God-given energy available to us. With enough self-work, it is possible to see through the lie that we must suffer in this life and to realize that all psychological pain resides in the lower world. What is unnecessary just doesn’t serve real life and prevents us from living from the True Self, which has no problems, no suffering.
         If we do this self-awareness exercise faithfully, Vernon tells us that darkness will no longer have the same hold on us because it knows we are onto its tricks. It is a process wherein more light is revealed as we show Truth we are sincere. The more we’re willing to no longer be fooled and to see the lower/false/dark world for what it really is, the freer and less burdened we’ll be. We’ll also know what Christ meant when he said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” We’ll be “in this world, but not of it.”
         We can begin to know from ourselves what it means to live from conscious awareness, above this crazy world, to be guided by the True Self, the Kingdom of Heaven within — no longer being irresponsible toward life’s higher purpose, which is to reach our spiritual home before dark.
         In 1500 Ways to Escape the Human Jungle #1044 Vernon Howard says, “We cease to stray from truth when finally realizing that truth is our very own and very wealthy original nature.”

  • by Richard Wooldridge
     I recently had an interaction with a person who hoped for a desired outcome in a particular situation but was quite skeptical it would happen that way. In the tone of the voice, you could hear a resigned but angry sort of cynicism and an anticipation that the outcome would probably be unfavorable. In these teachings we learn that if someone projects a cynical attitude, that negativity will reproduce itself in the outer world. A pessimistic belief that bad things will happen often attract those very things to you. That the inner determines the outer is a higher spiritual law that is always in operation whether we’re aware of it or not.
         We can observe that human beings are untrustworthy, but we don’t have to have a negative reaction to any event that comes our way.  In 1500 Ways to Escape the Human Jungle, Vernon Howard puts it this way, “We can rise above cynicism, for to be cynical is to be still chained to the follies of other people. It is quite possible to see people as they are without shaking with self-reference.”
         The whole point of our life here on earth is to transcend the human mind and human suffering. To rise above them. To actually see that there is a higher way to live free of all animosity. We have failed to contact a higher element that God has placed inside of us, an element that presently remains undeveloped.
         As long as we are apart from God, separated from our higher nature, we will suffer. I have a choice, but I must see that I have a choice. I can choose to be miserable, or I can reject all the persistent thoughts and feelings that insist I must embrace suffering. I was recently on a telephone call with a senior computer technician trying to get help solving a wi-fi problem. The technician eventually came up with a resolution but at a certain point in the conversation she was basically compelled to say that I was stupid for having set up something incorrectly within the system.
         It was something I didn’t know about, but I have a choice as to whether or not the remark offended me. I could see that because of the position this person held, her competitive human nature dictated that she unconsciously feel superior to those who don’t have as much technical knowledge and training as she does. Now, did I have a reaction in which I was wrongly tied to her? One indication of letting this incident fall on a wrong place inside is that I can’t or won’t let the whole thing go. I keep running it over and over again in my mind. Truth says to simply drop it; let it go.
         Human beings believe that the intellect is at the top of the pyramid of life. Society says that those who are considered to be the smartest are to be revered. But there is something above the mind which is way smarter and wiser than the intellectual center. It is something we can take with us when we leave this earth. It is something we can feel, realize and live from while we’re still on this planet. But there is one condition. We must give up being cynical, pessimistic or negative in any way. Truth tells us it can be done.

More How to End Suffering Articles 2

  • by Judith Anderson
         It’s no accident that the words SELF and RIGHT are part of the word self- righteousness. This actually describes the basis for all suffering: the belief that there is a self and that self is always right and must be protected at all costs. Let’s admit it, in spite of our protestations to the contrary, we still feel “I am right and you are wrong.”
         How can that be, the rational mind says? But our negative, insecure feelings proclaim this universal lie is true. The false self is actually non-existent, but let’s face it, until we wake up, we’re still convinced underneath that it’s real. Hence, the ugly Knower keeps arrogantly raising its voice, its opinions, its demands: “Why can’t he/she see it my way?” “I know what is best for me — and for you too.” This falsehood leads to all the other negativities that hurt us so much, like frustration, conflict, anger.
         Recently in class we talked about having strong opinions. (See Inspire Yourself, Chapter 5, about people who had different opinions about their mayor.) We have opposing opinions based on self-interest and acquired attitudes. To have “practical clarity,” there can be no false self, no false personality, no “me” that is identified with the person or situation. Ask yourself where did that strong opinion come from and when did I begin to call it mine? Does it make me feel like somebody special to express it?
         Here’s an illustration. I listened to a one-sided phone conversation in which the owner of a motel was telling a potential customer about the motel’s policy regarding pets. During the course of the conversation, the volume of her voice went up and up. After she got off the phone, she continued the argument with me, even though I happened to agree with her policy. One lesson to be learned from this is to never express an opinion when someone is just looking for a fight. They will not stop if you engage with them! As her voice got louder and louder, the fight went on though she was really yelling at no one.
         People love “a false feeling of life,” love to feel the vibration in the fury and indignation, which just feeds and solidifies the sanctimonious, hypocritical self.
         Moral indignation coupled with self-righteousness adds a dangerous element, like a match to dynamite. “How dare that person and the exterior world not agree with me and give me what I want?!” If I feel morally superior, the opinions/feelings of others don’t matter at all. Vernon, in A Treasury of Trueness says, “Self-development begins where self-righteousness ends.” Insight into this truth can help us when we’re gathering knowledge about human wrongness. As in the current social/political climate, where instead of reasoned, courteous debate we have hateful shouts, blind threats, physical violence, and the wish to silence all other viewpoints. Talk about a self-destructive emotion. Self-righteousness wrecks our health and spirits, relationships and country. It utterly blocks and prevents awareness.
         The higher answer is to be a watchful sentry. First, we must get a very strong taste of this bitter, burning state so we can’t love it anymore. Observe at the moment it occurs how uncomfortable it feels. Pain always emerges when I’m trying to prove I’m right, when I’m defending myself, when I’m arguing internally or externally with others because they won’t agree with me. We are capable of recognizing and feeling deeply the discomfort, the unhappiness in this. Vernon also gave this remarkable lesson in Cosmic Command, #1732: “There is no need to force other people to agree with you.” What a relief when we remember and live that freeing truth!
         Studying how self-righteousness only feeds the belief in the false self will aid our right aim in dropping it. We can’t hear too often that the imaginary self is really non-existent. So how can it be in the right, when it is nothing and nobody? For more on how to “judge righteous judgment,” see the New Testament and 700 Inspiring Guides to a New Life, #605.
         And remember that when we indulge in self-righteousness, our aim to be conscious is thrown out the window. It takes super-effort to give it up and choose a new way but this is all wonderful news, for without the old nature, we will be free of all its suffering.

  • by Brad Langenberg
         Living in this competitive world, man is like a balloon. One day he inflates with the feeling, “I am a winning” and the next day he deflates and says, “I am losing.” Proving to everyone that I am important, that I must be noticed, that to be happy it’s essential to have society’s approval, that need for affirmation was a strong driving force in my life. Later after reading Vernon Howard books and attending New Life Classes, I realized that I was not driven, I was chased. Chased by the fear of not meeting man’s definition of life, to push and strive to get to the top. Then I noticed when I did win, my inner life did not change. I was still anxious.
         Vernon Howard wrote that man’s definition of life and God’s definition of life are not the same. That struck me. Where did I get all these ideas? We are not here to win, we are here to develop and grow as human beings into a higher life. Personally I have worked with many wealthy people, and they all have one thing in common. They had gotten to the top, but every single one of them talked about how they could simplify their life and reduce all the frustration and anxiety that goes along with winning. If you have the identity of being a winner, you will also have the identity of being a loser.
         There is another way, where you are free of everyone and everything. And that freedom and peace of mind is what we’re really looking for at the end of the day. Living in Los Angeles and just driving the streets is a competitive exercise in itself, with everyone jockeying for a better lane, to be in front, to get there first. And with more people, you have more tension.
         There is nothing wrong with having a nice house, a nice auto, and a good job, but is the stress and anxiety that accompanies these strivings good for you or bad for you? It is this false, competitive, acquired nature that keeps us from the freedom we seek.
         Nature is a great teacher. I have worked a lot with horses and groups of people and have witnessed something very interesting firsthand. In those groups there were homeless children, ex-gang members, blue collar workers, CEOs, as well as celebrities and people of great wealth. What really stood out to me was that the horse did not know the difference between the homeless child and the celebrity, because the horse simply doesn’t operate using those labels. What the horse did know was who it could connect to and who it could not connect to.
         Vernon Howard wrote that God doesn't know the difference between a man with five million dollars and a man with five cents. God only sees the distance of his separation from him. This I could actually see for myself in working with nature and people.
         In the Bible, it says that the Kingdom of Heaven is within. This is where the answer lies, not in any outward accomplishment. The fictitious nature keeps looking in the wrong direction, but once we recognize the false life for what it is, we are given the real life.
         Competitiveness creates separation and these teachings are showing us how to become more natural, whole and one with God/Truth/Reality. Vernon Howard explained it this way: “There is no competition in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

  • by Karen West
         The grip of darkness is fueled by keeping a person unconscious to the harm done by his or her false nature. Vernon states that we are to wake up from this self-damaging slumber and break the spell. What does this mean? It means that until we see we’re apathetic toward our own spiritual growth and inner development, we will not take steps to see through the illusion of suffering and how we stubbornly stay asleep when we have been given the true solution to our problem.
         It is Life (with a capital “L”) that has been offered to us by God, Truth, Reality. We presently live life with a small “l”, weighted down by all of the cares of the world. We have neither the best of this world nor any sustained contact with the higher world. Until we face the mistake we’ve been making, we’ll continue to live within a very small part of ourselves that traps our attention and limits our view of Reality.
         Truth wants us to see that we have been ungrateful for and apathetic toward the Life given to us. We have not cared for it properly. In his book, Esoteric Encyclopedia of Eternal Knowledge, in the section entitled “Affection for Royal Principles,” Vernon says, “We must not handle the truth carelessly. It deserves our honor and affection.”
         If you were given a precious gift on just the material level, you’d likely take excellent care of it. The Bible references the “pearl of great price,” found in Matthew 13:45-46. “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” Likewise, the more we value these teachings, the more enthusiasm we’ll have toward our own spiritual evolvement and the apathy, laziness and carelessness will fall away.
         But one of the many tricks of darkness is to keep us unaware of our undeveloped abilities and of our God-given gifts. In truth, the Kingdom of Heaven is within, as close as our breath and available at every moment.  Why do we then see only lack and live from the false self in continual suffering? Why do we dismiss its authenticity in preference to our self-created illusion of suffering? Because we mistakenly believe we’re separate from God and that we must do life on our own. Because we’re addicted to the low-level vibrations of the artificial nature and are afraid to give them up. Because we haven’t realized that God, Truth, Reality is waiting patiently for us to awaken to the True Self and to the awareness that everything valuable comes from the higher.
         Deep down, we know we don’t understand what life is all about and that we misjudge what is truly good and right for us. If we genuinely want a peaceful life, we can longer afford to be apathetic and passive toward self-work. This requires continually bringing our attention home to ourselves and refusing to fight what we see.
         Vernon states, “The resistance to the disturbance is the disturbance.” We resist the light and then suffer over the disturbance that it causes. Vernon tells us that all suffering is unnecessary. When we start to sense that the power of the universe is on our side, we’ll also want to drop the resistance and yield to Truth. But we must see that darkness is not our friend and has never done us any good. Only then will we stop being apathetic toward “Life” and begin to live from the harmony of our own inner essence.

  • by Gary Blatchford
         Vernon Howard tells us that we have a false self and a True Self. The false self, which is an imaginary self, houses all of our negative emotions and attitudes and loves to suffer. One way it loves to suffer is to pretend to be something it’s not. Pretense tries to build up the artificial nature, but like anything constructed on a shaky foundation, it’s always in danger of collapsing. There is something very wrong with this constant self-promotion and you can feel it if you’ll steadily watch your behavior and become more aware of your thoughts and feelings.
         Have you ever gotten into trouble because you pretended to know something, and you really didn’t? You wanted to appear knowledgeable, but this one deception led to a lot of discomfort and further duplicity. It might even have unpleasant consequences if something like this occurs in a business or in a workplace safety situation. Is pretending to know really worth the pain it causes?
         Or you pretend that you are not wrongly concerned about the health of your physical body. Yet you go into fear or worry over every little physical pain, real or imagined. Do you see the contradiction? Or do you make-believe it is not there?
         Perhaps you pretend that you have more money than you actually do in order to impress another person. Why do you want to impress anyone? Why do you need to be liked by anyone when you can be guided by God, Truth itself, a force that always knows what to do and never gets itself into trouble with others.
         Someone comes up and starts talking to you. Though you aren’t interested, you act as though you’re enjoying the conversation in the hope that the other person will like you. Is this really necessary?
         Your favorite place to shop implements a new policy that makes no sense. Are you worried over this or are you pretending it doesn’t bother you? Either way you are choosing to suffer. Worrying is pain and pretending is avoiding reality. If you use these true-life principles you can get to the point where you won’t worry and you won’t feel any need at all to pretend.
         You can also convince yourself that you are on a high spiritual level. Harmful voices combined with imagination and pretense can lead a person to wrongly assume that he or she is much more advanced than they really are. Vernon Howard warned us not to fall into this trap or to try to imagine what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. His direct instruction was to be aware of where you are and to know your current inner state. Stop pretending, do the spiritual work, move into awareness and into the realm of Truth, and the Kingdom of Heaven will come to you.

  • by Kyle Rickert
        While living through the past year and a half, more than likely you’ve experienced a feeling of helplessness many times. Confusion, desperation, anger, frustration and anxiety have been right there as well, counterparts to this state of helplessness. It has seemed that many negative issues were magnified in a huge way, both personally and on a world-wide scale.
         Not that the feeling of helplessness is a new phenomenon to any of us, but in the past for me it would come and go depending on the circumstances and current situation. But this felt different. Everyone seemed to be experiencing high levels of apprehension and foreboding that just didn’t let up. A tidal wave of fear swept over the world on a scale that I have not experienced in my lifetime. However, some of us are lucky enough to be studying these teachings and that is what has made the difference for me personally. A feeling of right dissatisfaction with giving in to the onslaught of helplessness and fear has been inspired by regularly going to classes and making a consistent effort to read and listen to Vernon’s talks. After all, the ultimate purpose of all true spiritual studies is to teach us how to allow a higher power to command our thoughts and feelings so thoroughly that we are able to handle anything that happens to us and that means anything.
             The more you study any of these negative states such as helplessness, the more you start to see that they fluidly interchange. A “small concern” when left to run amuck in your mind can quickly turn from worry, to panic, anger, sadness; it really can come on like a flood when emotions take over instead of practical thought. When your intention is not set on being conscious and an effort is not being made to come out of a negative state, the thoughts turn into an out-of-control train. I’ve always really liked the mental image of a runaway train, because at first glance it’s just a speeding whir of cars, bound together by the track. But if you study a train long enough, eventually you will start to see the space between the cars and that is the key to this work. You must relax and slow the train of thoughts enough so that you can see one at a time and begin to release yourself from the hypnotic state induced by the unbroken procession of uncontrolled thoughts and feelings. That pursuit and the right sensing that there is something infinitely higher that can guide your life will release the negative feeling of being helplessly out of control.
         Vernon’s teachings are fundamentally based on the principle of self-responsibility and all negativities and issues lead back to the concept that if you’re unhappy and discontent in life, it is your duty to make a change. You are not required to surrender to feelings of helplessness and despair when society presents its next set of bad news. Worrying and being consumed with anxiety not only lessen personal energy but attracts more negativity into a person’s life. I have seen this in my own life many times and I know that the only answer is to relax and to allow something higher to guide you. You don’t have to “believe” that this is possible, but you can go out and prove it for yourself. And you will then know, with unmistakable certainty, that a higher power is always available to show you the way.

  • by Judith Anderson
         Life is met with the wrong attitude. In Pathways to Perfect Living, we’re told, “Strain exists in the gap between what we insist we need and what we actually receive” (p. 147). Life presents itself and we either complain, object, fight and suffer, or meet it with a completely new viewpoint.
         To illustrate what this new attitude would be like, there is a question asked in The Power of Your Supermind about the problem of insomnia. Vernon answers, “Stop fighting sleeplessness…. If your mind and body do not want to sleep, why should you object? Give up caring whether you sleep or not” (p. 150).
         Relinquishing the illusion of control is a monumental lesson. It relates to the esoteric principle of non-action. We must give up so-called self-protection to be cared for by Truth. As Vernon once said in a talk (3-23-84), “If you still take care of yourself, then God can't do it!"
         Vernon once told a story of a young peach tree, which provided nourishing peaches. In the natural course of life, it grew old, died and fell to the ground. But when our body undergoes physical changes through normal growth and aging, we fearfully protest and complain, “I should remain beautiful and young forever.” So people go on diets and exercise regimens, count calories, run marathons and oppose the inevitable changes.
         When you’re young, you think you’ll always be quick and you’ll never be sick. Then things start to change and surprise! You have to slow down and can no longer be as active and spry as you once were.
         With aging and poorer health, more than just physical discomfort usually occurs; if allowed, psychological suffering from negative emotions arises. It is easy to go wrong if these changes are faced mechanically and unconsciously, which results in a lot of complaint and sourness. Unfortunately, negativity toward health matters is often encouraged by so-called friends, relatives and allies. Listen to older people talk. Fear is present, accompanied by feelings of helplessness and a wish for sympathy, a desire to control the body, with an increase in prescription drugs, in doctor and hospital visits, insurance and financial worries.
         Remember, the world does not want us to wake up. It wants to be able to manipulate sheep who are asleep. It wants to snuff out the light we’ve found here and keep us entangled in more and more distractions that can cause distress and anxiety, which can easily consume us as we age. When someone complained to Vernon that he had had many bad breaks in life, Vernon said “to change your thinking.” The negativity is not in the event, it is in you!
         Besides complaint, another way to describe the cause of psychological suffering as we age is that we are strong objectors to what is happening to us. The mind grumbles, “These changes should not be occurring in my life. What can I do to stop them?” The true answer is that we are setting ourselves up in opposition to the natural process of how life unfolds on this earth. We demand certain requirements in life which cannot be met. So the mistake and cause of suffering is our own misunderstanding, which is that I can and must control what happens to me. This is impossible.
         This situation is a whole new adventure of discovery if you’re a truth student, a chance to learn something new. Am I going to go along with what the world says I must feel or will I allow the changes to occur without objection and quietly watch?
         Human beings are unique in that they have a chance to rise above being earthbound; this life is an opportunity to rise to a higher world while still living in a physical body. New Life students can use everything to wake up and to “come out from among them,” so this presents a wonderful opportunity to rise higher spiritually.
         With a sense of curiosity, we can observe: “Well, look at that. I’m going to watch and see what happens. Yes, it’s new, oddly unexpected. I don’t have to like or dislike it. I only have to watch without calling it mine, my body, my eyes, my weight. Yes, it’s where I live now, in a temporary vehicle on this planet. But it’s not me, my essence. So what comes and goes is not mine.” There can be no suffering if I refuse to identify with any painful thoughts or ragged, desperate emotions. Vernon says in “End of Frustration,” in his book Esoteric Encyclopedia of Eternal Knowledge, “With the vanishing of the illusion of self, there is no one to oppose what happens.”
         It comes back to the question, will I trust Truth or am I an atheist who battles with life? Do I fight the God who made me or will I learn from Reality as it comes? Vernon said, “Let it all unfold.”
         “The spirit is 10,000 times more important than the body.” We can separate simple and practical health information from the obsession to control what happens to the body. And Vernon assured us that the spiritual has complete dominance over everything, including the physical.
         All these negative conditions and states can be consciously watched, then left behind and ignored. We do not have to be drawn in and engaged by them. We don’t have to go there! See this refusal as a powerful preventative remedy to end suffering. Your force and energy will increase as you focus on true healing and inner health.

  • by Paul Wolfe
         A couple of months ago, in our class in California, we had a topic from Vernon Howard’s insightful book Esoteric Encyclopedia of Eternal Knowledge. The section was entitled “What Others Think” and it got me thinking about all the time and energy that I’ve wasted worrying about what other people think of me.
         When I was young, did they think I was handsome? As I got a little older, did they think I was good at my job? And, still later, did they think I was intelligent? And then when I found the Vernon Howard teachings, did they think I was Spiritual?
         The answer is no to all of the above and the reason I know that is because after a bit of work, I figured out that they were all worried about what I thought of them!
         In the section “What Others Think”, Vernon tells us that others’ attitudes toward us have no power to hurt or to influence us – it is only our own wrong thinking that causes this kind of suffering. So, it is really my thoughts about other people’s thoughts that are causing me pain. Operating from the belief that other people’s approval of me can somehow make my life better is a mistake. It's an error in thinking that causes us to be invisibly chained to the world around us.
         The truth is that the vast majority of people are thinking about themselves and about how they can get free of their own suffering, if they’re even aware of how much they suffer. And even if they aren’t aware of it, they don’t suffer any less because the pain is still there deeply buried in the mind and in the emotional life. They’re likely running as fast as they can in the wrong direction, toward a career or a relationship or some other worldly “prize” that will never be able to provide lasting relief and release.
         It isn’t necessary to be chained to the world of people and events or to be constricted and limited by our own thoughts about it. We’re told that we need have no concern over what others think of us. What we must do is to use these higher principles to replace the fictitious self with the natural self because the natural self has no concern at all over any of this nonsense.
         I can’t help but mention what occurred in class today. I knew I would be writing about approval after class and for our pre-class topic, the moderator chose the subject of approval. Once again Truth shows me that there is just one thing – God, Truth, Reality – and that it is on my side to the extent that I allow myself to be joined with it. Thank God for this work!

  • by Karen West
         Vernon Howard said, “We know you have been hurt.”
         I recently watched an online video of an interview with a relationship “specialist”. In the interview, the interviewee said that it would be very practical for a person to sit and write down all of the times they remember being hurt since they were a child. From a spiritual viewpoint, and if not taken to solidify the false, “victimized” nature, this exercise can be very valuable in becoming aware of how we’ve allowed ourselves to be hardened by our circumstances and experiences.
         Vernon said to write down your top five hauntings in his book, Your Power of Natural Knowing in the chapter entitled, “Live in the Bright Light.” He knew we operate from hundreds of past hurts and hauntings. Vernon Howard was a big proponent of writing exercises and making up this type of a list can be very revealing and helpful. He went even farther by instructing us to also put down on this list where we have hurt other people.
             All of the relationships we have are affected because we’ve both hurt others and been hurt by others before. Vernon knew this deeply and pointed it out quite often in his talks. As a result of taking these painful experiences on as essential parts of ourselves, we’ve become closed-off, guarded and hardhearted. And unfortunately, we’re ruled by a false nature that seeks to keep this hardheartedness and all those hurts protected and alive in our thoughts and feelings. This traps us in a memory life that has nothing to do with right now.
         When I was in my thirties, I was divorced, with two small children, trying to survive with two small start-up businesses. My youngest child had extreme health issues at birth and almost died. During one of my yearly physicals, our family doctor told me not to lose my “vulnerability.” I can see now that what he was trying to say was not to become embittered and hardened because of tough life circumstances. Putting it in New Life language, we must not allow the false nature to build walls of so-called self-protection which shield and protect only that which is false in us. What a waste of energy!
         By writing down and clarifying what hurts and haunts us and by realizing that we were hurt by sleeping, unaware people, we can begin the process of consciously letting go of old wounds. This breathes life into parts of us that have been pushed down and not allowed to come up into the light.
         And another aspect of this exercise is to ask, “Where am I asleep?” If I was consciously aware, I would have known that nothing and no one can really injure my True Self and that the attack coming from outside was an invader trying to cause inner separation from Reality.
             Never forget that now is new. These old slights and grievances are in the past. They are not in the now unless we are spiritually asleep and living from them. And by being in conscious awareness right now, we are truly protected from inviting new potential hurts to enter and torment us.
         It's becoming more and more apparent to me that many relationship problems are caused by deep-seated, hardhearted attitudes that dictate our present behavior. These habitual reactions are not part of a free-flowing pattern but are constrained by the compulsions of the old nature. By hanging on to past resentments, hostilities, and grudges that we still unknowingly carry, we can never live a truly happy life.
         Of course, we cannot change society, but we can let Truth change us as individuals. We can begin to look inside, make this list of hauntings and really become aware of how we must allow all the hardness be melted down by the warmth of Truth. And then we’ll know it isn’t necessary to suffer over anything anymore.

  • by Judith Anderson
         “A wish to understand why you suffer,” Vernon Howard said, "a wish to see what part you play in the fact that you always feel rejected, that you feel unwanted, that you feel unworthy, that you feel inferior ... will always lead to a higher level of insight” (on DVD 11: 4). So let's explore the topic that's difficult to even admit to feeling — rejection.
         Basically, there is a desire to be liked — accepted, approved, affirmed — and thus comes its opposite, the fear and dread of being disliked, rejected. This “I” is the ego, the false part of us which desires, fears and suffers. It can never be satisfied, only hurt and then pretend it's not. A common denial is, “Oh, I don't care what other people think,” which usually means a big lack of self-knowledge, which must come before any healing can occur.
         Girls learn to want “love” and to think “please don't hurt me.” In boys, it manifests more often as a desire to compete, win, and gain prestige. We may use big or sentimental words such as affirmation or love, but it still comes back to the little boy or girl who wants to be liked and not rejected.
         Since this desire and fear stem from the ego, as it grows up, the child just wants its own way. The terrible two-year-old becomes the demanding adult who falls into wrong, negative habits, and emotions, reactions like crying or greedy grabbing or blaming to compensate for its inability to get approval. Vernon says, “Nobody really likes you anyway” —  it’s a losing battle for egotism. The False Personality can never win for it’s built on a shaky foundation without substance. Being real is a whole new ball game, which we're here to learn.
             Now we come to a clarification about growing up into a mature, healthy adult, particularly in the Work: Correction is not rejection. Here's an example from a recent encounter.
         At our City Market deli, I had ordered 1/2 lb. of ham for New Life breakfast enchiladas. The deli employee working on the slicing machine was blabbing non-stop to another woman doing more slicing. Handing the package to me, she said, “Oh, you didn't want a full pound, did you? My mistake.” I answered, “No, only a half-pound. You were talking and forgot what you were doing.” (Not to mention, working on a sharp machine.) A lady waiting near me bounced over and said, “And we never do anything like that, do we?!”
         She was being “a good person,” though sarcastic, commiserating with the person in error and so dismissing their chance to face the error and learn from it. This is one reason we don't learn from our mistakes. We're taught to justify them and ignore people who bring attention to our blunders in case we might feel hurt. The ego protects and justifies its wrongness at all costs: “Build self-esteem, praise people, give them sympathy.” So instead of learning self-responsibility, we become lazy and point the finger of blame at others.
         Vernon told us to be receptive to correction and say, “Thank you. Please tell me more." What could be more important, for instance, than learning to be practical and keep your mind where your body is, especially in a potentially dangerous physical situation, as when driving or using a sharp tool?
         In the Work, this is a crucial distinction: Correction is not rejection. We must be rightly corrected in order to change and to grow up. It requires us to see what we actually are behind the mask, the false front. The question is are we willing to look and see where we're wrong, or do we just embrace self-pity, lash out at the other person and burn?
         The pain only comes from our wrong thinking. One error is in thinking the self is never wrong, always right. That’s nonsense of course but it's still the knee-jerk reaction. So we must go through a purification process of realizing deeply that we are all wrong, have been wrong all our lives. We can't evolve spiritually until we do. As a mystic in Psycho-Pictography (p. 156) is quoted, we must “be cured of the insanity of conceit....”
         We mistakenly believe in words. Labels like ridicule, scorn and rejection fix responsibility outside me, rather than seeing the assault is really from within. Rejection is a word, just like success or failure. They are labels, not realities. But I believe I am that person who suffers, that it’s real. It is only the wrong identification with what’s artificial in us that gets hurt. When losing “the agonizing need to prove” myself right or real, the pain and blame disappear.
         Be honest. Become aware when you get pained. See the attack and forcefully stop it right there. Remember it is the false  part that is disturbed, the weak, wimpy nature. It’s an illusion, imaginary. Separate from this “I” by seeing this is the very enemy force within which loves to self-reference everything and say “poor me, they don't like me.” It loves to be someone who struts or suffers on the center of the stage, liked or disliked. We were cautioned, "Do not fall in love with your suffering!”
         “Another person can't hurt you unless your thoughts allow it” (Psycho-Pictography). This realization takes the wind out of its sails. When the ego starts to collapse and disappear, we begin to be free of feeling rejected (and its many allies, feeling left out, envy, bitterness, hatred). Both the enemy and the answer are within.
         Vernon once told a story of a father teaching his young son how to play baseball. He necessarily had to explain and correct his errors for he was just learning. Like a kind father or coach or teacher, Truth gives us only what we need and can take. We can trust Truth to guide us through every obstacle, every difficulty as the false self weakens and the true self, the essence within, takes its rightful place in our lives.

  • by Bill Brown
         We suffer because our old earthly nature disobeys Spiritual Law. In fact, our not-who-we-really-are-self can only seem to exist by disobeying spiritual law. Human nature does not just get punished; it is the punishment itself.
         I am spiritually disobedient when my egotism is in charge because it is why I suffer.     Vernon Howard asks that we as spiritual students exhibit one ounce of intelligence by trying to see this.
         We are under a spiritual truancy law — orders from God to learn all about our suffering, so that we can study our way out of it to sanity and happiness.
    Earthly and spiritual truancy laws are quite different. Earthly truancy laws only demand a physical body be at school, whether there's any intent to learn or not. Under the spiritual truancy law, I am always at school — it's wherever I am — but I am not in school unless I really want to know why I suffer.
         Truant is an old word — we know its current meaning of being absent from school, absent from learning — but it came from a source that Vernon Howard says is handing us the result of that irresponsibility — being a wretched wanderer.
         We have standing spiritual orders: use everything and make spiritual connections with what you see out in the world. We can sometimes find helpful lessons and reminders in unexpected places:
    Seventy years ago, the world's most famous dancer starred in an MGM movie musical called Royal Wedding. This movie has a signature scene that certainly stunned audiences when they first saw it and it's still amazing to see today. The star had come up with a way to entertainingly exaggerate his own legendary ability. In his trademark elegant, sophisticated manner he danced up a wall, across the ceiling — he was upside down now — and down the other wall — seemingly defying the laws of gravity. Movie magic.
         But spiritually speaking, this star was in a more amazing second scene which reveals the reality of human nature with the help of humor. The second scene is a rousing 6½ minute song, dance and comedy routine about lying and gullibility. All our suffering involves lying and gullibility — we lie or get lied to in a big alternating circle.
         This scene is about a romance that has hit a rough patch, as they say. The star plays fast-talking boyfriend Tom, wearing a loud sport coat and straw hat. This is what Tom sings (here ever so slightly modified) to Ellen, his girlfriend, when she complains to him about how she is being treated:
         How can you say you believe me when I said “I love you” when you know I've been a liar all my life?
         I've had this nature since I was a youth.
         You must have been insane to think I’d tell you the truth!
         Tom repeatedly brags about his lying and laughs at his girlfriend because time after time she’s fallen for the lies.
         But by the end of this act the world's most famous dancer has literally been floored. He is on his back, straw hat down around his neck, pushing off with his heels to escape, but starting to acknowledge his lying:
    Ellen: You know you've been a liar!
         Tom: I know I've been a liar.
         Ellen: A double-crossing liar!
         Tom: A double-crossing liar.
         Ellen: All your double-crossing life!
         Here we have a humor-hammer pounding on the subject of lying, but what if we were confronted directly with this scene in real life? You know your reaction would be different. This is what Mr. Howard called our spilling level — how much truth can we take about ourselves without overreacting and losing the lesson about what is causing our suffering. We must obey the spiritual order to make an empty space inside so that what is Higher can fill it and help us to raise that spilling level.
         Maybe repeating this imagery would be useful: the world's most famous dancer goes from seemingly being free of gravity to being incapacitated and on the floor from the weight of his own lying. (Both scenes are easily available on the Internet.)
         Vernon Howard is telling us we must be floored (he often used the word stunned) by what we are consenting to let happen to us. You have a lying, disobedient nature, and most of the time you obey it and suffer. That’s the fact — but it does not have to remain the fact with our sincere request for help from God.
    “The most beautiful thing that can ever be done for a human being, including all of us in the room, is to have someone point out our weakness and our darkness — that’s the most beautiful thing. But what are you going to do with it, what are you going to do with it, what are you going to do with it? Come on, come on, come on, come on, please, please, please, grow up!”
    (The above quote is from Vernon Howard’s Higher World MP3 CD 32, Track 9)

  • by Dr. Lynne Wooldridge
         There are whole categories of dependencies, including some that are practical in daily living like relying on a grocery store to provide food or a mechanic to repair a car. To clarify what we’re talking about, here’s one dictionary definition of the kind of dependence this article will address. Dependence can be defined as “the state of relying on or being controlled by someone or something else.” In other words, behaviors and actions are not under your control, but under the authority of something foreign and alien to your original nature.
         This can cover a lot of territory, but one type of control we seldom consider is that we’re driven through life by a haphazardly formed, but hardened set of beliefs and ideas and the personal self-images created by them. For example, living from a self-image of being “good” is not the state of goodness itself. The fantasy image creates a rigid framework for how to behave that’s been projected outward so many times, it comes up automatically and unconsciously. It’s like the response is encased in stone. We take these “attributes” on as friends that help us navigate a hostile world and give safety and security but that’s not true, is it? They don’t function that way. They torment us. If I perceive myself as good but do something offensive and unpleasant that hurts another human being, that puts me in a very painful, contradictory position. How could someone as good as I am do something that bad?
         Dependence on something false can never lead us to something real. In the chapter ‘Welcome Your Higher Nature’ in Your Power of Natural Knowing, Vernon calls these tiresome manipulations costume changes. They are contrived, unnatural and mentally created responses. He says, “The idea of putting on one costume after another must be explored minute by minute.” And we ought to let this statement of his shock us. Vernon said something like, “See that all your replies to the world are from costumes; you never speak from anything but a costume.” In other words, there is nothing real and pure operating in us at present. But all that can change. We must keep these principles at the center of our lives at all times to learn how to say no to all costume selections.
         One simple exercise Vernon gave to break out of these self-created reactions was “to let go of one little incident that you took with offense.” Has it ever occurred to us that we’re not in touch with Real Life at all? That these buffers insulate us from experiencing any authentic relaxation and peacefulness that we could have in this life? In a talk, Vernon once said something very memorable. He said emphatically “I want you to have experiences that make you feel ALIVE!” The way has been given and it is our choice as to whether we want to follow the path all the way home.

  • by Jeff Fisher
         Vernon said worry is darkness masquerading as light. There is not a single benefit to worrying about anything. All it does is wrongly use the imagination to fret about some future event that we have no control over. But we get a false thrill out of worry because it gives us something to do with ourselves. It focuses the attention on the worrier, giving us the illusion that a separate self exists.
         Worry also keeps us from experiencing the present moment which is all there truly is. It makes no sense to worry, as it is a false substitute for living right now. Not once has worry ever solved a problem. It can only cause pain and confusion. And there is no end to what you can worry over. It could be losing a job, your health, your money, or being bothered by what other people think of you. The list could go on and on.
         One of the reasons we worry is because we choose to suffer instead of viewing the problem with spiritual eyes. If people could see the destructive ‘thrill’ of worrying they would give it up in a flash. As Vernon said, “No human being ever consciously hurts himself.”
         A couple weeks ago I had an issue at work. There were some refund claims I filed for a client that were not approved, and the client wanted to have a phone call regarding the denials. I immediately started to have anxiety, worrying that it was something I did. It was affecting me negatively and I was losing sleep which was also affecting my other work responsibilities. I was being taken over by these negative thoughts such as, “You had better worry about it, because if you don’t then something really bad will happen.” Once I spoke with the client, I found out it was an issue with the information they had given me. It was nothing I had done wrong. All this time I was causing myself unnecessary pain and fearing a situation over which I had no control and which wasn’t my fault in the first place.
         Worry is also dangerous, because when we are worried about anything we are in a state of insanity. We are asleep, sadly thinking we are doing something constructive. We must wake up to the reality that the whole world is one gigantic lunatic asylum that just loves to keep us in chaos, darkness and confusion. Just watch the evening news and you will see how the media is obsessed with writing stories about issues to keep you in a continual state of fear, anxiety, worry, and even hatred of a particular group or person. We must see with a painful shock that everyone on this earth is in a state of unconscious sleep. If you were to honestly look at the world, you will not see anyone who is truly decent, and if you do, it would be exceedingly rare.
         One of the ways to see through worry is to fully understand it from a higher viewpoint. Any time we are anxious about the future or afraid of situations or circumstances, we must know with both the mind and spirit that we are being hoaxed. See that the primary cause of worry is the belief that we exist as a separate self which must fight to save itself. If we see through this illusion, then all worries and confusions will begin to fall away. When we refuse to take worry as necessary, a whole new world will exist for us. One that will be free of tension, dread, fear and loneliness where we can be truly free. As Vernon stated, “Like an eagle, we were meant to soar.”