From 2025 Fall/Winter Newsletter
“What prevents higher wisdom that we could have?” Vernon Howard posed this question in a talk given on August 8, 1986. * If you reflect upon it, this question could be asked in any time-period, any century or any era and it would be a pertinent query to pose to any human being. You could say it’s arrogance, egotism, ignorance, self-absorption, stupidity. And of course, you could go on with a number of other straightforward descriptions. Vernon put it this way, “It’s the insistence of a man or woman for being on his own. Thinking the way you want to think. Thinking your own way ― having your own ambitions.”
Have you noticed that this is what is going on in society today? Almost every human being is saying, “I know what I am doing. Leave me alone. Keep your philosophies to yourself.” If you examine these statements and attitudes closely, you’ll see they’re motivated by a rejection of God. We think we know better. “It means you will not and cannot concede that there is an intelligence higher than the one you now have.” It is imperative that we begin to examine ourselves and our inner makeup because this is an extremely destructive way of thinking.
I have a friend who recently told me a fact about his business, which showed great insight into people. He sells advertising and said that on more than one occasion he has been told, “You should stick it to your customers.” In other words, charge them whatever he can get away with charging them. Good for him that he has a burgeoning conscience and couldn’t or wouldn’t do something like this. It’s all too common these days for people, both men and women, to think in this way. No wonder this country is in the shape that it is in.
Remember the question I started this article off with. Being a conscienceless human being and taking advantage of other human beings is wrong. Being ruthless is very harmful because it destroys the spirit. Being a grouch devastates essence. There is a huge difference between contrived niceness and genuine pleasantness. You can “get” places in this world with phony politeness but that is only done with surface personality, and it does nothing to lead us to the higher wisdom we’re supposed to be seeking.
I recently saw a very interesting interchange with two professional tennis players on the court after a match. One player did or said something during the heat of the game that the other player took as an insult. After the match was over the winning player confronted the losing player about what he had done on the court. The winning player was very young and immature and was physically bigger so he figured he could intimidate and demand an apology from the other player.
The losing contestant was gracious in defeat and didn’t feel it was necessary to have to respond in kind. The younger more aggressive one was contentious and felt he had something to prove. No one is going to act or talk to me like that. The losing player didn’t back down from the confrontation but also did not escalate things. He very tactfully handled the whole situation and told the other player you won so there’s no need to take this any further. I noticed that he wasn’t afraid of having to deal with the winning player, but also very wisely diffused his hostility. He gave the younger person nothing to grab onto. It was intriguing to watch the whole event unfold. It was refreshing to see someone do something right out in the world and to handle a situation in a more mature way.
If we were to examine ourselves more closely we would see that we’re hotheads ourselves. It doesn’t take much provocation to set us off. All of the following situations actually happened and illustrate this point. Someone takes a parking space we had our eye on. Someone cuts us off in traffic on the freeway. You’re the fifth person in line at the Post Office and there’s only one employee working the counter and it takes 20 minutes before they get to you. One lady is buying a bunch of sentimental cards and wants to break them up into two categories and pay with two separate credit cards but accidently gives the employee the wrong card because she was thinking about something else and not paying attention to what she was doing. She then profusely apologized and laughed to relieve the pressure she felt because she made a stupid mistake and was holding up the line longer than necessary. The man in front of you is afraid to get too close to the person in front of him so he hangs back 10 feet because he’s scared he may catch something from that person. Remember, we must stay one cow apart between each other. It takes an extra 15 seconds for him to walk up to the counter. And all you had to do was simply pick up a package.
In the meantime, steam is starting to come out of your ears but something in you reminds you to watch the anxiety welling up inside. The thought comes up, they have absolutely no consideration for anyone else. No one else in the world exists but them. Your mind then says we’re almost there. Maybe his business won’t take very long, and I won’t have to wait much longer.
You finally get to the counter, and you hand her the slip, pointing it in the right direction so she can read it and doesn’t have to turn the slip around. She takes off to get your package and finds it fairly quickly, but you have a clear view of her and she stops to complain to another employee about the previous customer who had received a notice on her phone about a package that was supposed to have come in but had only just arrived and hadn’t been sorted or checked in yet. They finally found her package, but you had to wait an extra four minutes and thirty-two seconds. The postal worker then comes back to the counter but must scan the package before handing it to you. Finally, you are on your way.
In these teachings, you learn that examples like this provide an excellent opportunity to watch your mind go crazy. A wide range of negative emotions come up in situations like this, such as anger, frustration, impatience, dumbfoundedness, bewilderment and other relatives that rear their ugly heads. You also get to see what almost every human being is like ― asleep, careless, inconsiderate, inefficient, lost, self-centered, the list goes on and on. But it’s something to simply be observed and not to react to negatively.
You can see a tremendous amount of the psychic sleep that has been wrecking your life in one little incident like that. If I hadn’t come into contact with these truth principles and come to class, which by the way explain everything, I wouldn’t have been aware of any of this. We can understand all of it and see what a heavy price is paid by automatically falling into these hostile and antagonistic reactions.
We can start to do something different with our lives if we truly want to stop suffering from being a mechanical, unaware, unconscious human being. We can start having real fun and not be such a miserable wretch (unhappy person). Vernon put it this way in Chapter 13 of The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power, “You are not who you think you are. You are someone entirely different. That someone is the person you want to be ― sunny, healthy, without the slightest concern about tomorrow, just like a child.”
What a great relief it is to begin to be free of all the nonsense we have picked up over the years from society and to realize that there is truly a way out. Thank you Vernon Howard!