Magnificent Special Lessons
by Vernon Howard
Your Humiliation Is Your Salvation
A short talk by Vernon Howard
Endure personal disgrace to the very end.
Let disgrace have its way with you.
Be completely humiliated, cast down!
Be a nothing.
Nothing left but disgrace, shame, regret.
Welcome the shame, disgrace, the loss of respect.
Collapse completely.
Don’t fight the fact you did wrong,
hurt someone, said something stupid.
Only pain can save you!
You have been wasting your suffering, your humiliation.
Next time you do some small thing wrong,
picture a tidal wave moving upon you and washing over you.
Don’t do a thing to save yourself.
You are not going to argue at all.
Suffer completely from it.
When YOU are no one, you are someone.
Special Spiritual Meeting
August 12, 1992
Vernon Howard spoke:
Think of why the last supper was celebrated in happy convivial circumstances. The spirit brought into it the physical body. And think of all the elements that we possess as human beings: mind, body, etc. That was to bring as many as possible of all the attributes of the universe into one setting for that time, and the disciples could understand to a degree what was going on. They could know that that was an unusual event and, of course, it was much higher than what you could see on the surface. And what Christ was saying in the talking, the meditating, the praying, what He was saying was that God is everything; everything is God, brought back into one whole. But we must work to understand what that means.
What it means to have that wholeness right in front of us and partake of it. See! What is eating? It is partaking of food, and life renews itself on and on. So in our small meeting here now we are partaking in a small way of the wholeness that we have all experienced a little bit and we want now to go on to a greater experience beyond it to find the ____________.* So we have had a unique experience and it started way back.
We have all of us here experienced spiritual things, cosmic experiences, which we couldn’t understand, but we experience them daily: Lots of confusions, lots of why and all that. So in a way every day is a day of celebration, every day is a day of renewing and refreshing ourselves and our task must be a very vigilant one. Wide awake at every minute so that the lesson does not miss us. That’s the problem, it slips by us. So our lesson now is to come awake and see; to partake of the wholeness of life and it will come to us the next time we partake of and let the whole experience go through us.
There is a yearning for more so that’s what we are doing Ms. and gentlemen, that’s what we are doing all the time now is inviting more of that illustrative experience; inviting it into our life so that we understand on many different levels. There are many things involved, so I invite all of us to invite more of this life for ourselves and it will go out. No question about it.
I don’t have to tell you what is going on, so that’s our work and that’s what we are going to increase, our volume, our mission so to speak, to express out because we love what we have heard and we know it loves us, so this is a spiritual — there are many kinds of spiritual experiences; our birth all the way through, so we’ll learn as we go.
* Vernon Howard used a word here that no one had ever heard of before. It obviously represented something of a very high nature.
New Life held classes in Boulder City, Nevada on Wednesday nights at 7 PM. After this Wednesday’s class was over the telephone rang at New Life Headquarters. Joan Philips the secretary at that time took the call. It was an orderly calling at Vernon’s request from the hospital in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada where he was being cared for. He wanted a few of us to come down and see him. What he wanted was to give us one last lesson before he passed away physically. Vernon sent one of the students of the four who came to a nearby McDonald’s to get milkshakes for everyone. After he returned we all drank our milkshakes and then Vernon proceeded to give the very high lesson above. The atmosphere in the room was electric to say the least. Sarah Forrest, a longtime close associate of Vernon Howard, took his exact words down in shorthand.
— Richard Wooldridge, Director of New Life
Vernon Howard photo
Pearls of Thought
by Vernon Howard
Here are sixteen Pearls of Thought by Vernon Howard. Ponder one enriching Idea each day. You may also use them at group discussions.
When living correctly with yourself you will know exactly how to live in right relationship with others.
What may now appear to be an impassable obstruction will eventually be as nothing, for an eagle which can fly over a boulder can also fly over a mountain.
No one is asked to give up enjoyment; he is asked to abandon his false concept of enjoyment, so that true refreshment may enter every moment.
If you let others carry a lamp for you, they may lag or rush ahead, but carry your own lamp and it is impossible to ever be out of the light.
People wonder how higher truths can possibly be of practical help in home or office, never once sensing that higher truths alone can help.
Suffering always runs along the track of mechanical thought, so by permitting consciousness to interrupt mechanical thought, we learn the secret for ending suffering.
Man’s new and true nature remains comfortable with everything it encounters, just as a stream flows casually around every shape of rock.
Everything necessary to true happiness can be obtained, so it is essential to learn to distinguish between the necessary and the unnecessary.
There is no beauty like the beauty of the person who truly wants to know what life is all about.
What we want is the release of our own confined wisdom, just as seeds released to the wind finally take root.
Do not turn against yourself, no matter how badly you may have blundered in the past, for blundering exists only in man-made time, and your true nature does not live in time, but in the pure present.
To encourage his students to empty themselves of false values, a teacher asked, “If a treasure chest is filled with stones, can you add jewels?”
Your own awakening essence is perfectly capable of distinguishing between imitation life and the free life you really want to live.
Disorders are healed when lifted to a higher plane of thought than the plane which caused them, for on this higher plane we cease to Interfere with the healing.
Practice these principles with no concern for results, for a planted seed is quite capable of developing in the dark.
Sooner or later, for the first time, you will catch a glimpse of that Something Else you somehow sensed just had to exist out there.