Special Spiritual Exercises 2

     Protect the Candlelight is the name of this beautiful and inspiring exercise given to us by Mr. Vernon Howard. He said:
     “There lived in a dry desert wilderness a group of people whose outward condition represented their inner states of confusion, stress and anxiety.” A wise man also lived in the wilderness. Some people went to the wise man and asked him, “Is there another place where there is NOT this wilderness and this misery that we have here? Is there a land different?” The wise man said, “Yes, there is, and I'll describe it to you. You won't understand it from the description but you will understand it when you get there. It's a land of pretty flowers, pretty sky, flowing waters and plenty of room, lots of space, not crowded, a  place where you can be happy. Now if you want to go there, I will tell you how to do it because I live there — that's my home. I have just come back to tell you about it. Anyone who wants to come, I am at your service. Ask me and I'll tell you how to get there. I can go there any time I want.
     “First of all, you have to understand that between this dreadful, deceitful place, where you now live and the Happy Land, there is a very long, dark path. You have to take this path and pass through it all alone. You can’t take your mother, your sister or your friend with you. You have to travel all alone. For you to get the reward, you must do the work. Now, I’m going to give you a candle if you want to go — one candle, strong and bright. Take this candle and start at the beginning of the trail through the dark path and, if you keep that candle lighted, if you protect it above all else, you will reach the Happy Land and you will live a different kind of a life. One unbelievably marvelous!
     “I want to emphasize the need for you to protect the light of this candle above ALL else because along both sides of the path there are hordes of evil monsters in human form. They disguise themselves as human and their purpose is to get you to put out the light. They even put up strange winds that might blow the candle out. Or they call out to you. They will even call out to you for help hoping to make you feel guilty if you don’t respond. And once they get in there, they’re going to splash swamp water on your candle and it will go out and you won’t make it. I’m not scaring you — I am both encouraging and warning you.
     “The single most important thing for you to remember when you walk the path to the Higher Land is to  protect that candle against all evils that want to put it out because, once it goes out, if it goes out, you will lose the trail and you’ll never find your way to the True Land.”
      I will tell you something else and I want all of you listening to this talk, to listen especially to this. It will sound dreadful to you but it’s a part of my warning, so as to make you so alert to not let anyone steal the light  and snuff it out. Here it is ladies and gentlemen: If your light goes out through your arrogance, through your stupidity, through your carelessness, if your light once goes out, you will never ever know or remember that you once had it. When you fall off the path, that candlelight goes out because it fell with you into the swamp water.
     When one of the demons comes up to you and says something like, “I see you put your candlelight out. That’s very good. That’s very wise. Now you can live in hell with us,” if a demon were to warn you that you once had a candle, you won’t believe it. Once the candle of light goes out, it is impossible for a human being to ever remember that he once had one. You talk to a person who’s had a taste of truth and it’s gone away, and you tell him the beautiful things that you heard in that class and you read in the book and you say, “Weren’t you attracted by that light?” That person will say, “What light?” HIS darkness has become his light.  That’s what he’s going to call it. He’s floundering around with the rest of the monstrous creatures there, all of them saying that they have the light. They don’t even know what they’re talking about. I want you to know what you are talking about.
     I want you to protect with every ounce of energy and alertness you have, the candle that all of you in this room and hearing this talk wherever you may be — I want you to protect it as the most precious, vital, the ONLY important thing in your life. I want you to protect that candle of light that you have just been given. Yes, yes, EVERY single one of you has been given the candle. Now it becomes your responsibility to care for it, to protect it, to not let ANY human being put it out, try to trick you, try to deceive you. I want you to listen to what other people say if and when you ever talk about right things. Can’t you see them trying to put it out. Can’t you understand that’s the only thing monsters can do. They want you to join them in the dark hell of that swamp, thrashing around hating each other, hating God. You be very sharp in your human relations now. Notice it with people who are close to you physically and strangers alike. Watch how the whole world is in that darkness wanting to destroy the smallest appearance of light.
     This morning, God himself has given each one of you the light of the candle. It is now glowing right now if you have been receptive to it. I want you to keep it glowing. I want you to study and work harder than you’ve ever worked before. I want you to be willing to sacrifice everything, even your so-called friends who are not your friends at all. Sacrifice those habits that you love so much but which you know are all wrong for you. I want you to be willing to let God take them and sacrifice them for you. You can’t do it but if you’re willing to have them go, then they will go.
     Above all else in your life, from now on protect that candlelight.

     Here’s a beautiful lesson and story by Vernon about our need to remember our purpose in life.
     Once upon a time a very interesting event took place in Heaven. What happened was that a chief angel called in a hundred or so men and women and spoke to them as follows:
     “Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to be born in a place called the Planet Earth. You’re going to enter this world called earth and you’re going to be there for a while. Now I want you all to listen to me while I tell you the purpose for you going down into this earth and being born there and experiencing life on earth. The purpose is for you to develop a choice — a love for what is truly good. You are going to be given an opportunity to truly love God of your own will. Nobody can force any human being to love the Creator of this Universe, but you’re going to be sent down there, as many have been sent before you and after you, and you’ll be given a bit of time down there to choose what is true — what is right for you — because it will give you life up here eternally.
     “So very simply stated, you’re going to be part of the world down there very soon now. And you’re going to be there for what is called a number of years, but you must remember the purpose for which you are there. And I want to warn you, the earth that you are being sent down to as a testing ground is a very, very wicked, sick, incredibly bad place. Now I don’t want that to frighten you. You don’t have to be frightened. You just have to remember what I said: That if you remember your purpose for being down there, then you will grow and you will develop, and you will find inside yourself something is occurring that hasn’t occurred up here because now you’re down there working — and you will find that you will add to yourself all the good things of life which are called strength, virtue, wisdom, and you will finally find that you have inherited a very, very high place eternally for yourself.
     “Now one final word. Most human beings do not remember the instructions that they have been given. They forget and they get enticed and lured by the excitements of the world, and they forget the way back home. I want you to remember what I’ve told you and to make every effort possible to develop yourself, which is your purpose in going down there.”
     So they went down to earth and, to their great surprise, it was a nice place physically and they liked that;  a marvelous place with continents and huge oceans, and waterfalls, and animals and birds. No problem there. Then when they were about ten days old, the damage began for each one of these candidates for higher development. Just by being in the atmosphere of the planet itself, they began to forget what they were told to remember. And they grew up. They became teenagers. They became twenty years old. And they became forty and fifty years old. And practically every one of them forgot the instructions as to why they were there, which was to not be the kind of a person they were when they entered the world, but to add something to it — through their own choice — by simply loving the instructions that were deep inside them that they’d carried with them from the other world. Remembering those instructions, they could have followed them. Most did not.
     Most made a horrible mistake, and I’m describing the mistake that the world has made, which is to believe that you are on this earth to fulfill your own self-created purpose. What do you think about all day long? What do you think your purpose is here? What was your purpose all day long today? Was it a lot more money making? Protecting your ego? Finding someone to talk to? Finding something to keep yourself occupied? All this is a part of you forgetting the original instructions, but you can begin to remember and reverse things even starting right now.
     So do you know what happened to all these people who forgot? They thought they could remember. They were so confident at the start. Now do I have to explain it in any more detail for you to understand what this world is like? Everyone being weak, everyone being foolish and ignorant, those are problems to everyone,  including the possessor of ignorance, and everyone he or she meets. Everyone became a burden to everyone else. Have I described it? Of course I have.
     You have forgotten the instructions, and I will tell you they couldn’t see the angel that came down with them anymore physically, but that angel is circulating around the world today trying to tell a few people, trying to tell them what they have forgotten to remember.
     That’s the purpose of this class: To remind you that you’ve made a mistake. You have forgotten something. You’ve forgotten the single most important thing of your life as to why you’re in life.

     Vernon Howard gave us this special exercise, which will help us tremendously in our daily lives:
     There is something higher than your present existence on this earth and it is your responsibility to find it, and I'm going to show you how. You do it by your own efforts, your own arousing of yourself and that’s how you can begin to develop. Development is an invitation to what is not thought, not in the opposites, which you will sense and you will live by. What I’m going to tell you, you must do, you can do, and if you will do it with a right heart the results will be right.
     Here’s a little background on what we’re talking about. You fail to use life properly. You’re so crowded with yourself that nothing can come in to penetrate and displace what has been wasting your day, your mind and  your spirit.
     Nothing new happens, does it? The old pains, the old worries, the same old routine ways, always hoping for magic of some kind, always hoping that something will turn up, that something will come your way. 
     How many of you are in love with yourself? Being in love with yourself means having no inclination or wish to change the fixed pattern of your reactions that hit you in the outer world or inside yourself. It means that you lie about, justify, protect, promote and maintain everything as it was before because when the river starts raging, all you have to do is fall into it. Have you ever noticed how simple it is to fall into the crabby little nature and make the sharp remark on the telephone or in your mind to someone else?
     You can start tonight to put yourself into a position called SELF-SURPRISING. How many of you are kind of unpleasant sometimes? Pretty dreadful, isn’t it? We’re going to pull a trick on the devil tonight, and you’re going to take it with you and work on it. The next time you feel tempted to react with a sharp word, a hostile feeling, which you’ll justify of course, a wrong reaction of any kind, you’re going to SURPRISE YOURSELF by being pleasant instead.
     I have given you a guaranteed method for building a life that is stronger than anything else, anywhere on earth. When you know you’re in an unpleasant state within yourself, or a worried one, in that state of knowing, the strength to do what you’ll have to do thousands of times, and which you can do for the higher success, is available to you.
     The rule is when you make an effort to work internally on yourself, when it’s terribly difficult for one reason or another, such as other people are around or you got a shock of some kind, when you work on yourself when it’s most difficult, you get a greater reward.
     A repeated, faithful application of Self-Surprise, catching yourself playing a role, catching yourself anticipating the pleasure of hurting someone else with a sharp remark, that Self-Surprise produces the necessary different location inside of you, and since everything is different inside of you when you understand that you don’t know, then your false knowing is weakened.
     Do take your notes home mentally or physically and Surprise Yourself all day long. Never have any fear of the consequences of deliberate, conscious Self-Surprise because they will be good. You will then know what it means to be on top of the mountain and look at the marvelous view.

     Vernon gave us the following information on spiritual justice which we can all work on and get the many healthful benefits.
     There is a popular word in the English language, which is much used and little understood, and that word is justice. We’re going to understand it in a profitable way inwardly tonight.
     Now society has its own definition of the term justice and, unfortunately, all of them are distortions of reality, all shallow, all misleading and all self-serving.
     To the average human being, justice is done if he gets his way, if he gets what he wants. If he doesn’t get it, that’s injustice and he goes around complaining what an unjust world this is.
     The true definition of justice, the spiritual definition, is simply when goodness is rewarded and badness is punished. If you are good, you will be rewarded; if you are bad, you will be punished. There’s really no way to escape divine justice, it’s a fixed law. You always get justice from the spiritual viewpoint and it can be positive or negative. It is justice when a good man does good and feels good, and it is injustice when a bad man commits a crime or hurts someone. Justice is done, “Vengeance is mine,” says Heaven. You know that you can’t be a bad human being and be happy; only a good man can be happy.
     Justice always follows either happily or unhappily every small move you make, every action you take. Every word you speak will bring upon you one of the two kinds of justice, but it’s up to your inner condition whether the justice is happy or unhappy. A negative cause will produce a negative effect.
     Sure you're going to associate with people, spouse, friends, you're part of the physical world, but there’s no more anxious yearning when you see that crowd or go to the party, there’s no more anxious wish to change them in any way. How would your life be different if wherever you went, you didn’t want anything from anyone? That is the true spiritual life.
     We have to come awake and stay awake. Then everything that used to conquer you, you now conquer.
     In this true world of justice, there is no such thing as defeat, all there is, is a knowing of the true world, the divine world.
     Listen to the following:

Do right even when tempted to do wrong.
Do right even if it means losing a friend.
Do right even if it means you don’t understand why you should.
Do right even if you fear the consequences.
Do right even if you don’t want to.
Do right even if it feels strange.
Do right even if it arouses criticism.
Do right even if it’s you against the world.

     Oh how clear the whole world of badness will become to you because you're seeing it from the height of goodness and that height is also from which you have absolute power, spiritual power over the past.
     You will know for yourself that the only world you have is the good world, and in that good, true, virtuous world no badness can enter.

     When thunder and lightning strike your mind, remind yourself instantly, “I am apart from all that.” Now you translate thunder and lightning into your personal experiences — into your worries and your half-seen  concerns over what’s going to happen to you. Remember this fact: What is known in heaven as a fact can be known by you as a human being here on earth.
     It’s a heavenly fact and you can learn how to bring it down to you — yes — right at the office there, right at the home. It doesn’t depend on you to build it, to keep it going, but it is up to you to allow it to descend inside your mind so that something that is stronger than the thunder and lightning can take over your entire life.
     The next time you feel a shaking and an unnamable bother of any kind that you’re only dimly conscious of, you will remind yourself of the heavenly fact that you are apart from all that. The thunder and lightning is not you!
     Hostile forces want you to believe in them; they tell you “That’s you, therefore you’d better get sick and stay sick.” Don’t you believe it again! I know that the fact is not yet a personal experience with you and that’s not anything for you to be concerned with. What you should be concerned with only is being loyal to the fact that at the present moment you only know with the intellect, you don’t know it spiritually, yet. It’s not a living experience with you, but I’m telling you to remind yourself while here on earth of the heavenly fact. That is your work. That is where you make the mental concept your personal daily experience, and you will know it — not just with the intellect — that you have added something to it far above it. You will know it with the spirit of heaven itself and it all came about because you remembered, “I am apart from the thunder and lightning” and how many know what I’m talking about? Everyone raise your hand.
      I, my real nature, is apart from that. Never forget it. Remind yourself every day. Say “In Reality, that’s not me at all.” You are not a single one of your doubts and your struggles. Who you really are is something else. You don’t know that yet. No, you don’t. Keeping in mind a heavenly fact about me can become a personal spiritual experience with me. Remember those facts and you will see how the light becomes brighter and clearer, for example, in your contacts with other people.
     Remember and work very hard with the point, “My real ‘I’ is apart from all that.” That is, anything that is  striking you, paining you, including what is now unseen self-deception. Yes [this is] giving up your suffering! Don’t be afraid to be apart from yourself. You don’t know who you are. If you abandon everything you’ve lived from up until now, then terror will go away and it won’t go away until we do that.
     This will take away the smallest or largest anxiety and nothing else will do it. You’ve got to know how awful it is [inside] and don’t give yourself a solution. Don’t think that you know the answer to the problem that is you. Just say, “I’m a little lost child. I don’t know what to do.” When you really don’t know what to do, your head will lift up and you’ll catch your first glimpse of the open highway. You may crash again, you will get hurt again, but if you continue you will catch a glimpse of the little lost child.

     Tell yourself forcefully and at the same time very calmly, “I have much better things to do with my life than to spend it in pain.” Now you say that several times a day. You will not know what you are talking about but the words are beginning guidelines so that you can go from words to feeling, to comprehension, and the light will burst upon you one day in which you won’t have to say it with your mind anymore because you will know it internally. It will be with you twenty-four hours a day so that pain of any kind — emotional, physical, psychological suffering — so when it tries to intrude into your life, you will have more power than it has because you will have received the inspiration and the explanation from the higher place that you don’t have to submit anymore!
     Good morning, submitters! You know that’s accurate. You know that what I just said is true. You submit. Now, you’ve already had an enormous clue. The clue is you have been telling yourself what your life is all about. I have to tell you something very special about pain, about anguish. Of all the evil forces on this earth, anguish, hostility, any kind of pain is one of the most cunning in disguising itself as a needful friend. I want you to understand for yourself what I just said. The next time you feel any kind of apprehension or doubt about something and you start to shake, I want you to look at it so closely that you can see through the bluff that it has had on you. You can see that it is nothing but a faker that you thought was your friend.
     It is never necessary for any of you to be in, or to fall into a state of anxiety, tension, any kind of pain at all. I just told you the fact of the matter. Now which are you going to believe? Well, you’re going to have some hard work in tossing out your beliefs in the necessity for you to be thrown off the track. And New Life teachings will show you how to do it, how to encounter the enemy with a new kind of strength and fresh vigor and higher intelligence so that pain, worry, feeling inferior, the whole business, so that you meet it with the light of heaven itself and that is what makes you strong; that godly presence living through you is stronger than the trillions of types of fear, tension, feeling awkward, feeling unworthy.
     Identify to yourself the wide variety of pain and sufferings there are. See how they can grab you anytime they want. You’re not going to spend your days feeling at the mercy of other people, of the news headlines, of anything at all. The fact is freedom from agony exists. Shake those chains off. Don’t be afraid of anything! Instead of being afraid of your life, you’re going to be interested in it. You can do this! You can say, “Oh, I’m going to understand you. Instead of shaking before anything, I’m going to look at it as a scientist would look at a problem.” You’re walking around and you catch some small or large anxiety, whatever, and then remember what you’ve just read. Don’t forget it! Write it down. Look at it fifty times today. Put a little note in a prominent place at home that says, “I don’t have to be afraid or in anxiety over anything. I just have to be interested in understanding what is going on.” Already you’ve struck a blow against the enemy; you’ve taken some of the chains off and heard them clank down at your feet. You will understand the deeper meaning of this as you practice it.

     Vernon gave the class this beautiful practical exercise of Self-Reliance, and the benefits derived as a result of doing it.
     When we were children, we were told quite often about certain virtues which we commonly called the old- fashioned virtues. This morning we’re going to take the virtue of self-reliance and its power.
     If you want to build some self-reliance, obviously you have to work on yourself. There are endless ways in which you can do this, one being to find some small way where you would normally ask for assistance from  someone else and do it yourself. For instance, when around the house and you can’t find the salt shaker, your first impulse is to ask your husband or wife, “Where’s the salt shaker?” You be self-reliant in such a little thing as this, which forces you to think and to not mechanically call out, “Hey, where’s the salt shaker?” Instead, look around and find it, and obviously if you can’t find it after a thorough search, then you might ask because it might be out for repair.
     Here’s an exercise for you to do:  After class and by yourself take a piece of paper and write at the top, “How I Can Build More Self-Reliance,” then number the items, 1, 2, 3 and so on. Force yourself in little everyday matters to do things for yourself so that you’re not so lazy about it. You’ll have a different feeling by breaking the mechanical habit of asking someone else. There’s also the habit of relying on your essence,  rather than on ideas. Fill the page out as much as you can, add to it and then practice it.
     On the writing exercise, this time you’re not to show it to anyone at all. You’re not to show it to your wife,  your husband or anyone else. This is to be strictly and one hundred percent a private project. You see, nothing is fixed. There are times when we get together to discuss ideas back and forth, and there’s also the opposite of that where you must keep everything to yourself. That’s part of your self-reliance.
     Another thing is when you get to point five and you can’t think of anything else, increase your self-reliance by staying with it, and don’t get up to fill your coffee cup, but force yourself to think. This will bring your memory out properly because whether you know it or not, for every five ideas, you could think of ninety-five more if you’d just sit and force yourself to do it. It’s very easy to write five points, then stop and say, “I have accomplished something.” Always push yourself far more than you want to, never spare yourself. Find ways to make yourself uncomfortable which will force your mind to yield what it actually has for you.
      Vernon then asked the audience to finish this sentence: “I can make myself more self-reliant by:” Some of the responses were making my own decisions, doing my own cooking, forcing myself to do something that  I’ve never done before, not depending on comfort from others, not being concerned about another person’s business, and seeing how unconscious and mechanical I usually am.
     There’s something in every one of us that senses the rightness of being self-reliant.

     Let me give you the fundamental error. The chief error of every human being which causes every problem on earth is the individual thinking that he exists as himself. That he exists apart from other people, apart from events, apart from everything. In other words, a man’s mind starts to form when he’s young by saying, “I am I.”
     Now he backs up this false statement with false supports which say “I, in my physical body, am either magnificent or not so pretty.” It starts with that, because that’s the thing he knows mostly. And already he’s got an identity of being beautiful or being un-beautiful.
     That’s the bare beginning of it, though. He has hundreds of experiences, miserable ones, so-called triumphant ones, but every one of them he captures and puts into his little box labeled ‘me.’
     Here’s a forty-year-old man, his box is compacted and it’s like steel. This is why you can’t get anything new into that box, because it’s so hard. You can’t talk to him about anything outside of that “box of me,” because everything is referred to it, which is all he can do, because that’s all he has!
     Now here’s the chance you have — and don’t you miss it!  You have built this box up so that when someone talks to you about another kind of a life, another kind of a self, it doesn’t mean anything to you. But now you can say, “You know, part of the box was my imagination that I was happy, that I was free, that I’m learning, that I’m open minded.”
     You have to see where you might indeed be envious of someone else and stay there and suffer through to the very end of that envy. Because that means you’re still divided inside yourself. It means you still love the pain of envy more than you love Truth. And you don’t understand that yet.
     Let me give you the fundamental error once more. Remember this, never forget it, review it constantly. The chief error of every human being which causes every problem on earth, the chief error is the individual thinking that he exists as himself. That he exists all apart from other people, apart from events, apart from everything. A man’s mind starts to form when he’s young by saying, “I am I.” So, you’re hanging on to jealousy so you can say, “My I, myself is secure.” But you’re not because it’s a delusion. Give it up! Let it go! See what is on the other side of you seeking security by feeling envy.
     You will pass through a period of darkness when you determine to do that. And in that darkness, you won’t know who you are, which is exactly what you have to do. And the fear is beyond explanation. Marvelous! Do it. Stay in the darkness, not having anything to run back to at all! Stay in it and something will happen inside of you. This is all an internal experience, you know. This means that you have given up all hope, all refuge, all comfort — given up all past time. And when you have given all these up, they — being your false self — also disappear. And when you disappear, the darkness disappears. And there’s only the Light. And it isn’t your Light, is it, because you have disappeared. It is the Light of Pure Truth.

     Once upon a time there was a good and noble King who turned over to his citizens a marvelous beautiful castle where they would be comfortable and happy and safe from surrounding enemies.
     For a while everything went just fine and they grew their agricultural crops inside and outside the castle land. But there was something wrong with them. They had careless minds. They were just plain careless and lazy about the development of their own inner natures. They paid attention to their outer world only where it could do them some good in body and appearance. So something happened that would not have happened had they not been asleep inwardly. Enemies who did not love the good King, who bequeathed the castle, infiltrated the castle grounds and the surrounding yards, and they began to bring their evil into it. And more  and more they came into it and more and more the people lost control of both the castle and of their own inner lives.
     Malicious monsters took over and little by little they took over one room and the next room and the next one until the people themselves were forced out of what was once a marvelous happy place to live. While it was happening they did not realize that evil forces were being infiltrated into the castle, and they didn’t even notice that they were becoming unhappier day-by-day. So the monsters took over just as evil spirits have taken over the world. Now that fact is not clear to you, you’re afraid to face it. Face it anyway.
     When the people did not rise to the challenge of taking back their castle, the King decided the only thing  to do was to send a Hero down in human form, someone who represents Truth, to assist them in driving the enemy out of the castle.
      And here’s where we’re going to have to go to work this morning. The Hero led the people in going from room to room to drive these monsters  out — those sufferings, those arrogances, those prides, those vanities — drive them out one room at a time and finish it before starting on the next room, until the whole castle is cleaned out.
     Your exercise is to begin cleaning out the first room in your inner castle, which is to take paper and write “What I Know About Healing” then write everything you know about it. For example, one could be what does  healing mean? Well we’re not talking about the physical body. And another could be everything that goes contrary to the good King. By doing this exercise it will put you into right and good associations. And those associations will become new sources of light on how to allow healing to happen.

     Vernon gave the class this simple yet powerful exercise of answering the world in a different way. This will be of tremendous help in our daily lives:
     Thousands of years ago a certain man, a certain woman over here and over there somewhere in the world, made an astonishing discovery, a marvelous discovery, and this person tried to tell other people about it, but other people didn’t want it at all and this individual passed it on down in writings. Some people read the writings and others didn’t, but this secret which I’m going to give to you exists right today.
     It doesn’t exist for the vast population over in China or France or Portugal or Egypt or anywhere else, but it exists for individuals and I’m going to explain it to you very carefully.
      Someone says, “We’ve got all this military equipment just laying around, let’s start a war,” and they destroy each other. Now the same thing goes on inside you. You are very contagious to yourself as well as taking on the contagion of the outer world.  Someone can say something to you and you react in kind in a negative way. You are answering the world with your neurosis. The world talks to you in different ways, such as in advertising, in political meetings and in religious meetings.
    You overhear a conversation down where you work and you react in a certain way to it. You unknowingly answer the world in kind. Here’s a key phrase to use when answering the world: “I have nothing to say to  that.”
     The world insists, it demands, “I know what is best for you.” And because you’re so easily intimidated, you meekly answer, “Yes Sir, Yes Ma’am.” When you agree with the outer world and the equally sick world inside you, you don’t know that you’ve taken another step downhill. Someone angrily challenges you and offers something you don’t really want, your only answer is simply, “I have nothing to say to that,” and that’s the end of it. This cuts off energy waste.
      Real slow now, when you meet any situation one of two things happens, the situation takes charge of you or you take charge of it. Now which would you say it is presently? Doesn’t the situation take charge of you, which merely means that you are living your life from the outer to the inner. Why don’t you start living your life from the inner to the outer? Wouldn’t you like to be in charge instead of the inner chaos? Don’t you ever again answer chaos and confusion in you when it wants to take you over.
     The Light exists, Truth exists, it will work for you as you receive it. Remember the main point, “I have nothing to say to that,” get it into your memory and let it go into your spiritual memory. Now if you don’t reply the way you usually do, what else is there? There is silence and that is the reply that is different, and it’s  coming from something higher than you. God is silent. Pursue this all the way to see what it means to be spiritually silent and you’ll walk through this noisy world and you won’t hear a thing offensive.

Vernon gave the class this very practical and valuable exercise: 
   Here’s an exercise on how to choose what is right for your true self. Let’s say you're in the kitchen working around. You are to suddenly go out of thought when you can. You've chopped the carrots. You've put a little salt on them. You're cooking the dish, and that’s doing well. All of a sudden, when you can do it, be aware of your physical self in the kitchen. At the same time that you're aware of your physical self, you're also to be aware that you're in the kitchen. 
  Now please, don’t interrupt and say that you always know that you're in the kitchen when you're in the kitchen. You don’t, and you can prove it. Sometime, all of a sudden practice this exercise, and you'll suddenly realize that you're in the kitchen, you're in the bedroom, you're in the living room, or wherever, and you didn’t know you were there.
    All of a sudden, at the same time now, you're going to do two things.  You're going to be physically aware by looking out the kitchen and seeing the stove and seeing the refrigerator. You're going to see that outside of you. At the same time that you see the physical objects around you, you're also going to be aware of yourself being in the kitchen and seeing the outer things.    
Now, this is the cancellation of divisive thought and produces the state of one light, which illuminates both the physical kitchen out there and illuminates your inner state, your inner thoughts and your feelings.
This exercise, which you must do all day long wherever you are, cuts off the flow of the mechanical repetitions of your heartaches and your thoughts, so that they don’t rebuild you every few minutes with your lonely state. This will do it.  You will see it for yourself. You'll feel different! 
When you're working around the kitchen, and you may have to go back to chopping up the cabbage next. That’s fine. Then you have to go into thought on how you're going to do that. That’s fine. Then you have to go into memory-thought of how long you're going to cook the carrots or the cabbage. That’s fine.
But, when you can be free of that and give your attention to something else, then practice this, so that you're now free of mechanical memory-thought, including the memory-thought that you're lonely. You cancel that by walking around the kitchen and you feel your feet on the floor. For the first time in your life you'll know that you have weight that pushes against the floor in the kitchen.  That’s part of your physical awareness.  You'll look around, and at the same time that you see the kitchen, you will know that you are in the kitchen.
That double awareness of the exterior and the interior is what chases out the spy, which is what pushes out your false terrible fondness for what is dark and for what is punishing you.
You try that for yourself, and when you take that out into the world, let me give you one small reward out of so many. One of them is, nothing in this world, other people or headlines or anything out there can ever again tell you what’s important to your life.

     This practical exercise which Vernon gave us could be called the “Are You Willing to be Wrong?” exercise.
     Let’s say you work in the storeroom of a large company. One day your boss reprimands you. He says, “You were careless when you returned boxes to the storeroom. You did it with no regard for instructions or for putting the boxes in right order so they could easily be pulled out when someone needed them.”
     At the moment of the criticism were you able to see the fact without self-defensive emotion, or did egotistical self-protection, which is wrong, come in and speak in your name? It manufactured all the wrong things, including the pain you must experience because you asked for it.
     Or, did you say, “Yes, I was careless. I see what you mean. I put boxes “A” back in the corner and they should be toward the front and boxes “B” are also hidden, and should also be in the front. I understand.”
     When you admit you are wrong, the next time you have to put the boxes back you do not go into hostility toward the boss. You don’t let the present time arouse your pernicious memory of the previous time.
     You know you were careless the first time because you wanted to go to lunch and meet that pretty girl. You didn’t care about a certain neatness and order we must have in human affairs. All you wanted was get it done and you hoped no one would notice. Also, because everyone else hates the boss, you do too.
     You realize you’ve been exposed as a lazy and careless man who cannot do what he’s supposed to be doing at the moment he’s doing it. You see you have a rambling, selfish and wild mind. You resolve in the future to give your attention to what you’re doing at the moment. Why? For your sake and everyone else’s because your nature affects them. You say to yourself, “I’m going to be very careful with these boxes.  I’m going to look at the instructions, I’m going to learn to think right, to behave right. I’m going to see how clearly, how accurately, how nicely I can set these boxes in the storeroom.”
     Notice that when you stack the boxes right, there will be something very alive in you as a result of this right experience. When you do right, you feel right. Watch what happens. What will happen is this: Light radiates, doesn’t it? The same with this experience. When you have that right feeling that you should be with yourself at every moment and pay full attention to what you’re doing, there will be accuracy and you won’t go into wrong emotion over stacking the boxes. All you need is a clear mind. And you understand you constantly have the wrong emotions while doing other tasks. This lesson just happened to be in the storeroom. So the lesson spreads. It goes out from you. And what is happening is that the rightness of the truth of God is beginning to displace the wrongness which you have recognized and no longer desire. The light is getting brighter.
     You have to understand it is right for you to see the wrong.

     Vernon Howard gave us this refreshing illustration and exercise, so we can begin to reclaim our lives.
     The purpose of our work is to arouse right rebellion in you which comes as a result of right insight. Here’s an example: There was a movie on TV that had a lot of great psychology in it. Here is one of the incidents to illustrate what we’re talking about.
     This is the story of a typical New York striving young couple. He wanted to become somebody in the business world, and she played the role of the helpful wife.
     One time as part of their phony scheme to get in with the crowd, they decided to have a party. They had a little money and hired a caterer who was going to come to the New York apartment and set up all the food. So the caterers came in before the guests arrived and the couple, pathetic you know, strivers are always pathetic, aren’t they?
     The couple’s seven-year old daughter wandered into the kitchen and asked the caterers for a piece of cake. The mother was right there when the child asked for the cake. And the caterer, the man in charge, the  big boss, said, “No, you can’t have a piece of cake. We’re in charge here. We’re fixing things up for the guests, so no cake.” The child then went away feeling disappointed. The mother walked out of the room half thinking about it because she had so many other things to think about. All of a sudden it hit her. Pray for the day when it hits you. She said:
     “Wait a minute, this is my house. I paid for that food. I hired you. Go get a piece of cake. Give her a piece of cake.”
     You don’t know that, you don’t do that, which is why you are the way you are.
     Pray for the day when you say, “Just a minute, whose life is this?” Don’t say it, scream it, shout it, like I am now. Oh! You’ll see through your cowardice.
     See, if she’d been awake, she would have said it when it came up.
     “Just a minute, this is my house. I’m paying you. You don’t tell her what to do, I tell you what to do. Little Mary, take a piece of cake, take two if you want.”
     You have given your life over to sickness. When are you going to reclaim it? Start now, saying, “Just a minute.” Do you see why people are arrogant? Because you let them. You’ve sold your soul. See! Years ago it happened that way, and you’re afraid to tell that man you hired who’s in your house, “This is my house. I’m paying you. If you don’t like it, get out. I’m in charge of my house.” You’re afraid you’re going to get knocked down if you rebel. I tell you, dare it!
     When are you going to start? God himself will back you up when you say, “Just a minute, whose life is this? It’s my life.”
     You don’t know where that one right rebellion and declaration of independence is going to take you. It’s going to take you to an enlightenment in which you are free.

     Vernon Howard gave us this Spiritual Seriousness exercise to use in our daily lives so that we can distinguish between right and wrong humor. And also to meet gloomy, sour-spirited people with a conscious mind so that we can grow.
     When someone tells you his troubles, let them fall on your understanding not on your shoulders. To do that, you have to be a serious and very energetic student of human nature.
     Bad people, gloomy people, sour-spirited people are everywhere. The purpose of this talk — one purpose of it — is to make you aware of this kind of a wrong person so that you won’t meet him lightly and asleep, but will meet him with a conscious mind, so that you’ll be able to spot what he is doing.
     Now, to help you work at this from here on, you will now use memory properly to think of two or three sour, bitter hard-faced men and women that you know. That didn’t take long, did it? Wherever you wander, they’re all over the world, but you get two or three of them that are close to you, and I want you to know that they are life destroyers.
     See, sin, sickness, mental unhealth must never under any conditions be taken lightly. I told you once awhile back, an alcoholic is not an object of jokes or of humor. To be alcoholic is to be self-destructive, therefore destructive of everyone else. But the point is this. Do not take it as a joke among yourselves when there’s a sour-faced bitter person working in your office. Don’t take it as a joke and laugh over the fact that she is hard and troublesome to work with, to deal with.
     Always take wrongness very, very seriously. Don’t allow levity or lightness to enter into it. And the reason you have done this in the past is, believe it or not, because you sense the dreadfulness of that person’s condition and it frightens you a little lest you be like that. It frightens you and so you do make jokes about it in order to give yourself certain relief. You will never do that again.
     I want you, starting now, to have spiritual seriousness. This means no more joking at the wrong time. No more laughing at things that are not laughable. Anything that is apart from the Kingdom of Heaven must be seen seriously. And, as I mentioned before, from now on you will not make jokes about staggering drunks going down the street.
     You will not speak lightly of that woman who can’t stop criticizing … “Ah, she’s a nut.” She is a nut, but you’re to understand that below that, what appears to be an amusing character trait, below that is a  perniciousness that you must see without trying to relieve yourself by laughing at it.
     Spiritual seriousness is an enormous power. This you will understand as you practice it. Do not, do not be frivolous toward this world. Do not try to find humor where there is no humor. There is right humor and you’ve gotten them all mixed up. I want you to be very watchful of jumpy, grumpy people as they come along and enter your life. And everyone is jumpy, grumpy unless they have the Spirit of Righteousness within them.