Vernon Howard

Don't look for someone in whom to believe. Believe in yourself. The only authentic authority is your own original nature.

Do not be impatient with your seemingly slow progress. Do not try to run faster than you presently can. If you are studying, reflecting and trying, you are making progress whether you are aware of it or not. A traveler walking the road in the darkness of night is still going forward. Someday, some way, everything will... break open, like the natural unfolding of a rosebud.

Don't try to live. Let yourself be lived.

Genuine effort is success.

Don't try to be unafraid. That is impossible. Rather, go ahead while being afraid. That is the entire secret for abolishing fear. The Supermind teaches us to have no self-concern at all. Whatever happens to you, act as though it happened to someone else.

You are free when you have no anxious thoughts about what happens to you.

One false idea is that anyone can hurt you. Events can ruin your reputation, take your money, mistreat you, revenge itself upon you, deceive, betray, abandon you, but cannot hurt you.

There exists a special self which takes every event as if it were the very thing you wanted to happen. That self is the Supermind, which is never upset by anything. Your goal is to nourish it into greater strength. Then, every step is sunlit.

Don’t try to be spiritual. That is only a word in the dictionary. Make it your goal to become a normally functioning individual. Let these principles shape you according to your real nature of a simple, decent, honest, unafraid human being.

Mysticism is: a. An advanced state of inner enlightenment. b. Union with Reality. c. A state of genuinely satisfying success. d. Insight into an entirely new world of living. e. An intuitive grasp of Truth, above and beyond intellectual reasoning. f. A personal experience, in which we are happy and healthy human beings.

Pseudo-mysticism seeks to evade reality; authentic mysticism wants to live it.

Mysticism is not this or that particular cup on the table; it is the water poured into all of them.

Happiness is yours in the here and now. The painful states of anxiety and loneliness are abolished permanently. Financial affairs are not financial problems. You are at ease with yourself. You are not at the mercy of unfulfilled cravings. Confusion is replaced with clarity. There is a relieving answer to every tormenting question. You possess a True Self. Something can be done about every unhappy condition. While living in the world you can be inwardly detached from its sorrows to live with personal peace and sanity.

If you call one thing good, you must call its opposite bad. If you think it wonderful to make a big profit in your business, you will also think it terrible if you incur a large loss. The idea is to live above the opposites.

All we have to do is to receive what we are given...We are given the naturalness to love someone, to be calm in crisis, to ignore self-defeating suggestions, to be pleasant, forgiving, tender, helpful, unworried, brave, energetic.

How would you feel if you had no fear? Feel like that. How would you behave toward other people if you realized their powerlessness to hurt you? Behave like that. How would your react to so-called misfortune if you saw its inability to bother you? React like that. How would you think toward yourself if you knew you were really all right? Think like that.

No one can tell you what is right for you except yourself. So start telling yourself what to do. If you blunder for ten years while thinking for yourself, that is rich treasure when compared with living these ten years under the mental domination of another.

It is against the law to permit weak people to steal your strength. Never permit it.

Aloneness is a wise teacher. Kierkegaard remarked that one sign of spiritual maturity was the ability to be comfortable when alone.

You have it made when you don’t care whether you have it made or not.

Persistence prevails, like a stream that is temporarily blocked by boulders and then collects force enough to overflow onward.

Have the daring to stop doing the things you really don’t want to do. Can you see them? Look closely. Can you observe the many things you do because you reluctantly feel you should or must? Watch closely. Examine every action and reaction. Do you act naturally or do you act because you feel compelled? If you feel compelled, stop. Compulsion is slavery. Example: Refuse to go along with the crowd.

You must never fear anything at all.

When you are genuinely strong, you neither attack nor defend and so retain your energy.

A cheery relaxation is man’s natural state, just as nature itself is relaxed. A waterfall is concerned only with being itself, not with doing something it considers waterfall-like.

No one can enjoy a truth for which he is unprepared, any more than an ape can appreciate a harp.

Is the beam from a lighthouse affected by howling wind and rain? It remains perfectly steadfast and unaffected by the storm. Your true self is like that. Nothing can ever harm you once you are consciously aware that it is so.

At the start of your quest, wisdom is a flash, not a glow.

You know what is right. Deep down, you know. The battle between your true wisdom and the counterfeit wisdom of society is what causes frustration. Refuse to compromise with what you know is right—with what is right for you.

Never sacrifice your inner integrity to anyone, anytime, anywhere.

The genuinely spiritual person is one who has lost all desire to be anyone but exactly who he is, without labels and without apologies. He is what he is and that’s all there’s is to it. Such a man is undivided, uncomplicated and contented.

How true are you to yourself? That is the degree of your contentment.

Human beings live the way they *choose*, not the way they *want*. A vast difference lies between the two.

Supermind exists within everyone, but man is asleep to it. Our entire task on earth is to awaken to the unfoldments of Supermind.

Don’t be afraid to let go of this acquired, invented identity; this false feeling of ‘I.’ That is like being afraid to let go of a headache. That is what the imaginary ‘I’ is—one great big headache.

Rebel against everything within yourself that you feel is artificial. Become what you are!

How on earth can another’s thought harm you? It is your thought about his thought that harms. Change *your* thought.

Please don’t go around trying to save the world. You have all you can do to save yourself.

Use this secret for developing receptivity: Learn to love situations which make you uncomfortable. That is the only way you can learn to be comfortable everywhere.

Accept nothing as true that is not *your* truth.