We are so involved in our own drama that we miss out on reality. Vernon Howard’s short talk and exercise helps you break out of your own nonsense. Practice this:
AWARENESS
If you only knew how much others are secretly suffering, you would be very consciously tender to them.
If you could only feel this secret feeling, you would treat them differently than you now do.
Man cannot feel others because he is asleep. As you start to wake up you feel people. You feel their negative feelings, which is their secret suffering. People in life do not feel each other. They just feel their own feelings.
So you must be wide awake, alert and aware at all times. Be aware while working, eating or whatever of every person who passes by,
walks into the room or is in the room, at work-parties, anywhere.
Do not be so self-absorbed in your food or your own feelings that you forget your surroundings, such as a passing car or a person or noise. Know that you are in the room. In a group, feel the feelings of others, otherwise you will think it is your own feelings that you are feeling. Be aware of others in the room.
One person might be suffering from sentimentality and you know that. It is a fact outside of you and you might be able to help that person without him or her knowing that you are the helper!
Practice this all the time. One person in a group of six or ten can keep the sanity level up instead of down if he or she practices this awareness.
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Special Truth to Remember
Since Truth is always relaxed, just join yourself to Truth and you will be part of that relaxation.
My spirit feels so elevated when practicing ‘Awareness’ as Vernon writes about here. This ‘Awareness’ takes the energy and pain out of the habitual mode normally absorbing the mind: That which is always and only considering ‘me’ – of what others think of me; of my precious darling feelings being protected; of the imagination that this ‘self’ is someone ‘on top’ and better than others. Our life here on Earth, for the short span of a lifetime, is incredibly precious and every effort to utilize the Life Force for Awakening out of our sleep is our debt, and duty as caretakers of this planet – to the Creator and to each other.
Just think if everybody did that, the world would be a very peaceful place.
“Want to change the world?, then change yourself”
‘If you only knew how much others are secretly suffering, you would be very consciously tender to them.‘
It’s so nice that we can put ourselves in the other person’s shoes. When I do this my whole day is uplifted. Thank goodness there is another way to live than always insisting I am right.