Just One Thing Happening
(an excerpt from a Vernon Howard lecture)
Shall I tell you what I’m going to do the rest of the day? I’m going to find ways to put a greater end to myself, to put a finish to things. I’m going to walk around my house all day and in the evening, just go walk around doing things that are necessary. And I’m going to see how I’m going to get rid of myself to a greater extent.
And I’m going to, I’m going to try to catch the difference between my mind moving my activities, dictating to me, and Life with a capital “L” doing it with me being conscious of it doing it.
I’m going to know that I can’t do anything. I can’t pick up a tea cup, I can’t put down a pencil. I can’t look out at the tree. I’m going to see that I can’t do anything at all of myself.
And I’m going to know that everything that happens to me is happening, it is happening and the energy that is causing it to happen even the eyesight, the visual eyesight, the hearing, picking up a spoon, I’m going to see that all that is not my energy, not Vernon’s. It is simply happening to this particular physical body that is presently here on earth so that there is no division between the movement here and its source.
But the action, the higher action and the lower reaction are really one thing. There’s just one thing happening. There’s not Vernon doing anything at all. There is just a happening, right? Why don’t you do the same thing?
You can spend your day–and that’s what I’m going to do–seeing, seeing I interfere with the All. The part–the part is calling itself the All. But it’s not the All. It’s division. It’s one little letter on the whole page. If I can see I’m interfering with the flow of energy, the energy which is me, which is Truth–all one thing. If I can catch myself suffering that means I have interfered that means that I still think that I am responsible for keeping my life going.
Where were you before you were born that you decided to make yourself be born? Did you decide to be you in this world? Is it then possible that, wow, what a blow to all mighty me. Is it possible there’s a power besides that of my striving intellect? Maybe, maybe after all, I don’t have to live my life according to the dictates of what’s up here. Maybe I can let go and see what I do.
I am so excited to begin this today!! Seeing that “I” am just one letter on the whole page, and catching where I go wrong, where I want to get a ‘feeling’ of pain or of self-existence from an event or a happening. What is happening right now is infinitely greater than this ‘me’ who claims to be in control ~ yet is so ‘needy’. It is like leaping into the great void of unknowing. And the only certainty I have is that where I am leaving is not a good place.
Wow! Giving up one’s own drama, We don’t like other people’s drama, and think why don’t they see thru themselves, but what about us? We should be seeing thru ourselves, our phoney drama, our non-stop self thinking. Nothing to do but expose the phone in me, all day long. One Beautiful Noble Aim! Taking one step at a time.
I just re-read this lecture again and can’t think of anything better than to take VH’s lead. I will spend today watching me, the ‘know it all’, the pain collector, the pain in the neck, the troublemaker, myself and I interfere with my life and then simply not go along with it. I can already hear Steve protesting that this may not be the best coarse to set, the Great Interferer has spoken, Good bye Steve.
This was wonderful to read this morning! I love that Vernon tells us how he’s going to spend his day – it encourages me to do it too!