How to Break Through the Roadblocks of Life (an excerpt from Vernon Howard’s Pathways to Perfect Living)
Here are the various roadblocks along the esoteric highway. You can break through them with self-insight.
1.False assumptions: If we suspect that our false assumptions are assumptions, and not the facts that they seem to be, our days brighten. If we are living in an uneasy truce with life, we have false assumptions.
2. Searching outside ourselves: Nothing exterior to us can do it. Zen teaches that salvation is so close we can not see it, like a man crying for water while waist deep in a lake.
3. False hope in the future: Beware of those who urge you to sacrifice today for some misty heaven tomorrow. It will never come. The right time to wake up is right now.
4.Self-condemnation: After making mistakes, self-awareness is the right action, not self-reproach. Self-condemnation only leads you away from the path, while giving the appearance of humility.
5. Laziness toward self-awakening: Let shocks and sufferings awaken you, for it means their ending. It is as if you might shake yourself awake while driving the highway, knowing that sleep spells disaster.
6. Wrong attention: It is a pointless waste of time and energy to criticize the behavior of others, either openly or secretly. Our task is to study our own mental states and our own behavior.
7.False belief in a fixed fate: With his usual bluntness, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote,”What people commonly call fate is, as a general rule, nothing but their own stupid and foolish conduct.” Do not believe that your life is fixed and unchangeable, for all can be altered, magnificently.
8.Dishonesty: As long as the ego-self gets a reward from evil, it will lie about it and shamelessly call evil good. The detection of dishonesty is a first step toward true happiness.
9.Discouragement and depression: There is no need to be depressed about anything whatsoever. The rainbow is in the sky all right, but we must clear away the over hanging branches to see it.
10. Compromise: Do not go half way. There is one declaration which every earnest seeker must make: “I will not settle down in my present psychic location.”
11.Vanity and egotism: Look at the foolish man, boasting of his earthly success. He is like a man running desperately over a collapsing bridge, who stops to call out to his friends to please notice his pretty new jacket.
12. Dependency: We cannot become a musician by playing a borrowed phonograph record.
But we can become a cosmic artist by listening to the original music within our nature, where there is never a false note.
***
Inner Life Exercise
Whenever you feel taken over by something, always remember: “Instant Recovery”***
Gospel of St Thomas…”113. His disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?” “It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Rather, the Father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don’t see it.”
Wow! It was right here all the time, but I was in love with an illusion.
We always have the choice to drop what we think is real and important to a self that thinks it can gain something. There is never anything to obtain. We win by losing.
Just read what you posted on Vernon Howard Teachings fb page Max, This ties right in………….
Q. Mr. Howard, What is the True Self? A. It is the lightening of inner loads you are now unconsciously carrying around. Most people are not aware of all the useless burdens that wear them down. ….Fearful imaginations and frozen attitudes. As you become conscious of these pointless burdens, you drop them. Remember, no man consciously or knowingly burdens himself. He doesn’t see what he is doing to himself. We must become aware of our totally unnecessary loads of negativity. Q. How do I drop them, Mr. Howard? A. By simply dropping them!
These are truly helpful comments. #7 hits home. For many many years, I would talk about how wonderful my life was to everyone, but my secret personal thoughts were the opposite. I was jealous, resentful and critical of everyone and everything. Then one day after many years of studying myself, I realized; I and I alone was the whole problem (which was a tremendous blow to my vanity) and by simply continuing to study myself my life would get even better. You and I both have within us the keys to all doors that block us from our happiness. We just don’t realize it, which we can do.
#6 Wrong attention: How easy and common it is to criticize what others do and say. One can spend all day in useless detours with this one roadblock. In fact, if I’m honest, I would have to admit that my entire life has been spent in wasteful detours. Sure, I may not criticize others all the time, but what am I doing? My attention is so easily stolen by whatever rewards the self at the moment. Sometimes it’s criticizing and blaming others for all my problems. Other times daydreaming, looking forward to and or dreading upcoming events or being taken over by excitements will have the same sad results. Wrong attention takes me away from the one thing I really need, self-awareness. The great news is that all I have to do is see what I’m doing at the moment . . . Instant Recovery. . . What a relief! Seeing wrong attention throughout the day and coming back to myself every time is what breaks the spell.
I love the power of Instant Recovery! It has saved me countless hours of misery because at the moment I remember that exercise, it snaps me out of my self-absorbed thoughts and feelings that always drag me through more pain and suffering.
“Energy and Light are synonymous. In order for the Inner-Light to shine brightly, we must not waste our energy. How do we waste energy? Through all kinds of negative feelings, negative thoughts and actions. No matter how large or small, they rob us of vital energy. Negativity damages our bodies and our spirits.
“Negative energy can be transformed into useful, healthy energy. Here’s how: The next time irritation or anger tries to get you to do something on it’s behalf — don’t do it. Simply refuse to go along with it. Say to yourself, ‘Not this time. I’m not wasting my health that way anymore.’ Don’t argue with the accompanying negative thoughts. Don’t resist the feelings or the thoughts – stay above them and just observe. They are not you! Remember, this applies to all negativity including depression, feeling sorry for yourself, guilt, etc. Besides the obvious physical energy level change, think of how much better you’ll feel psychologically.”
“19. Comfort: Human beings are driven by the desire for comfort. Always remember when you’re dealing with anyone, if you say or do anything that threatens their sense of comfort you’ll have a fight on your hands. Don’t push people psychologically. They’ll resist and push back. Use tact, slow down, take your time and introduce new ideas to them gradually, so they’ll feel at ease with you.”
“24. Environment: Correctly so, people are concerned with the health of our natural environment. However, what could be more important than our psychological/spiritual environment? Yet, few are concerned. There is never a right, healthy time to feel bad. Cheerfulness is a nice, healthy environment. People who spread pollution with their gloomy spirit should be avoided. They will pollute your spirit.”
“33. Questions: Maybe you have already noticed that people will ask questions, but almost never listen to the answers. Why? They are only interested in answers that confirm them and their way of looking at things. If the answer challenges anything about them, the wall goes up instantly. Of course, they will swear they really want to learn and are all ears. They most likely will be able to quote word for word what was said to them, but they never really heard a thing.”
Be Interested in Your Life in a New Way
“Let’s suppose somebody walks in and gives you more work than you can do. Does it make sense to get up from wherever it is that you are, and go over and stick your finger in the wall socket and shock yourself? Does that make any sense? Of course not. But that’s what we do! That’s what we do inwardly to ourselves. If something we call ‘bad’ happens, if we don’t get our own way, if someone doesn’t treat us the way we think they should, we immediately adopt the strange procedure of putting our finger in the wall socket – psychologically speaking. Somehow we feel that if we get hurt, if we hurt ourselves, then that validates our self-picture of being right. We think it proves ‘I’m right!’ No, all it proves is that we hurt ourselves, unnecessarily. That’s what it validates.
“It was not the incident or the other person or the amount of work we had to do or anything else outside of us. It was how we reacted to the outer event. Blaming anything else just avoids the problem and keeps the whole painful thing going.”
“47. Knowing what you want and expecting it ruins relationships and life. When we resist any event we are getting in our own way. Remember, Life is the Teacher and we are the students.”
“62. Never blame any unhappiness you feel on anything but your own lack of Higher-Understanding. This is the beginning of Higher-Understanding.”
“66. There is nothing more beautiful than one’s naturalness fully developed. There is nothing uglier than unnaturalness fully developed.”
11. The Demander:
“Description: You owe me — I was there when you needed me, now I need you. You owe me. Sound familiar? Isn’t it strange we think of ourselves as kind, caring, giving people – but at the same time we feel you owe me for my ‘kindness’? The fact is we want to build up a credit balance for future use — we’re trading –we’re exploiting one another. That is neither nice nor kind.”
“Response: Never play trading games with people. If you really want to do something for someone — do it! — no strings attached. If you don’t — don’t! No one owes you and you owe no one. Clear cut, pure and nice!”
“The fact is that we are both the source of the problem and the victim. Our unawareness of our inner-world makes it a perfect breeding ground for problems of all types. Because we are sure the source of our problems is outside of us, they easily ambush us from within. If we get our feelings hurt, get angry, get depressed, etc, — it’s an inside job. Nothing outside of us is hurting us. We hurt ourselves because we are frozen in our beliefs. If we will allow the Truth to thaw us, then we can catch ourselves in the act. Catching yourself in the act is the beginning of the end of hurting yourself. And in a relationship, if both people are catching themselves, the two of them can breathe new life constantly into the relationship. In life, everything is either getting worse or getting better. Working on oneself ensures that your life does not go downhill, but to the contrary, goes delightfully uphill to the beautiful mountaintop.”
“It is strange how human beings miss the most obvious facts about their negativities toward others. A hateful man seldom reasons, ‘Hatred toward others makes me miserable, so in the name of common sense I’d better abandon it.’ Rarely does a resentful person think, ‘Resentment of other people drains my strength and destroys my mental powers, so I’d better clear it from my life.’ Negative feelings so cloud a man with darkness that he cannot see what he is doing to himself.”
“There may be times when a problem in finances or human relations seems like a mountain in comparison to the particle of truth you presently possess. Don’t believe it; not for one second. Behind that particle is the Whole Truth, which does not give power to a problem, as unalert minds do. Open yourself to the vastness of the Whole Truth. Start by refusing to listen to the noise of a problem, for this enables you to hear an instructive message originating in a silent place above the problem.”
“‘You say we must react rightly to suffering. What is a wrong reaction?’ ‘When you resist it, hate it, fight it, try to escape it with some frantic exterior activity.’ ‘Why are those reactions wrong?’ ‘Because they prevent you from understanding the whole process. And that is why you suffer over and over again. If your car breaks down, do you walk away and pretend there’s nothing wrong, or do you work at understanding the mechanical failure in order to repair it? Why not face the inner breakdown and correct it?'”
Gospel of St Thomas…”113.
His disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?”
“It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Rather, the Father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don’t see it.”
Wow! It was right here all the time, but I was in love with an illusion.
We always have the choice to drop what we think is real and important to a self that thinks it can gain something. There is never anything to obtain. We win by losing.
Just read what you posted on Vernon Howard Teachings fb page Max, This ties right in………….
Q. Mr. Howard, What is the True Self?
A. It is the lightening of inner loads you are now unconsciously carrying around. Most people are not aware of all the useless burdens that wear them down. ….Fearful imaginations and frozen attitudes. As you become conscious of these pointless burdens, you drop them. Remember, no man consciously or knowingly burdens himself. He doesn’t see what he is doing to himself. We must become aware of our totally unnecessary loads of negativity.
Q. How do I drop them, Mr. Howard?
A. By simply dropping them!
These are truly helpful comments. #7 hits home. For many many years, I would talk about how wonderful my life was to everyone, but my secret personal thoughts were the opposite. I was jealous, resentful and critical of everyone and everything. Then one day after many years of studying myself, I realized; I and I alone was the whole problem (which was a tremendous blow to my vanity) and by simply continuing to study myself my life would get even better. You and I both have within us the keys to all doors that block us from our happiness. We just don’t realize it, which we can do.
#6 Wrong attention: How easy and common it is to criticize what others do and say. One can spend all day in useless detours with this one roadblock. In fact, if I’m honest, I would have to admit that my entire life has been spent in wasteful detours. Sure, I may not criticize others all the time, but what am I doing? My attention is so easily stolen by whatever rewards the self at the moment. Sometimes it’s criticizing and blaming others for all my problems. Other times daydreaming, looking forward to and or dreading upcoming events or being taken over by excitements will have the same sad results. Wrong attention takes me away from the one thing I really need, self-awareness. The great news is that all I have to do is see what I’m doing at the moment . . . Instant Recovery. . . What a relief! Seeing wrong attention throughout the day and coming back to myself every time is what breaks the spell.
I love the power of Instant Recovery! It has saved me countless hours of misery because at the moment I remember that exercise, it snaps me out of my self-absorbed thoughts and feelings that always drag me through more pain and suffering.
Me too. I love Instant Recovery! So simple and so true.