posted January 14, 2009 01:49 AM         

The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power by Vernon Howard (1967)

Hot To Feel Great Every Minute

Recently I was standing on a corner in downtown Los Angeles waiting to cross the street. The traffic signal suddenly went crazy, blinging senselessly from stop to go, go to stop. Confused pedestrians started, stopped, whirled around, started again. No one knew what to do.

That is what happens to people whose emotional signals are out of order. They just don’t know what to do. The entire secret of success with your emotions is this:
You feel good not because the world is right, but your world is right because you feel good.

We start with that all-powerful principle of the Mystic Path: self-awareness. We must become acquainted with our emotional household; we must see our feelings as they actually are, not as we assume they are. This breaks their hypnotic and damaging hold on us. Negativities are like weeds in a deep basket. When we bring them to the surface of the basket-of our awareness-the winds of Reality carry them away.

Don’t hesitate to challenge any negative feelings you discover within yourself. That is a giant step toward their dismissal. Over many years of lecturing and counseling, I find many people hesitant to question their negative condition. They fear there may not be an answer. But we must dare to ask anything and everything, especially when suspecting that the answer may be contrary to our present opinion. This gradually awakens the intuitive self which explains everything to us.

What a pleasure to hear someone frankly admit a confusion in order to clear it! Example:

“I don’t understand. You say that emotional pains are caused by illusion. Illusion or not, I feel the pain!”

A man certainly suffers from a frightening nightmare, but when he wakes up, where is the suffering?
Whenever confronted by a particularly disturbing emotion, you may wonderingly inquire, “Is it really possible to arise above this”

With perfect assurance you may tell yourself, “Yes, even this”

How To Understand Negative Emotions

Before reading this section, think of the negative emotion that bothers you the most. It might be boredom, restlessness, a sense of futility, something like that. This gives you maximum benefit from our exploration.

Grasp this basic fact about negative emotions: All arise from a false sense of identity. We think we are the false self, but we are not. Every painful feeling-sadness, envy, guilt, insecurity-is sour fruit of the false self. What a great day when we see this. We can destroy the sour fruit by chopping down the tree at its trunk. Then, how differently we greet each morning!

It helps to see that there is no such thing as a single negativity in a man. The frightened person will also be defensive; the discouraged man will be nervous. Negativities are like marbles in a jar. Though they appear individually, they are all part of the self-enclosed ego-self. This is more good news, for as we crack the jar, away roll many negativities. Take hostility.

An obvious fact about negative feelings is often overlooked. They are caused by us, not by exterior happenings. An outside event presents the challenge, but we react to it. So we must attend to the way we take things, not to the things themselves. It is our happy responsibility to react constructively.

We destroy painful emotions by becoming fully conscious of them. We must see them clearly, without evasion, without any reaction whatsoever to whatever we see within ourselves.

“This seems to connect with the technique of impartial Self-Observation, which you speak of so often.”

Exactly. Passive self-examination brings negative feelings to the surface of awareness. We see them as being within us, which begins to destroy them. We become conscious of what was previously unconscious. Let’s take an everyday example. Suppose you resent someone for pushing ahead of you at the check-out line at the grocery market. If you do not observe this resentment, you suffer from it unknown to yourself.

“It has happened!”

But suppose you are an earnest student of the Mystic Path. On the way home you observe, ‘You know, I was actually resentful. I really see it.’ Now, you have stood apart from yourself and observed the resentment objectively. This clear recognition has already weakened the resentment, for you have seen it not as part of the real you, but as a hold-over from the old, habitual, conditioned self.

The Mystic Path Is For Heroes

Noticing our negativities is a curious process. It is like seeing a shadow and taking it as a frightening phantom. If you look closely, you see it as a mere shadow. But refusal to look at it perpetuates the painful illusion of a frightening phantom. This is the awful state unnecessarily endured by millions of unawake people. They suffer without knowing why.

My own early experiences show that advancement to a higher level of freedom is often triggered by a rebellion against the existing lower level. Simply stated, you get fed up with the pain of the lower level. You decide not to live that way any more. You get tired of enslavement to a habit. Everything you have done in the past fails to break the habit. So you dare to try a new way, such as understanding how and why habits are formed. That new understanding breaks the habit.

You must rebel constructively. Do not direct your rebellion against people or conditions, rather, against your own fear of people and conditions. Perhaps someone in your life bothers you. You need not get mad at him or her. But you need to say silently to the person and to yourself, “From this day on, I will no longer sacrifice my natural integrity to you. From now on I am living my life. I will no longer barter my true individuality in order to please you and to hold you. Take me or leave me, but you’ll have to take me as I am.”

When silently spoken with insight and without hostility, this speech begins a tremendous transformation within.

In his essay Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson declares, “If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. However long we have dwelt in lies, now your interest, mine, and all men’s, is to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last.”

The Mystic Path calls for heroes. To perform deeds of valor on the battlefield is not necessarily heroic. Authentic heroism is inner action, unseen and unapplauded by men. It consists in a willingness to wade, if necessary, through a thousand personal blunders in order to reach the next elevation. The basic heroism is an agreement to higher truth.

Hot To Detach Distress

A story from Taoism tells of a carefree band of horses which galloped spiritedly around the hills and meadows. They dined on green grass and drank clear water from cool streams. Living freely and naturally, they lived contentedly.

Along came a famous horse-trainer named Polo. He captured the unsuspecting horses, declaring, “I know what is best for them.” He bridled the horse, decorated them with cheap ornaments, gave them numbers. Then he made them perform in public. They were forced to trot about in precise formation to the crackling commands of a whip.

The once-carefree horses turned into mechanical performers-tired, sick, afraid.

That is how modern society regiments man. And that is why he is tired and afraid. How can we regain our natural and spontaneous feeling for life? Through the dynamic principles of the Mystic Path, like this startling one:
You have never been discouraged or depressed. You never have and never will make a mistake of any kind.

The clue is in the word you. As we have seen, man’s whole difficulty lies in his false sense of identity. He wrongly takes himself as the negative false person. But, in reality, he is his True Self, which can no more be negative than an angel can be impure.

Here is how the mistake proceeds in a man’s emotional life: A feeling of sadness arises. The man immediately identifies with it, that is, he takes himself as the feeling. He thinks he is this feeling, which he is not. He doubles the error every time he says, “I am sad.” The more he says it the sadder he feels; the sadder he feels the more he says it.

If you, the reader, run into this, what can you do?
Separate the way you feel from who you really are. You are not that feeling of sadness. Try to grasp this.

Impersonalize a negative feeling. Do not say “I” to it. Rather, refer to the feeling as “it”. A man should say, “it is depressed, it feels helpless, it is enslaved by passion, it feels guilty, it craves alcohol, it wants revenge, it is terrified, it is a compulsive eater, it has heartache, it feels betrayed, it is confused, it does foolish things, it is secretly bitter, it is envious, it feels bored, it is nervous, it has sleepless nights, it is irritable, it is exhaust[t]ed.

Do you see what this does? It separates the false you from the real you. By detaching this false sense of identity you also detach the distress it creates.

Separate your feeling about yourself from who you really are-a free person. Separate, separate, separate.

It is not an evasion of your responsibility when you attribute your negatives to “it”. It is a new kind of self-responsibility, a genuine technique that delivers you once and for all.

Your whole duty is to understand this. It is your understanding that destroys painful negativities. Work with this miracle-method of the Mystic Path.

The Cure For Depression

“My chief negative emotion is depression. What causes it?”

Follow carefully. Your understanding rids you of the problem. Depression occurs when you catch a sudden insight into the emptiness of your life. A man thinks he is happy with all his business and social activities. But he catches a glimpse that it is all an act, which depresses him. It is like dreaming about a palace and waking up in a mud hut.

“And the cure?”

Be willing to see through your pretensions of having a purposeful life. This is an awakening shock. But when we abandon a pseudo-purpose, when we have nothing left of the false self, a true purpose enters the life. Then, depression is absolutely impossible.

“I don’t know what you mean by pseudo-purpose. There is nothing wrong about building a business, a career, or having a happy home.”

No, of course not. Go ahead and be a successful businessman, or homemaker, or whatever else you want on the worldly level. Be as outwardly prosperous as you like. But don’t think it can add anything to your interior life. You must not use worldly success as a means of psychological identity, such as picturing yourself as an important person. This creates anxiety. Remember, you live in two worlds-the material world of business and homes, and the spiritual world. Keep each in its place. If you try to use exterior success to find your True Self, you will fail and fall into depression. You can’t paint the outside of your house and expect the living room to look any different.

“Is this why successful people like movie stars often live so unhappily?”

They get depressed because they catch a glimpse of their inner poverty. This frightens them, for they fear there is nothing besides this showy sham. There is something else. We find it by daring to abandon the false. Then, we have no problems whatsoever with our exterior affairs. This is what the New Testament means by seeking first the Kingdom of Heaven.

“But no one really pays attention, do they? That is why everyone suffers from depression.”

Work on these ideas so that you don’t suffer.

Let’s pause to inquire into the reason for our investigation of negative emotions. Why spend so much time discussing unhappiness? The reason is: it finally awakens us to the very life we seek. We cannot become happy by altering our exterior affairs any more than we can improve our handwriting by getting a new pen. The understanding of unhappiness brings happiness. To see what is false is also to see what is true.

We are exactly where we have chosen to be. But we belong where our original nature longs to be.

Surprising Facts About Desire

The average man’s day is characterized by strained efforts to fulfill inner desires through outer supplies. He is surprised and hurt when outer supplies are denied. He rarely suspects the base of the problem. He assumes that it lies in exterior availability, when it really resides in his own desire.

Mystical teachings about desire are frequently misunderstood. Those who read mystical literature are urged to be free of cravings. They react, “But my whole life centers around wanting things and going after them. What would I do without my desires?”

Mysticism explains, “No, do not try to extinguish all desires. But try to separate the healthy from unhealthy. How can you tell the difference? Watch them. Notice what they do to you. A false desire is painful, compulsive, nervous, angry. It keeps you running, but you don’t know where. A false desire masquerades as real fruit, but it is artificial; it cannot satisfy hunger.”

Healthy desires, mysticism continues, are quite different. They also activate you, but you run in a straight line, not in a circle. It is healthy to wish for greater self-understanding. It is just fine to desire a better life. It is healthy to yearn for the way out of your haunted house.

Freedom from compulsive desire is next-door-to-heaven. How would you, the reader, feel right now if you were free from a certain craving? Do you see the magnificent possibilities?

If people involved themselves only with necessary things, they would, with one stroke, cut away ninety percent of their emotional grief. But they mistake wants for needs. Genuine wants, such as food, rest, recreation[-]create no problem. Being normal needs, they are easily satisfied. But false appetites, arising from the false self, keep the seeker anxious, even when obtained. One way to see a worthless goal as worthless is to obtain it. The child soon feels that he really didn’t want the bee.

The identity of these needless cravings may surprise some people. You need not crave to be appreciated. It makes no difference whether you are popular or not. There is no need to lead the band.

If you could peer into your original nature, you would see that you haven’t the slightest desire to lead the band, whether socially, commercially, or intellectually. Your inner self is quite content to remain in the ranks as a flutst or drummer. It is the ego-self that insists upon being the drum major. It is a sign of psychic expansion to be unconcerned with your position among the ranks of men. As long as we are spiritually in place, we don’t give a hoot about our position in the earthly band. And that is when we enjoy the march and the music.

Every man senses the truth of this. But there is another part of him that dislikes the idea. This is merely the egotistical self which fearfully protects its threatened extinction. Good. Your task is to extinguish it.

Your True Self has no desperate or unfulfilled desires. It already has all it needs. Its very Self is what it needs.

Your Freedom From Painful Craving

“Please explain how false desires cause distress.”

Let’s track down a typical human trait, that of vanity. Have you ever noticed the undercurrent of pain and anxiety there is in vanity? We worry that people won’t notice or appreciate us enough. Now, vanity feeds the false self, which has an endless appetite. It can never get enough; it keeps us chasing frantically around, seeking the food of attention and flattery. So observe how painful it is to live with this nagging offspring of the false self. That is a superb start for dismissing it from your mental household.

“Then the Mystic Path frees us from the painful desire for flattery and attention?”

Trying to flatter a mystic is like praising an apple for creating itself. The mystic has extinguished identifications with his ego-self. He sees his own dependency upon a power far beyond himself. And so he has no worries in his human relations. He is not nagged by self-centered demands upon others. And that, incidentally, is a state of genuine love. You love someone only when you don’t want something from him.

The lopping off of false desire provides amazing new command in your human relations. Other people have no power over you whatsoever. With full integrity, you face anyone with confidence. By not hungering for Mr. A’s approval, you are free of him. By no longer needing Miss B. to dispel your loneliness, you are happy with her, or without her.

In summary, compulsive cravings are part of the artificial self. But as we awaken, they dry up because they no longer have a source. It is a wonderful experience to see them vanish forever. We are then left with healthy desires, in which there is no pain, and which serve our genuine interests.

The Only Answer To Anger

A compassionate king wishes to help the poor citizens of his land. He was also a wise king. He refused to hand out unearned benefits, knowing how they corrupt human nature. So he set up bountiful stores of food and clothing at one end of a long, dark valley. All along the trail he placed straw men, each one more fierce-looking than the last. The citizens who dared to face and pass by the fierce figures received their share of the reward.

That is what we must do. When faced with emotional barriers, we must become aware of their flimsy falseness. If we really do this, unwanted emotions level and disappear like a sand castle before the waves.

You eventually reach a very interesting state. You will have no time to fool around with things that used to bother you. You ignore them. You pass by. You smile in amusement at the childish attempts of fear and worry to drag you down. You calmly see that they have no power whatever to touch the new you.

In this advanced state, a businessman is not afraid of competition or poor commercial conditions. A wife is unafraid of her husband, or children, or relatives. A husband is without anxious feelings toward his employer or friend. A single person is no longer preyed upon by loneliness. A citizen is free of apprehension toward a domineering government or worldwide threats. On this higher level, no one is afraid of anyone.

“Then can men have no more power over us, because they can neither take us by our desires, nor by our fears.” Do you see something of extraordinary depth in this declaration of Francois Fenelon?

“You know, Mr. Howard, I feel free in these classes to speak about things I usually hide. Take anger. I try not to get mad, but fail every time. I would like to hear what you have to say about this.”

You must stop trying not to get angry. This is suppression, which only makes it worse. Whenever you are angry, [i]be angry, without condemning yourself for it. Listen carefully, please. You do condemn yourself for being angry; that is why you hide it. You have an ideal picture of yourself as being a peaceful person, a non-angry person. So, whenever anger arises over something, it shocks you. You are shocked because the actual anger clashes with the imaginary picture you have of being a non-angry person. Because you don’t like giving up this flattering and phony picture, you get angry often.

“This is so utterly new. I want to think about it. So I must give up my pretentious picture of being a non-angry person?”

You can do this be observing your anger without identifying with it. Simply watch it come and go, without shame or comment. This is the only way in the whole wide world you or any other person ever frees himself of anger. And it is quite necessary that you free yourself.

“Well, as you say, we can’t be angry and happy at the same time.”

You Can Be Happy Right Now

Why does man feel so bad so often? What is wrong with our emotions?

Nothing wrong, says mysticism, that mental clarity cannot cure. The problem is man’s insistence upon feeling a fact before establishing that feeling upon the foundation of reality. A psychological fact cannot be felt correctly until we first understand it. To place feeling before understanding is to cause tragic illusion.

We can be happy in the here and now. That is a fact. We rightly grasp this fact by seeing that happiness is a state of non-illusion, of seeing things as they are, not as we are. With this foundation, we feel happy permanently. But suppose we hear the fact and try to feel it without seeing what it means? In that case, the wild imagination projects all sorts of false ideas about happiness-for instance, that it comes through wealth or power. We may feel excitement at that, but sooner or later it collapses.

This is important enough to review: Do not try to feel a fact until it is personally understood. Do we try to feel the beauty of a symphony before reaching the concert hall? We must stop reaching for emotional sensations. They deceive. They prevent us from experiencing the fact which produces the genuine feeling. An emotion based on reality is permanent; it never fluctuates with exterior changes. A false feeling is as shaky as the mirage of an oasis. A genuine feeling comes spontaneously, when we sight a real oasis. This feeling cannot be shaken because the oasis itself cannot be shaken.

A tale from the Arabian Nights tells of Jallanar, a beautiful slave-girl. So impressed was the King of Persia by her loveliness that he took her into the royal palace as his queen. Although given every luxury by the King, she declined to speak to him. “Why,” has asked, “do you not tell me your secrets? Who are you? Where do you come from? Why are you silent?”
Jallanar finally told him, “I am a princess, the daughter of a Sea King. I have remained silent in order to prove you. I now see that you are a kindly king who truly loves me.”

The Truth is like that. Before giving us its joy, it tests our sincerity. When we are right, the right emotions come, and never go away.

“The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical.” (Albert Einstein)

Your Field Of Diamonds

Remember this basic principle for happy feelings which were set down at the start of the chapter:

You feel good not because the world is right, but your world is right because you feel good/

Let’s see how this happens. The following illustration is from my previous book, Psycho-Pictography: The New Way to Use the Miracle Power of Your Mind.

Suppose you are not feeling well one day, yet you accompany some friends on a leisurely drive through the beautiful countryside. Someone calls your attention to a lovely lake, but, because of your illness, you cannot give it your attention or interest. Someone else remarks about a magnificent mountain in the distance, but you hardly hear him. You pass one lovely scene after another, yet they have no meaning to you. Because your illness has taken all your energy, you have none to spare in enjoying yourself. It is the same to your mind as if these natural beauties didn’t exist at all. In your present ill state, they have neither existence or attraction.

But the next day you recover. You feel fine. There is no inward attention to anything; you are outward bound once more. So again you go on a drive; you visit the very same places. But now, everything is completely different. You enjoy the lovely lake and magnificent mountain. You respond to them. You enjoy yourself.
How come? It was the very same scenery both times. But on the second trip [i]you were different. You saw everything in an entirely new way. You had inner freedom to see and appreciate your outer world. Like magic, your changed mental viewpoint changed the world for you.[/i]

In Chapter 7 we will discover absolute evidence that our pains and difficulties are cased by distorted thinking. We will also learn how to correct the thinking and thereby abolish the pain forever.

Let me speak very personally with you, the reader, for a moment. If you continue working with all these ideas, absorb them as best you can, you will look back with deep gratitude for your persistence. How happy you will be that you kept walking. You will feel like a man turned loose in a field of diamonds!

Remember, every individual, who has found personal peace and happiness, has been through everything you may now be experiencing. He or she knows the barriers and the frustrations you face along the way. He understands your concern over financial affairs; he knows how fervently you wish you had not made that impulsive error; he sees your secret sorrow. But this mystic-man knows something far above all this. He knows it can come to an end.

Vital aids to keep in mind

1. Your world turns right when you feel right.

2. A clear understanding of negative emotions dismisses them. Work for their dismissal.

3. It is right and necessary to rebel constructively against tyrannical feelings within yourself.

4. There is not a single painful mood that you cannot separate from your life.

5. Use the techniques given for the release of depression. They work.

6. It is essential to gain awareness of the whole process of desire.

7. Your original nature, which can always be reclaimed, is totally free of painful cravings.

8. When we wake up to the facts of life, we are left with beneficial desires only.

9. Never condemn yourself for having negative emotions. Rather, find freedom through self-knowledge.

10. It is a fact-you can be happy in the here and now.