You are the whole world..maybe you would discover this secret

Lead me from dreaming to waking.
Lead me from opacity to clarity.
Lead me from the complicated to the simple.
Lead me from the obscure to the obvious.
Lead me from intention to attention.
Lead me from what I'm told I am to what I see I am.
Lead me from confrontation to wide openness.
Lead me to the place I never left,
Where there is peace, and peace
- The Upanishads

*note* more painful truths from Vernon Howard...ask yourself whom hurts,and if you are really THAT.
-added by danny-
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Let The World Hurt You All It Wants
An excerpt from a talk by Vernon Howard

Let the world hurt you all it wants. There is your deliverance from all hurt.
You're not living that way are you? Well, how about a little experiment? Why
don't you just let the world hurt you all it wants as an experiment to see
that maybe the final final result will be different from the results you're
getting now by fighting the world that tries to hurt you. You are you know.
All your energy, all your strength, all your intelligence is used to fight the
world in one way or another. To try to outwit it, out guess it, to be
competitive with it. All in an attempt to prevent the world from hurting you.

And I can't begin to show to you the incredible mistake you are making.
Still only having an ordinary intellect which divides itself into inner and
outer, you still think that the outer world is out to get you. Therefore, the
self in you must protect itself from the world out there.

You don't see, I am telling you, you don't understand that the only enemy
you have is within. You don't see it. This is why you are wasting your time
and your energy in a vain battle to try to keep yourself from getting hurt.
How come it happens ten times a day? Something is failing. Your technique
is very very ineffective.

What would happen if you didn't resist when the world tried to hurt you?
Maybe you would discover the secret I've just talked about. To discover that
it's your own inner processes that are false, that are resisting the world that
is keeping you in a hurt condition.

The next time you're going to lose something why don't you simply say
politely good-bye to it instead of trying to hang on to it? The hanging on to
it is what is causing the fear, because you are saying, "I must keep this," –
listen, listen – "I must hang on to this possession in order to remain as
secure as I am."

Your security is nothing but one trembling after another. And you don't have
the intelligence enough to see that simple fact. If you did, you would then
begin to have the higher intelligence of letting it go. Letting that man go,
letting that woman go, letting that power go, letting that advantage go, and
indeed, of letting that anxiety go.

Because your anxiety, strange as it seems is giving you a sense of security,
because it is giving you something to do so that you won't have to face and
see the mistake you're making. Because what if you had to say, "I've been
wrong all my life about the way I've been living my life." Whether you're
twenty or eighty, pretty shameful to the ego, huh? Why don't you plunge
into the dark clouds just to see what happens to you; to let yourself be
completely ashamed at what a liar you've been, at what a phony you've
been, at how divided you've been, at how you believed in people, how you
trusted people.

Let yourself be knocked – you understand? You have to understand – let
yourself be knocked around by a vicious world all it wants so that you have
a pair of sandals and pants and a shirt on and that's your possessions. When
all you've got is a pair of sandals and a little bit of clothes over you, you'll
own the world. I'll tell you, I'll teach you in this class how to own the whole
world.

You don't own anything now. You crab at the rent. See you don't own your
house. You have to pay rent to everybody you meet. You hate them. They
take tribute from you and you hate them. Own your own house, own your
own life. That is the whole world. Owning your own life is possessing the
whole world. Possessing the real world. A world that won't pass away.
Your home up on the hill or down in the valley or your nice big fifty-story
casino that you own or hotel that you own or that big property you own in
Oregon or Vermont, all that's going to pass away as far as you are
concerned.

Why do you fight? You're afraid – you're afraid that someone is going to
steal your misery. Your misery is your present world. That's right. Your
division, your fear, your split down the middle is your present world and you
are fighting to retain it. You're afraid that someone is going to steal your life
away from you. You have no real life. You are afraid that someone is going
to steal your trash. Begin to let them steal your trash without resistance.
Resist not evil. Let them take anything they want. Let them take everything.
You precious, good people here. You good people are so bad. You
respectable people are so disrespectable, unrespectable. You interesting
people are so boring. You people with hope, you're hopeless. That's why you
have hope, because you are hopeless. If you didn't have hope you'd have
hopelessness which is freedom.

The man with the sandals and the coat and the shirt and the pants – he has
no problems. You with your tuxedos and your ties and your shiny boots, you
have problems because now people have to be impressed with you. And
maybe the boots will wear out or maybe that woman will find another man
with shinier boots.

Get poor. Own nothing. Not as a religious phrase because then you're just a
religious hypocrite, but as a reality in your actual life where you're so poor –
you are so poor that nobody and nothing can ever ever again take a thing
away from you. Now you are rich! As long as something can be stolen from
you, you are poor thinking you're rich.

You'll look – having that shirt on your back and the old sandals – you'll look
out at the world and you will marvel at your stupidity, your hypnosis, that
you ever could have been so stupid as to be jealous of that man who owned
that million dollar motel, hotel. You'll wonder at your insanity that you could
have ever wanted that marvelously beautiful charming television actress.
You'll wonder at your insanity that you wanted that insanity. Insanity does
indeed covet insanity.

How poor can you get? Find out. Never mind defining riches because you
don't know what it is. You can examine – you can examine what you call
riches and let that go. Then you'll know what real riches are without the
word, without the description, without the definition.
Then you can sit back and you can have a home if you like, and you can
have friends if you like, and you can have a car if you like. Then you can sit
back and be unconcerned. Then you can sit back and be content not wanting
anything from the world because you are the whole world.
Sorry, But You’ve Come To The Wrong Office

Student: Vernon, the unconscious, is that merely thoughts, feelings, sensings, that we don't --
that is running through our mind so fast that we don't catch it?
Vernon: The unconscious, did you say? Yes. That's a very good way to put it. It's running
through our mind like a reckless wild horse. And we're on the horse; the same thing as the horse;
so that we don't see it at all. Our opportunity to see it is for someone to jump out in front of that
horse and wave a red flag.

That horse is running like crazy, and someone jumps up and waves – the horse rears up. His
motion – forward motion is broken, isn't it? And this is what the shocks we're trying to give to each
other here are all about.

The horse is not going to reach out and get a red flag and put it in front of his own face. He's
incapable. He doesn't want to do it. Something outside of that horse has to do it. And what that is
is the first little bit of understanding that you gain in the office when you've exhausted all the other offices.

Student: To be able to reply to life as far as, "You've come to the wrong office," you have to --
wouldn't you have to have begun to be able to separate from your false self a little?
Vernon: Of course. Of course. That's the start of it, isn't it? If someone – look, when your evil is
the same as my evil, we're buddies, right? And then we fight all the other what we call evil in the
world. If I begin to get tired of what my evil is doing to me, then I can recognize my evil and
therefore your evil. That's the separation, isn't it?

Can any of us here begin to see what phonies we are? I'll get one maybe even closer home
than that. Can you begin to see – well, take a pad with you sometime – better make it pretty long
– a 100-page notebook would be better. And you carry it with you -- and about ten pencils. And
you make a little mark every time you feel ill at ease over anything.
You walk down the street, you'd be writing as you walk down the street. The way that man
looked at me – you won't have anything to do but write down one, two, three – all day long, right?
How many have felt ill at ease in the hour we've been here already? More than once? Twice?
Thrice? Frice? (Laughter)

That's because we have – we're still visiting the office called Useless Agitation Supplied Here.
You glance at me, or I see there's only one cookie left and there's two people there. Can I catch
myself right in the middle of the discomfort, the embarrassment, the ill at ease, and see it going on inside me at that instant?

Some day you will be able to catch it. And when you catch it, another bell will ring, and that bell
will consist of one word. You see you're ill at ease about something out in the kitchen. You really
see it. And for the first time you say, "Ah, for the first time I've seen it. The other times I imagined I saw it, and I wanted to blab about it." The minute you see it clearly, another bell will ring that will say – another voice will speak – that will say, "Unnecessary."

Why should there be any ill-at-easement at all? Discomfort at all? Why? It exists because a
certain little machine inside with calculation and cunning that says about 100 things at the same
time. "How can I keep that person in the kitchen from seeing that I've gained ten pounds? Huh?
How can I keep that person thinking that I'm nice – if they thought it in the first place – I hope.
How can I come to this class and experience the least amount of discomfort?"
Oh, you waste this class. You come here after this to see how much discomfort you can become
aware of so that you're not ill at ease unconsciously by trying to put on a front, by trying to protect something.

Nervousness is very important to study. The word nervous – very simple word, right? You might
even write it down. "I will study nervousness." That would be good. "I will study nervousness." Try
to see how many things are involved in it, one of them being – notice how much more at ease you
are when you're all alone, when you don't have to see whether other people are approving or
disapproving or whatever.

Of course, you're ill at ease about other things when you're with yourself because you're living
with your own agitated mind. But at least with other people, when you're a little bit at ease – no
masks or anything like that – and that should be evidence that our contacts with other people
arouse the false parts in us that want to be impressive, that want to keep the delusion going that
"I'm okay," that "I'm strong," that "I'm intelligent," that "I'm normal."

Look at the strain we put on ourselves, trying to keep the other person thinking well of
ourselves when we don't even think well of ourselves.

You don't think very much of yourself, do you? You really don't. Well, of course, that's a
mistake because you've identified with all the nuttiness inside you and called yourself that. That is why you don't think well of yourself, which is simply self-centered conceit. But that's another debt to explore.

But you don't think well of yourself at all. And yet you want other people to, which
means that the actor or actress has to be pretty busy out there.
Student: Vernon, is a lot of nervousness caused by suppressed hostility and rage?
Vernon: It's certainly involved in it. When you are nervous or I am nervous, I hate that state. I
really hate it. For a number of reasons. First of all, I don't like the pain. And I don't like you telling me that I'm nervous because – you single me out. You say you're calm; I'm nervous, therefore I'm inferior to you.
It's always involved in it. How can it be separate from it?

When are you going to rebel against nervousness? I'll tell you how to rebel against it with
complete success. Just be nervous. And take all the criticism, all the stares, all the disappointment.

"Oh, we thought you were poised and in charge of yourself, and you broke up – you cracked up
at that crisis that happened." But it won't do you any good to be nervous unless you know you are
and just stand there and suffer consciously from it.

Do you know what will happen if you do that? Nervousness, which is a part of our general
neurosis, will run its course for the moment. You're in a situation where you're nervous. Okay. Go
ahead – go ahead. Be it. As if you can do anything else. You can cover it up, but cover it up – a
monkey is still a monkey. You put a hood over it, and there's still a monkey underneath it. It's just an invisible monkey or something. (Laughter)

The energy in the false state will run its course. That is, it will get tired because there's always
a change in motion, in movement, in energy. You're not nervous all the time, are you? Sometimes
you're relatively at ease. So it will run its course.

And as you stand there and remain nervous, without doing anything about it, repeatedly – as
you repeatedly do this, then each time you do this – without fighting it, without resistance – to
make it clearer, each time it will last 30 seconds shorter each time. It will exhaust itself faster each time until it won't arise at all.

Because you are no longer a part of the nervous person with its
impostering and all that, that is not there to be set off, to be made nervous, by any situation at all.

Not in the courtroom, not at the wedding, not at the family quarrel, not at the loss of this or that.

There's no one there to be set off. And when nervousness tries to walk in, you remember, "Sorry,
but you've come to the wrong office. I'm not getting involved in that anymore."
You can actually – you'll be able to actually see sometime where you're in a – say in a social
crisis situation. You'll actually be able – because you're working on yourself at all times, you'll be in the same situation you were, say, ten years ago, and because you're sitting there quietly, you can see how the idiot in you ten years ago got up and tried to prove himself, tried to straighten out the mess of other people.

And you can see why you were nervous, because you were being a phoney,
thinking you were helping or trying to be intelligent, making that dynamic remark. No wonder
you're nervous; you're a dummy. Dummies are always nervous.

How many – let's find out. How many nervous people are there? What does that – (Laughter)
All right. I couldn't resist.
And you'll sit there calmly, and you'll be able to see the progress you have made by only
visiting this one office of information all the time, every day instead of the other places.
And that –
I don't care how many times – how long you stay in it – the time will come when you'll move in.
Then, curiously, in one sense – in one sense you'll move out because you're no longer depending
on knowledge to tell you how to behave; you're depending on something that is higher than
knowledge.

Then this something that is higher than knowledge can speak to knowledge and say, "Say this,"
in that situation, and it will be the right thing to say. "Do this," in that situation, and on the social, everyday level, it will be the right thing to do.

In other words, we're trying to get our instructions from a higher source than our own
nuttiness. Our own habitual nuttiness.

Student: With all this knowledge that we keep putting into our head, is it going to connect with
something higher? Is that what is going to come out?

Vernon: Well, it's a part of the whole – knowledge has its part as the whole wholeness, but you
use it as a stepping stone. Once you're up there, up in the castle, you don't use the stepping
stones anymore. Except for practical purposes. We're using stepping stones called words. If by a
great miracle all of us in this room suddenly understood everything about life, would there be any
need for words? We would sit here and just look at each other, stare at each other. (Laughter)
Stare nervously – no.

You work on this from now on, too, in this room. And everybody else. Notice the little nervous
eye contacts you have with people. When I come here early – which I always do – and I look out at
some of you, what goes on in your mind when you have eye contact with me? What goes on when
Gordon looks at Joe or Rod looks at Allen, Connie looks at Mr. DeFrancis?

Are you ill at ease? Let's look. I'm going to look at some of you. Nothing the matter with eye
contact. Anything embarrassing about it? Anything uncomfortable about it? Well, let's find out. I
think I'll look at you. But our imagination goes to work. "What's he thinking?" (Laughter).