The Beauty of Disillusionment

The Beauty of Disillusionment
Vernon Howard

From "The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power":

To be disillusioned is a wonderful state to achieve, a marvelous breakthrough into sunlight. Do not think of disillusion as a sad thing. We think this state is terrible. We are mistaken, It is there that we find peace, liberty (Francois Fenelon)

Disillusionment with yourself must precede enlightenment. If you are disillusioned, I am very glad for you, for now there are great possibilities. Do you feel that nothing you know can fulfill you? Great. You are preparing a psychic emptiness, which can be filled with something making sense at last. You are ready to leap from the frustrating known to the emancipating unknown, magnificently beyond your present self.

Tired of trying to believe in something? Good for you. You can now let something believe in you. It is especially splendid to get disillusioned with people, most of all, your best friends. No, not in cynicism and bitterness, for these are still prison cells consisting of your own defensive attitudes. You don't want emotion-charged attitudes toward lost people; you want clear discernment of their lost state. In such clarity there is total calmness and command.

There is something quite fascinating, I assure you, in being so disillusioned toward others that you are left without a single friend, or counselor, or authority to lean upon. Your very awareness of the inability of others to help you forces you to look, at last, toward your only genuine source of strength, the kingdom within. It is as if a weary wanderer, refused lodging, turns to leave, and in so doing, sights his inherited castle.

The whole idea is to see ourselves and others as we presently are, for upon the ruins of our disillusionment we build a castle we can actually occupy. You build swiftly when you make these insights of French philosopher La Rochefoucauld your own:

* We assume the look and appearance we want to be known for, so that the entire world is a mass of masks. * We offer praise only that we may benefit from it. * Only strong natures can be sweet ones. Those that appear sweet are usually only weak, and may easily turn sour.

It is severely damaging for anyone to pretend possession of a virtue which, in fact, he possesses only in imagination. If a person thinks he is already loving, he cannot go on to find the genuine article. Not only that, but if we think we have bread in the cupboard, when in fact we don't, we will be hungry when we need bread. Such imagination is a dangerous foe of freedom, and far more difficult to detect than one might suppose. Negative imagination is a major cause of human hypnosis. It must be detected, and abandoned. Start with honest Self-Observation. Review the technique for this from Chapter 2.

La Rochefoucauld s insight represents a certain state toward cosmic consciousness. It is one in which you no longer idolize people by attributing qualities and virtues to them which they don't really possess. A person at this stage realizes that his admiration of others is merely a subtle projection of self-admiration. Seeing through himself, he sees through others. This brings great relief, for you are never nervous toward anyone you really understand.

Disillusionment is nothing else but seeing the false as false, and is therefore an advanced mental condition.

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