A Banquet of Concise Wisdom

from Vernon Howard

The Dynamic Power of Awareness

The most trivial act becomes dynamic when you attempt it with self-awareness. Whether you are washing the dishes, or painting a table, or simply walking from one room to another, try to be aware of yourself doing just that. Don’t just paint or walk, but be conscious of yourself painting or walking. This detaches you from the dream state in which most people live, it puts you in touch with your energetic centre self. Any action performed with self-awareness becomes inspired.


The Natural Life Is True

A cheery relaxation is man’s natural state, just as nature itself is relaxed. A waterfall is concerned only with being itself, not with doing something it considers waterfall-like. It does not force us to think about it; it does not demand our attention and energy; it does not lean on us for gifts; it asks nothing of us. It simply gives what it is, and lets go at that. And that is why we enjoy its magnificence.

The usual phrase is, “Be yourself.” We are not following this counsel if we are strained and unsure. These are the sour fruits of the carelessly adopted synthetic self.


How To Be One With Life

When a stream approaches a series of rocks, it has no preconceived plans for passing them. It does not see the rocks as opponents or as threats to its own existence. The very fluid nature of water tells it how to rightly meet everything in its path. Let this natural wisdom also be in you. Meet everything with a free and flexible mind which is not tied to past experiences. You will then meet all events without alarm, with quiet progress.


Be True To Yourself

Behave the way you really are, even if it ends a relationship! Never suppress yourself in an effort to influence, hold, or win someone. When we are unreal, so are our rewards. To say this in another way, never behave the way you think the other person wants you to behave, but in the manner you must. Nothing you really need to do or have ever requires a yielding to person or custom.


The Secret To True Happiness

Do not deny yourself the normally nice pleasantries of the world in the belief that they are anti-spiritual. People who do this merely repress themselves, which results in secret bitterness and neurosis. Participate freely in your business and social activities, but do not form attachments to them in an effort to find security.

Also, never try to be more spiritually advanced than you are. That is a painful trap. When you do this, change occurs. However, YOU don’t change anything, it just changes.

Buddha found this secret to true happiness. In the early years of his search he practiced severe self-denial, including fasting. On one occasion he so weakened himself that his friends could hardly pull him out of a raging river. Seeing the folly of exterior exercise, he turned in the right direction - inner insight.


Fascinating Facts About the Richer Life

One of the most persistent of errors is the belief that the spiritual life is separate from our daily life in the home or office. The truly spiritual mind sees no difference in the two. Differences in geography seem to make them different in psychology, but the wise mind sees them as one world. A businessman is doing spiritual work when he refuses to waste his energy in feeling disappointed. At the same time that Ralph Waldo Emerson was writing his victorious philosophies, he was also raising the best commercial apples in his home town of Concord, Massachusetts.


Don’t Be Afraid to Play Through Life

Don;t be afraid to play through life. Retire from heavy thoughts. Take everything with lighthearted wisdom. We are heavy because we think we must make an impression, gain something, be somebody. In spite of what society tells you, you need not be anybody at all in the eyes of men. The only genuine need you have is to be a real human being. Try to see this, try to feel it with all your heart. Then you will know what it means to make the world your plaything.


How Love Creates New Energy

Remember that all energy is a single, unified force. The energy which lifts your left hand is the same energy which makes a carrot grow. The power which whirls through space is the same power by which you observe the mood you are in today. This vast energy is ready to renew whoever makes himself ready of it. We make ourselves ready by refusing to take pleasure in negative emotions, by wanting to know more about life than what we see on the surface.

Love is the full, free and uninterrupted flow of life-energy through your psychic system. It is the river with no dams or whirlpools or broken banks or dividing islands. Love is oneness, wholeness, mental health. This free flow starts by first becoming aware of self-division, and then by dissolving it through spiritual insight.

Copyright SuperWisdom Foundation