Vernon Howard Quotes & Sayings

Insight into the two selves within a man clears up many confusions and contradictions. It was our understanding that preceded our victory. — Vernon Howard

The problem is not what other people think, do or say; it is your reaction. — Vernon Howard

Anger or bitterness toward those who have hurt you will block your path to higher ground. You can have anger toward people or you can have freedom from people, but you can't have both. — Vernon Howard

One of society's absurd delusions is that the spending of money can cure something. — Vernon Howard

Bitterness is the outcome of a wrong mental movement - the attempt to force external events to conform to internal fantasy. The cure is to see fantasy as fantasy, which will reveal it as neither necessary nor rewarding. — Vernon Howard

You see everything depends upon the psychological headquarters from which we live. 'Where am I living from?' Ask yourself that question. If you don't like your headquarters, you can move any time you like. Break away. Don't tell anyone about it. Others will either smile tolerantly or mouth sanctimonious babble. Make your escape plans in secret. Never mind if you lose certain friends, you will find others who also have dared. They will be ten-thousand times more valuable to you. — Vernon Howard

Happiness is liberty from everything that makes us unhappy. — Vernon Howard

Men have the illusion of having a duty to make the world spin properly, which is precisely what makes it wobble. — Vernon Howard

Be very careful that you do not unconsciously assume that nervous tension is power. This is vital. Watch yourself the next time you work toward some goal. Look very closely to discover tense feelings and nervous thoughts whirling around inside. Do not let them deceive you into assuming that they are creative forces; they are not. They are thieves of genuine powers. As always, your awareness of their thievery is your first fine step toward casting them out. — Vernon Howard

There is no way reality can be prevented from flowing the way it
flows. It is our vain attempts to force it to flow in the service
of our imaginary needs which sets us in painful conflict with our-
selves and nature. You are not separate from the flowing reality;
you are that flowing reality. See this and you will not see any-
thing else which conflicts with it. You will be what you see. — Vernon Howard

We are slaves to whatever we don't understand. — Vernon Howard

Truth is not a matter of personal viewpoint. — Vernon Howard

It is wise to seek immortality for time defeats all other ambitions. — Vernon Howard

The Truth must be told at all costs, no matter how unpopular it may be. The authentic spiritual leader, having freed himself of his own false need to be popular, tells the Truth whether it falls on fertile or stony ground. Such a teacher is the salt of the earth, though few know it. If you think the world is delirious as is, you would find it intolerable without his healing influence. — Vernon Howard

Don't try to be spiritual. That is only a word in the dictionary. Make it your goal to become a normally functioning individual. Let these principles shape you according to your real nature of a simple, decent, honest, unafraid human being. — Vernon Howard

It is a mistake for anyone to think he has lived too long in his old, unsatisfactory ways to make the great change. If you switch on the light in a dark room, it makes no difference how long it was dark because the light will still shine. Be teachable. That is the whole secret.
— Vernon Howard

Genuine kindness is not what we do, it is what we are. — Vernon Howard

What you really want for yourself is always trying to break through, just as a cooling breeze flows through an open window on a hot day. Your part is to open the windows of your mind. — Vernon Howard

Resistance to the disturbance is the disturbance. — Vernon Howard

Have the daring to stop doing the things you really don't want to do. Can you see them? Look closely. Can you observe the many things you do because you reluctantly feel you should or must? Watch closely. Examine every action and reaction. Do you act naturally or do you act because you feel compelled? If you feel compelled, stop. Compulsion is slavery. Example: Refuse to go along with the crowd. — Vernon Howard

If you call one thing good, you must call its opposite bad. If you think it wonderful to make a big profit in your business, you will also think it terrible if you incur a large loss. The idea is to live above the opposites. — Vernon Howard

We can accept God becoming Man to save Man, but not Man becoming God to save himself. — Vernon Howard

Living in the now is freedom from all problems connected with time. You ought to remember that sentence, you ought to memorize it, and ought to take it out, you ought to practice it, you ought to apply it. And most of all, you ought to rejoice in it because you have just heard how not to be wretched, miserable you any more but to be a brand new, and forever brand new man or woman. — Vernon Howard

All we have to do is to receive what we are given ... We are given the naturalness to love someone, to be calm in crisis, to ignore self-defeating suggestions, to be pleasant, forgiving, tender, helpful, unworried, brave, energetic. — Vernon Howard

Quit thinking that you must halt before the barrier of inner negativity. You need not. You can crash through ... whatever we see a negative state, that is where we can destroy it. — Vernon Howard

The terrible immoralities are the cunning ones hiding behind masks of morality, such as exploiting people while pretending to help them.
— Vernon Howard

There exists a special self which takes every event as if it were the very thing you wanted to happen. That self is the Supermind, which is never upset by anything. Your goal is to nourish it into greater strength. Then, every step is sunlit. — Vernon Howard

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. — Vernon Howard

When one plan that you have, to get this or to get that, to advance in the world, or whatever it might be, when that seems in danger of veering off the path you have set for it, you have your emergency plan ready. And in simple language what that emergency plan is, what you put into operation, is called worry. If you can worry you are occupied, and what an incredible human situation it is! — Vernon Howard

You can end half your troubles immediately by no longer permitting people to tell you what you want. — Vernon Howard

Suppose you stand on a high place to enjoy the beauty of the sparkling sea below. You need do nothing to create that beauty; you need only BE IN THE SAME PLACE WHERE IT IS, and let nature do the rest. So it is with the inner life. There is nothing we can DO to gain psychic beauty. It already exists without our effort. We need only be where we belong, that is, in self-union. Then, beauty IS. — Vernon Howard

You cannot stop destructive actions by others, but you can stop your own destructive reactions to them — Vernon Howard

Happiness is yours in the here and now. The painful states of anxiety and loneliness are abolished permanently. Financial affairs are not financial problems. You are at ease with yourself. You are not at the mercy of unfulfilled cravings. Confusion is replaced with clarity. There is a relieving answer to every tormenting question. You possess a True Self. Something can be done about every unhappy condition. While living in the world you can be inwardly detached from its sorrows to live with personal peace and sanity. — Vernon Howard

Our freedom can be measured by the number of things we can walk away from. — Vernon Howard

A perfect method for awakening is to examine the results of our daily actions. If they are harmful, we know we need more consciousness. — Vernon Howard

Human sickness is so severe that few can bear to look at it ... but those who do will become well. — Vernon Howard

No one can tell you what is right for you except yourself. So start telling yourself what to do. If you blunder for ten years while thinking for yourself, that is rich treasure when compared with living these ten years under the mental domination of another. — Vernon Howard

Run forward when possible, walk ahead when you can, stagger onward when you must, but never cease your forward movement. — Vernon Howard

Your central self is totally untouched by grief, confusion, desperation. — Vernon Howard

Cruelty practiced as a matter of social principle or public policy, and presented to the community as a means to a higher goal is the most obscene and decadent phenomenon of any civilization. — Vernon Howard

We are exactly where we have chosen to be. — Vernon Howard

You must never fear anything at all. — Vernon Howard

Truth breaks you down so it can rebuild you according to its specifications in Heaven. — Vernon Howard

Is the beam from a lighthouse affected by howling wind and rain? It remains perfectly steadfast and unaffected by the storm. Your true self is like that. Nothing can ever harm you once you are consciously aware that it is so. — Vernon Howard

Do not be impatient with your seemingly slow progress. Do not try to run faster than you presently can. If you are studying, reflecting and trying, you are making progress whether you are aware of it or not. A traveler walking the road in the darkness of night is still going forward. Someday, some way, everything will break open, like the natural unfolding of a rosebud. — Vernon Howard

Worried thought prevents practical thought which could prevent worried thought. — Vernon Howard

Self-knowledge is the great power by which we comprehend and control our lives — Vernon Howard

Truth does not really hurt, rather it is our resistance to its message that causes us pain. — Vernon Howard

The only way to do something truly important every day is to seek to understand yourself every day. — Vernon Howard

Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn, and you will. — Vernon Howard

All heartache is caused by wrong viewpoints. — Vernon Howard

You have it made when you don't care whether you have it made or not. — Vernon Howard

Happiness is not the acquisition of anything; it's the understanding of something. — Vernon Howard

Learn this great secret of life: What people call interruption or disturbance to their routine is just as much a part of living as the routine. To split life into two parts, one called routine and the other called interruption, is to be caught between them. — Vernon Howard

Self awakening enables you to see the human scene as it is, not as it appears to be, which frees you of its chaos. — Vernon Howard

It is a thousand times more sensible to climb one foot up the
mountainside than to chatter for years about the mountaintop. — Vernon Howard

Change is never a loss - it is change only. — Vernon Howard

Interpretation blocks reception while masquerading as reception. Rightness does not need interpretation; it requires simple acceptance and nothing else. — Vernon Howard

Study carefully the law of cause and effect. — Vernon Howard

How would you feel if you had no fear? Feel like that. How would you behave toward other people if you realized their powerlessness to hurt you? Behave like that. How would your react to so-called misfortune if you saw its inability to bother you? React like that. How would you think toward yourself if you knew you were really all right? Think like that. — Vernon Howard

We cannot be free of nagging desires through suppression. This is like trying to keep a rubber boat beneath the water. But we remove compulsive desires altogether by understanding their nature. — Vernon Howard

The power of the present moment is so immense it is capable - when lived in fully - of destroying forever every past mistake and regret. — Vernon Howard

Pseudo-mysticism seeks to evade reality; authentic mysticism wants to live it. — Vernon Howard

Do not mistake desire for love. Desire leaves home in a frantic search for one gratification after another. Love is at home with itself. — Vernon Howard

You have succeeded in life when all you really WANT is only what you really NEED. — Vernon Howard

No one on earth can hurt you, unless you accept the hurt in your own mind ... The problem is not other people; it is your reaction. — Vernon Howard

Awareness of your weakness and confusion makes you strong because conscious awareness is the bright light that destroys the darkness of negativity. Detection of inner negativity is not a negative act, but a courageously positive act that makes you a new person. — Vernon Howard

You must dare to disassociate yourself from those who would delay your journey ... Leave, depart, if not physically, then mentally. Go your own way, quietly, undramatically, and venture toward Trueness at last. — Vernon Howard

Our life-transformation is in exact proportion to the amount of truth we can take without running away. — Vernon Howard

Society is like a crowd in carnival costumes with everyone fearful that others will see through his disguise. — Vernon Howard

Persistence prevails, like a stream that is temporarily blocked by boulders and then collects force enough to overflow onward. — Vernon Howard

Inner guidance is heard like soft music in the night by those who have learned to listen. — Vernon Howard

We can no more enjoy life by hoping for a future result than we can enjoy music by waiting for the final note. — Vernon Howard

The genuinely spiritual person is one who has lost all desire to be anyone but exactly who he is, without labels and without apologies. He is what he is and that's all there's is to it. Such a man is undivided, uncomplicated and contented. — Vernon Howard

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it. — Vernon Howard

It is a true miracle when a man finally sees himself as his only opposition. — Vernon Howard

The world consists of imaginary people, claiming imaginary virtues and suffering from imaginary happiness. — Vernon Howard

When you are genuinely strong, you neither attack nor defend and so retain your energy. — Vernon Howard

If heaven existed as a physical building on earth, human beings would remodel it to make it right. — Vernon Howard

It is against the law to permit weak people to steal your strength. Never permit it. — Vernon Howard

We never get upset over what happens. Never. We get upset because of preconceived ideas as to what we think should happen, what we want to happen. When our preference clashes with the reality, we get hurt. Rid yourself of all preconceived ideas as to what should happen. You are then at peace whatever happens. — Vernon Howard

Can you think of anything more permanently elating than to know that you are on the right road at last? — Vernon Howard

By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity. — Vernon Howard

The leap is made by dropping vanity over knowledge and by a willingness to become nothing in order to become everything. — Vernon Howard

Healing fails to occur because it is much easier to injure another than to heal oneself. — Vernon Howard

Don't try to live. Let yourself be lived. — Vernon Howard

We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception. — Vernon Howard

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. — Vernon Howard

We find the light only after total defeat of our attempts to deceive and outwit it. — Vernon Howard

Who asks a king for a penny? — Vernon Howard

You need only choose ... then keep choosing as many times as necessary. That is all you need do. And it is certainly something you can do. Then as you continue to choose, everything is yours. — Vernon Howard

A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep. — Vernon Howard

Realize that the surface personality has no interest in anything which might disturb its darling delusions. — Vernon Howard

The need to impress others causes half the world's woes. — Vernon Howard

Just be honest with yourself. That opens the door. — Vernon Howard

Mysticism is: a. An advanced state of inner enlightenment. b. Union with Reality. c. A state of genuinely satisfying success. d. Insight into an entirely new world of living. e. An intuitive grasp of Truth, above and beyond intellectual reasoning. f. A personal experience, in which we are happy and healthy human beings. — Vernon Howard

We clearly realize that freedom's inner kingdom cannot be touched by exterior attacks. — Vernon Howard

Ignorant people remain ignorant because they have a secret agreement to call one another intelligent. — Vernon Howard

See human nonsense as nonsense and save years of trying to make sense out of it. — Vernon Howard

You know what is right. Deep down, you know. The battle between your true wisdom and the counterfeit wisdom of society is what causes frustration. Refuse to compromise with what you know is right-with what is right for you. — Vernon Howard