[inquiringmind4u]

Here's part II to my best-of-the-best Vernon Howard quotes. I know there's quite a few.... they're just so dang good!

• You have problems with people for the prime reason that you want something from them.

• Always remember the following fact: Anyone who is a burden to you receives secret and sinister pleasure from burdening you. Your only duty toward him is to quietly and absolutely refuse to be burdened by him. Understand that this gives him the only chance he has for lifting the burden he is to himself.

• You never really hate another person. Believing that you hate him is another type of cunning self-deception. What you really hate is the weakness in yourself that is revealed by the other person’s rejection of you. This principle contains the secret of liberty from all wrong human relations.

• You’re not good. You’re not bad. You’re nothing. That nothing is everything. Now you have enough to think about for a week.

• If you were utterly, utterly weak you would have the strength of the universe.

• Your problem is you can never be final about anything.

• God is not going to enter your darkness. It is up to you to see where you’re at in the slums and get out of there!

• If the mountain disappears as a necessity to climb, the mountain climber also disappears as a necessity to exist.

• You are really not a citizen of this world permanently. You see, you always forget that.

• Madness is to think that a cluster of thoughts is you.

• You still want something from man instead of everything from God.

• Anytime you want to be the big hero, you are going to be awfully nervous about it.

• Every time you try to conquer the world, the world conquers you.

• Winning in this world is nothing but a thought and a feeling. Losing in this world is nothing but a thought and a feeling.

• Unconsciously you create things to fight.

• A right aim is to refuse absolutely to ever attack anyone or anything again.

• For the sake of rightness, you must learn to disappoint others and yourself.

• When you see someone crying, run away fast. The guiltier you feel, the faster you should run.

• Silence in the face of an accusation leaves the problem where it belongs – with the accuser.

• The love of being afraid is one of the greatest enemies of mankind.

• The phrase that is constantly going on down deep in your psychology is: Please don’t get mad at me.

• You gain through loss.

• If you did not take pleasure in anger, you would not be angry about anything. There is a great sick pleasure and ego-excitement in the thrill of hating or any other negative emotion.

• This will save you from so much false morality and false guidance: When you do better than you are, the doing in burdensome.

• All you need to be is a simple, good, decent human being.

• You have to send a prayer to Heaven and not to hell. Find out where you are praying to hell.

• The secret of spiritual success is to repeatedly let the house collapse on top of you so often and so watchfully that you finally see that there is neither a house to collapse nor anyone for it to collapse upon.

• Dedicate yourself more and more each day to God and His Kingdom. Entering the Kingdom, entering it, is the only important thing on this earth.

• I know who I really am when I don’t think about who I am.

• All hostility is enmity against God.

• The next time I am angry at a person or a condition, I will comment to myself as follows: “Maybe I am really angry at my own weakness and inability to handle the condition.”

• You don’t know how alert you have to be to refuse the flood of insanity!

• Do you want a guaranteed spiritual formula for becoming mentally and spiritually healthy? Try to have as many devastating experiences as possible consciously. Oh, you have them now but you don’t take them rightly. You hate them or use them as an excuse to go blab to your friends about how badly life has treated such a precious person as you. You enjoy your pain. That becomes a new possession. If you’re smart, when you ask God to destroy your present ridiculous strutting little life, you will add a second prayer and ask God to enable you to meet experiences properly, with a wise spiritual mind instead of with your usual egotism. One collapse is fine. Two collapses are good. Three are great. Four are terrific. Five are stupendous.

• When you decide to become nothing in your own eyes and nothing in the eyes of other people, that nothingness is eternal life.

• You are saved by seeing sin in the present and not pleasures in the future.

• Think of this key idea: When you have no future you are saved.

• Your god is what you think about all day long.

• You need not add to your already complete true self and you cannot add to a nonexistent false self. Relax.

• You must give up all, everything, without knowing what you will have next.

• To the degree that you are in pain you are wrong.

• There is no doubt about it, an avoided pain must be suffered again and again. When avoidance is ended, the pain is ended.

• Your mind is a sacred place. Now what is the right attitude toward a sacred place.

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

• No one is nice unless he can be so without nice possessions and nice advantages. May heaven help you if you cling to your supposed advantages, your securities, your comforts. Anything you look forward to will destroy you as it already has.

• Think of this one important sentence and reflect on it often: Too much of me is in my life.

• Stop protecting the source of your misery, yourself. Thinking about yourself is circular. It will not solve any problems.

• The road to Heaven is straight through hell

• Here is one way to grow fast. When your feelings scream at you to do the wrong thing and your mind instructs you to do the right thing, obey your mind.

• Never expect anyone to put you at ease. Just be at ease.

• The entire secret of spiritual growth is to simply stay with whatever is happening to you without trying to change it.

• It is very important for you to know in your heart that God alone loves you.