Be Ignorant All By Yourself - The Darkness Was Your Own Nature

VERNON HOWARD TALK 12-14-85 AM Be Ignorant All By Yourself - The Darkness Was Your Own Nature

Never acknowledge any other human being on earth as superior to you in your opportunity to become spiritually intelligent. Never acknowledge anyone—anyone you can see, look at, never believe that they have a superior chance, opportunity to rise higher in this unique spiritual world than you can.

Human beings are equal in the sight of God in opportunity. The opportunity for you to go as far as you want, as high as you want, is right in front of you. But because you live in a world of comparisons, of one person being superior and the other one being inferior, you automatically and needlessly and foolishly use that idea of superiority and inferiority, you transfer it to the spiritual world, where it doesn't belong at all.

But your intellect operating from memory, and remembering how those other kids in the sixth grade were smarter than you, and how when you went out later and went to work, how other employees got ahead faster than you did, and they seemed superior in intelligence, in grasping how to do that office work or factory work, you have brought this false reasoning into the spiritual world. Stop it now.

I'll say it once more. If your heart is right, if you're sincere, no one on earth has a greater opportunity than you. You, therefore, have all the opportunity. All you have to do is take it. Yes, it really is that simple. All you have to do is take it. And to take it, you have to remove the unseen obstacles—like the one I just mentioned—that prevent you from going far and fast.

If you're in a place where it's sunny and bright, and the sun comes down in a field, and if you're out in that field, don't you have all that sunshine? There are other people around you too. Don't they get all that sunshine? See how that knocks out the idea of limitation? Of you hoping that you can get a little bit of it, and you worry that maybe that person sitting next to you in the class, maybe they’re getting your share. (Laughter) How many think someone else has your share of intelligence? (Laughter)

Isn't it all yours out in the sunshine? Of course it is. If you remain in the sunshine. And if you don't want to be superior to the other person in any way at all. I said we switch from inferiority to superiority. You know, the dumb kid in class. Any dumb kids in the class, you know? (Laughter)

The reason you were a dumb kid is because you compared yourself to the smart kid, simply because he could add figures better than you could. What's that got to do with you as a human being who was put here to develop. Nothing. But we didn't outgrow that comparison, did we? We will do it now.

And we’ll grow up altogether into complete maturity right now. No time is necessary. You understand that? You know what's necessary? Insight. Understanding. Accepting a fact as a fact. And there you are out there. All the sun you want. Right there, as long as you stay in the place where it's sunny.

Now I want you to think about that and don't drop the thought that you can have all you want. Because, it will gradually and definitely dislodge your opposites thinking of inferiority and superiority. In the spiritual world there is no such thing. Only in the human world, in the world of human competition, financial endeavors—only there are there rich people and poor people. Only there are there the bright people and the dumb people.

God is not concerned with what you are in the sight of men—only with what you are in the sight of Himself. But you're so concerned with what you are in the sight of men and of women, huh?

How about the opposite sex brought into that? You're so concerned that you're going to prove to be acceptable to someone else. You're letting that other person take over your life and you don't see it, because you don't know that you can transcend the opposites.

Freedom consists of you being in the sunshine in that bright field, all the time, and while you may see lots of people all around you, there's no possibility with the idea of competition for the sun to come up. That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? You know where you are. And then, and only then, can you deal intelligently, wisely and with real goodness toward everyone else out there.

You know what the rest of them are doing? The sunshine is there, but they can't feel it. They can't sense it, because they're looking down and they're creating their own shadow inside themselves—their own shadows as they look down on the ground. And they walk without looking where they're going. I'm describing you, am I not? And they bump into each other. And then they cry. Competition.

How nice to know that there's plenty of spirituality for all who want it. All you have to do is want it. To do that, you do the early work of throwing out of your mind all ideas that you're either intelligent or stupid.

You know the pain that you can go into right now, and I want you to see if you go into pain or embarrassment right now, while I deliberately bring up something for you to consciously look at.

School. Oh, that schoolroom is still operating, isn't it. You go there all the time, don't you? Remember the boy in the front row there that you girls kind of liked a little bit. And that other boy who teased you all the time. And you boys—what was her name? You know her name, don't you boys! (Laughter) She knows your name, too! (Laughter) She remembers you, but maybe in a different way than you remember her! (Laughter)

How about the embarrassing situation when you were the only kid in class who failed the test. If it pains you now, you're still living in the sixth grade.

And there's a very, very weird, useless fondness for school days, going back there. That's because you lived in a false security—you know, parents took care of you, and paid all your little bills and gave you dinner. And you felt secure, didn't you? That's simply immaturity.

You looked at life a little different when you got out of high school or college, didn't you? Now you're out there. And now you have to do it all by yourself. You have to apply for work down there, and you're terrified to even go in the office, right?

So you regress and you go back. Don't go back. If you go back, you'll run into this mass of contradictions in which you think that you have to be the best looking boy in the class. How many were? (Laughter) How many have doubts about it? (Laughter)

Now I'm going to present the solution to you—to all your problems. The solution is a journey. The solution is you doing something that you're going to fight and that you're not going to understand at the start—that you want nothing to do with, because you'd rather picture yourself being in that same—you even remember what that seat was in school, don't you? The fourth one back, the right row, whatever. You know who was in front of you, at the side of you. And that kid who kept hitting your head in back of you. (Laughter) Tickling your ear with a piece of paper. Remember him? (Laughter) Forget him. (Laughter) And gentlemen, forget her.

You're in school, which gives you a false security. The real security—and get ready for it—the real security that you can have arises from you being willing to do a certain thing. And here it is. You must be willing to be ignorant all by yourself. That's a strange thought right now. You perhaps never heard it put that way before, so we have to see what it's all about.

I have to be ignorant all by myself. Now to be ignorant in the way of the masses, is to be ignorant as part of the masses. That evil group or gang or organization in which they're all ignorant of anything higher than the purpose of their group, to make money or to persuade people to get what they want—all this is mass ignorance. And this is a hideout. All those fifty people belonging to that club, that group—they all support each other, they all lie to each other, they all depend on each other.

These dependent people, these weak people, are outside you and they are inside you. To be ignorant all by yourself—which is necessary, absolutely necessary if you're going to take advantage of the opportunity to become a true spiritual human being—to be ignorant all by yourself means to descend inside yourself and never mind what you encounter. But you stay there until you know, from yourself, that the only thing that has been guiding—misguiding—and tormenting you, was the ignorance that you permitted to remain there, calling it wisdom.

Now the people outside of you never call their mass ignorance, ignorance or stupidity. They call it intelligence. They call it a group come together for the enrichment of mankind, or some other equally misleading phrase. They are foolish. They live in folly. They call it right.

You, being a part of the mass delusion, both outward and inward—you have managed—too bad—to conceal your ignorance from yourself. All the hostility and all the fakery and even all the pain—you have pushed that aside and made various excuses for it. For example, you say that, “Well, as soon as we pass that legislation, as soon as I get the money, then, while there may be pain there and confusion there now, then it will go away."

Your mistake-making machine called self, is taking error and saying that it can be intelligence to rescue you.

Now the key phrase was be ignorant all by myself. This is shocking! This is a new kind of pain and fear and agony. And listen to me. You have to do it! You have to descend and go through it. You can't excuse yourself anymore. You can't rationalize. In short, you can't lie anymore.

You must be willing to face the ignorance inside, even while in enormous fear and anxiety at losing yourself. I told you, you lie and call your ignorance intelligent. Therefore you are afraid of losing your intelligence. There is none there to lose. (Laughter)

How about a little special spotlight on that sentence? All you have to lose is false intelligence. All you have to lose is everything that hurts you. Destruction must precede construction.

But I want to emphasize the enormous anxiety, the throbbing fear which you have verbalized inside yourself. You've verbalized it by saying, "All right. I've been told what to do to free myself of pain. But what will happen to me? If I lose my ability to lie, that is”—you're catching on a little bit—"I'm calling my stupidity intelligence. If I lose that, what will I say to what I see? What will I do? How will I act? How will I behave?"

When you were a little kid, were you ever invited somewhere, to a birthday party, the kid's birthday party next door, and you were afraid. You didn't know how to behave. "What should I do? Where should I sit? Should I talk to the girl there? Should I have two cups of lemonade?"

Ask for two cups of lemonade. It's all right. (Laughter)

See, this is an idiot acting as if it knows what is the intelligent thing to do! You're the little kid, aren't you? When you face yourself and then go into fear, asking, "But what should I do?" you have walked right into the usual trap all covered with pretty roses. You still believe in yourself. "But what should I do? Am I not a halfway normal human being?"

How many of you are halfway normal? (Laughter) Shall I stop there? (Laughter)

"What should I do?" Stop asking that dumb question! "What should I do?" There's no one there to do anything. There never was. There never will be.

But you fear taking advantage of your opportunity to develop. Your fear, invading body, mind, emotions—your fear talks for you and when you hear it say, "But what will happen to me?," you believe in that. You believe in that falsehood.

You hear a lying spirit inside of you speaking for you, when you could have been speaking for yourself. But you believe in the faker, the imposter. And you go along with it and say, "Oh, that's right! What will happen to me?" You're simply agreeing to your own continuation of pain.

All right. Back to the phrase, I must be ignorant all alone. To be all alone means one thing. It means to be all alone.

Ah! When you started to explore that dark space inside, when you started to explore, you didn't know what to do and you wanted to run back up the stairs and run away. But you have a dim understanding, at least, that you've got to stay there, until the light of your insight into the whole situation brings sunlight into the cellar, in the dungeon, and it's no longer scary anymore.

But you don't stand all by yourself. You look around invisibly and inwardly inside yourself, just as you do physically outside, looking around for someone to help you. You do that.

And by the way, I want you to know that physically—see that first. You're looking around at someone else's face. Do they approve of you? You're looking around, "Do they want to speak before I do? Then I'd better let them speak, so they won't think I'm rude."

Your desperate cry for help will attract desperate low destructive help. You asked for it! You wouldn't stand all alone in your ignorance, would you? You say, “If I'm ignorant, there has to be intelligence." And so you who are actually ignorant, are calling for intelligence, which you wouldn't recognize if it walked up and shook your hand. (Laughter)

When ignorance cries out for help, it gets ignorant help. And I described that to you. Satan never sleeps. The deceptive forces inside of you are just looking—and I tell you, they're looking with great confidence, for you doing for the millionth time, doing it one more time. They're just waiting for you to call on them for help, and they'll supply it.

That means you didn't stand all alone, right? Standing all alone means there is no flow of thought of any kind, or feeling of any kind, in an attempt to find out what to do about the darkness you've encountered.

No more phrases like, “But what should I do? Who can help me? Who can be stronger than I am?" You must bear the darkness and you must bear the darkness and you must bear the darkness, and you don't need to do anything but that one thing, which is to bear the darkness all alone.

You haven't done that. And I want you to know that you haven't done that. Because if you see where you have been looking around for something that you say is stronger than me, has a greater opportunity than me, the very saying of it attracts its own level.

Do you know—if you don’t, here it is—you don't and must not do a single thing to push away the darkness, which would admit the light, when the darkness finally does go away.

All your frantic efforts to save yourself, to feel good, all that is keeping the darkness going, because a dark human being is trying to change darkness into light.

When you stop, when you sit in the dark and do nothing, the first thing to do is watch—oh, watch how eager and nervous you are. You're sitting on the stone steps of the dark dungeon, right? And you're obeying instruction to remain with your own ignorance, which means to do nothing.

You're sitting on the cold stone steps. I instruct you to remember the talk and to try to translate the talk into the personal experience. And it's just fine for you to remember the picture of you sitting on the stone steps absolutely dark. You feel trapped down there. No light. You don't see any doors. You can't see anything. You're in absolute darkness.

Now, your work—and take advantage of your opportunity to not let anyone be superior to you in opportunity. Your work is to notice the smallest—to say nothing of the largest—to notice any movement of your mind, anything inside of you that is an attempt to do something with your state of darkness, such as being afraid of it.

I tell you—listen to me—there is no need to fear the dark. Now that's a fact. You don't know that but I'm telling you it's a fact, and you find that fact. The miracle of a magnificent spiritual experience will occur to you only when you're seated on those cold steps in total darkness, and not trying to understand it. Your attempts to understand are a misunderstanding. You don't get it! You still think you can do something about your ignorance!

The only force, power that can do something about your ignorance is the light itself, God, Reality. Sitting on the stone steps and as afraid as you are, as terrified as you are of losing yourself, you won't lift a finger to get rid of that fear. Now don't you do it. Don't you do anything to push away the darkness of your anxiety over being there in a state of anxiety.

Look how simple the instructions are! To save yourself from yourself—you being darkness—to save yourself from yourself, don't do anything at all.

Now that has to hit your understanding and your consciousness, so that every time you are tempted to go into violent feelings, any time you want to be timid and shy about anything, you're not going to try to get rid of it. If you try to get rid of it, as you have been doing, it will remain. If you don't do anything about it, it will disappear.

The spiritual life is different magic, true magic, but altogether different. And you don't cause it to happen, but you allow it to happen. Allowance means sitting on the cold steps, knowing everything that's going through you, feeling it, feeling—“What's going to happen to me? I've got to do something lest something bad happens to me." It's happening as you're saying that! And it continues to happen as you frantically try to reach out, for some club, some group, some thought, some person to try to save you.

You are saved by realizing there is no one there who needs to be saved. How's that for a point of reflection for a long time.

Let's go on to a story that covers, what we've been covering.

Suppose you're driving along the highway and you come to a new town. You've never been there before. And you stop and you have some business to do which takes over two or three days. And while you're walking and driving around, you see something unusual. You see a certain man—the same man each time—you see him frantically and anxiously chasing around the town. And he seems to be trying to find something.

And you watch him. You're in a cafe and you can see him out the window of the cafe. You can see him there. You park your car somewhere and you can see him in another part of town.

And he seems to be looking for something. He's looking up in the trees for something. And then the next day you see him. He's back in an alley looking around the boxes piled up in the alley. And you see him out in the countryside looking out in the fields.

He's looking for something but he never seems to find it. And this is the way his whole day is spent. Night, too—trying to find something. Already are you in the story?

So he wonders about it and finally his curiosity can't take it anymore so he asked a resident of the town what's going on. "What's that man doing chasing around like that?" And the resident of the town says, "Oh! He's driving himself crazy."

Are you driving yourself crazy? Yes. (Laughter)

So you ask and you say, "Well, that's kind of obvious, but what's the how and the why of it? What’s he doing to drive himself crazy?" And the resident says, "He's trying to find an excuse for his evil nature and his behavior, and he can't find it."

That's it. Can you make a connection between that little story and sitting on the cold steps, looking for a way out, for an excuse?

Now here's this evil man driving himself crazy trying to find a justification, an excuse for his evil nature. In other words, trying to say that it is good, necessary. "I have a right to behave any way I want." But how can a lie ever become a truth? It can't.

That's what hell is. A human being believing a lie, calling it heaven, and when all the supports of his heaven fall away, he is in hell—his false heaven. False heaven of support, looking for other people, as we discussed.

You feel so secure in the gang. You felt so falsely secure when you were a child, with the group of people you ran around with, or as a young person. And then something happened and you were no longer a member of that group. Your supports fell away. Your false heaven fell away. And you lived in the actual hell of your own lost inner state.

Search, know where you're seated on those stone steps trying to find an excuse for trying to save yourself, in order for you to be able to continue to pretend that you have a self, which you don't.

If your mind and your spirit go silent, then there is no movement, there is no anxious searching for salvation. Very quietly you sit there and you understand what you have been doing trying to excuse your behavior in order to keep your so-called identity going.

The plain fact is—and let's see if you know anybody who wants this—the plain fact is there is never any excuse for sick behavior. There's no excuse for any human being hurting any other human being. There is no excuse.

Now if you do bad things, doesn't that automatically mean that you are still looking for an excuse to keep your false life going? Yes.

All projections of inner badness to badness to other people means that you must frantically drive yourself crazy trying to find an excuse for them. And since there is no excuse, the only thing to do is to continue to go crazier even still.

God in his Heaven is just waiting and looking down on humanity, to find that one man or that one woman who will obey instructions.

Now I didn't say to find someone who's brave. You're not brave. When you're brave the way you are now, you're falsely brave, which is arrogance, which is phoniness, which is pretense.

God is looking for someone who'll sit on the cold stone steps, in the terrifying darkness, not crying out for help to human beings, and sitting in that darkness, until suddenly the light comes on, and the light comes on with the realization that the darkness was your own nature.

With that impact that you're wrong and always have been wrong, with the realization of that, which is a right realization—to realize is right, and right is light—you disappear! The darkness disappears. And you're out in the sunshine.

There it is. Shining down warm. No more anxiety. No more trying to decide just what's going to make you feel good. “Should I do this or shouldn't I do that.” All that is gone. All that belongs to the dark dungeon, and you're out of it.

The sunshine of spiritual light is shining right now and it's shining right now in this room.

Now, right now, sit very quietly. Don't try to save yourself. Just sit very quietly. And God Himself will show you that there is no self who needs to be saved. And that is what salvation is.

God is eager and willing to have you experience what we've talked about today. You be willing to experience what God wants you to experience, and it will happen. You'll know what it means to have all the sunshine you want, all the time.