You Know Where You Are - I Am Here - The Perceived Blur - Will This Never End?

VERNON HOWARD TALK. 1/19/86. "You Know Where You Are - I Am Here - The Perceived Blur - Will This Never End?"

Self-advice is very valuable providing the source of that advice is not the self. That means that there must be a transmitter like radio waves, television waves transmit a message from a far off source to the individual in his home.

I'm talking to you about allowing your self to be the transmitter of the message and not to be the originator of it; where you can receive something from a very high place, take it down and tell yourself about it. And then the information will be accurate and valuable to you in your daily life.

One such message, one such advice is the one to just—and were going to all do it together now. As I tell you what it is I want you to experience the words, the advice. One such advice which is very valuable you can always give to yourself is to just slow down.

You forgot to do that, didn't you? When is the last time you remembered to slow yourself down? That means slow down your life. Go very casually and easily in the way you think and feel in your reactions.

Slow down your reactions and there is no need to leap. There's no need whatever any time for you to leap at anything anyone says to you.

Slow down your speech reaction. When you do that you are able to hear the higher message that's trying to get through to you. Your self is out of the way; your defensive self, your offense of self, the self that wants to impress someone, that's out of the way and when it's not there then you simply receive the higher message in which you understand completely what the other person says and you know what’s your right reaction to it. And you know your right reaction is simply not a wrong reaction. You understand everything about the other person and about yourself.

So we’re talking about you getting rid of the rapid pace, the frantic blur in your mind and life. You’re driving a car 90 miles an hour down the open highway and you glance out at the side. There's a farmhouse out there, but you don't see it as a farmhouse, do you? It goes too fast. There's a cow in the field. You can't identify it as cow because you're going too fast. There's nothing but sight and a blur.

Now when you do that in life what you try to do is understand the blur. And when you try to understand it without seeing it for what it is, then your self, your wrong nature will leap in and see that blur according to its own insecurities.

You'll see the farmhouse maybe as a place that everybody wants you to come to and you're welcome to it and someone is friendly there. It might be a trap of some kind, that nice friendly farmhouse that looks so nice on the outside. But you’re interpreting it instead of seeing it.

The slowing down, and you're to do it now as I'm talking to you. The slowing down of yourself is an absolute requirement for you to be free of yourself.

And this means you have to understand that you're always leaping. Think of synonyms of words that associate with speed. You’re leaping. You're exploding. That snap reaction. Someone is talking to you and that person is somewhat critical of you—look and see how fast you're going.

See that you can hardly wait for them to stop criticizing so that you can either say something back in defense or accusation at them. And see how even if you don't say something back your mind does. It speaks. It’s defending.

The mind starts and then the voice starts, unless you're afraid that you're going to get in trouble by speaking the way you really feel about something. Why don't you see how you feel about it, and when you understand that, there’s no need for any feeling of defense. There is no one there to be protected! Understand that and watch how you slow down.

Oh, I tell you, this neurotic nature, how it's peering out with neurotic suspicion, worried that someone is going to steal something from it. Away with it.

And I'm going to tell you the simple solution. Oh, it is so simple but again, you have to do it. And you have to see that you have this problem of racing around living in a blur and interpreting that blur instead of waiting until— slowing down until you can see it as it is.

Write down the following phrase. I'm going to give you spiritual magic. Three words. I am here! I am here.

All right. Let's look at it. You never know you're here! You're gone. Identify your favorite vacation resorts.

Thoughts of love and romance, ladies? That nice handsome charming man. Whose got a lot of money. (Laughter) Ah! I added it for you, didn't I? Wealthy, successful. He's just waiting for you to come along. You’re gone. That's where you're gone into.

Everyone has their favorite scenarios, screenplays, resorts to visit periodically. That means you're not here.

Exercise: I want you to know that you're here, first of all, physically in this room. Visual sight is a part of it. That's the elementary. That's the start.

Know that you're here in the room. You can see straight ahead. You're looking at me now. You can see out of the corner of your eyes the person next to you.

Where are your hands? Legs crossed. Legs not crossed. The physical posture. Now change your physical posture deliberately so that you'll be aware of where you were. Now you can be aware of where you are. And alter it a little bit. I'm doing it myself. It's necessary to change a little bit. The legs get tired of being in one position but in each position you know where you are. Now to know where you are means much more than know the physical self. It means you know what you're thinking right now. You know what you're feeling right now. I am here. When you're able and you are able to put yourself into the position of knowing you are here, then nothing outside of you has the smallness chance to enter into your right world, to enter into it and disturb it.

When you spiritually know I am here, that's the only world. There's no other world at all.

See, make this connection. Work hard at this little connection. God is exclusive. Truth is All. Reality is the only real state. Reality is the only real state.

When you realize that you can knowingly, spiritually give yourself the right true advice, “I am here,” and there is nothing able to disturb you coming from the outside, because you realize that the Kingdom of Heaven is pure. Pure. Alone. Only. Exclusive.

At the same time you realize the purity and dominion of the spiritual world you also realize the uselessness of again ever trying to go real fast, to snap back at the accusation, or to protect yourself from the enemy whatever it might be. The enemy of someone slandering you. The enemy of a change that may come in your life.

You realize absolutely and with great peace of mind and calmness of spirit, you realize that any action on your part to protect your self-world perpetuates the self-world, and the continuance of the neurotic self-world has no intention of letting you see that it's the false world and above the false world is the true world of the purity of Truth itself.

It is essential for you to remind and practice the slowing down of your fiery assertions that you must do something about your problems. You've got to find out who's attacking you and attack back before they go any further.

All this is a falsehood, a lie. But you’re so used to, by the force of mechanical habit, of believing in your present but false existence, you believe that it's necessary to get tough and to fly out like an arrow and defend and attack.

Put a big word in front of you right now. Why?

No real reason at all. You yourself, taking false advice from the self believe in this neurotic inner counsel. You believe it and accept it because among the many false lies it tells you, the lies it gives you is the lie that what you now have, it is essential for you to protect it.

Do some deep thinking now. How do you react when I give you some spiritual advice—which I'm going to give to you right now. Watch your inner reaction to it. Slow down enough to see it. I give you spiritual, true spiritual counsel right now to let your whole life go.

I tell you, give you spiritual instruction to abandon now and forever everything that you in your blurred mind have identified as your life, as you, as yours. Abandon everything that you say must continue.

Now I asked you to watch your reaction to that advice. And I’m going to tell you what it was. It was a blur. It's not clean-cut. But I've given you the opportunity to start clean-cut. And I'm going to tell you how dark forces put one over on you as I was giving you this instruction.

You could not see a certain deep reaction, and I'm going to tell you what it was, and then I want you to see it for yourself. Now I want to assure you that what I'm going to tell you about is there and you weren't able to see it because you prefer the blur because the blur allows your ego nature to give its own interpretation to the farmhouse, or what's outside of you. “That person is my friend.” And so on.

When I told you to release everything that you now call necessary and valuable, when I told you to do that, a wave of horror, of fright, and a very, very loud anxious, “No,” went through you.

I know that. I want you to know about you, what I know about you.

Unseen, manipulating you inwardly when I gave that instruction for liberation, inside were the forces that have taken you over inwardly, in your mind, in your reaction, had taken you over and it was the neurotic-self, the fearful-self that screamed, "No!"

And it doesn't want your power of choice to understand anything that I'm telling you, but which you can understand for your own liberation. The enemy, the real enemy is always within, not out. The real enemy is someone who is so sly, so maliciously sly that you haven't been able to even recognize it yet. And the proof of that is that nothing changes in your nature; therefore, you're always defensive or offensive or worried. And with that awful, awful cry of, “Will this never end?,” I'm going to expose one of the most cunning of all secrets of Satan.

Satan himself makes you scream out almost always within yourself. Not so much to others unless you have an outer explosion. It is Satan himself who makes you scream out, "Will this never end?"

You've got so much to do. So much to see and recognize and understand and liberate, but isolate that one scream which all people in the world have. The very successful financier. He has it. The grandmother who's so proud of her role in the family and her children come over and the grandchildren. And they have their big family reunions.

I want you to know that grandma is screaming, “Will this never end?” She has nothing. She has nothing that will endure. And she knows that. She sees herself changing and exterior things changing. One time instead of the four children coming over, only two could come over. The others are gone somewhere else and they've lost interest. They've got their own interest and now she's shaky because she didn't have—shaky because she had four delusions; each of her children loved her and cared for her. Two of them are gone. Now she only has 50% of the assurance. See what advice she's given herself?

See the malicious demands she has put on her children. "You owe it to me to come around at least once a while. You owe it to me."

The world is not going to satisfy your demands, so why don't you just give up? Back to the point.

"Will this torment ever come to an end? Is there no way out?" I am ordering you, a spiritual order. Oh are they powerful when you listen and obey. I order you to detect yourself saying that, screaming that and dare to let it fall away forever.

That's called letting go of yourself. That's the same thing as coming back home to yourself. Wandering in the wilderness of despair and desolation and secret fear, that means you are not home, but you love as that grandmother did, you love to dwell inside of you so that you always have something to refer to. And it's all mental.

Oh, what a beautiful day when you have dared to drop common self-reference. When you see no use talking about yourself anymore that's the big leap, isn't it? Aren't you always talking about yourself? Aren't you always trying to make yourself the center of everything? This is why you stay worried.

You're worried about your inability to keep your world in place. And the fact is you can never keep your world in place because it's a delusory world built up by your own misunderstanding and your wish to keep yourself the center of your own attention.

Now if you have no self-reference, what are you going to do with yourself all day long? That's another one of the lies that creeps in and makes you terrified that you won't know how to talk. Believe me, you'll know how to talk. You've always known what to say, haven't you? You've always had a quick come back. And you never—oh, every time you knew what to say to defend yourself you never really knew what to say. Because the sick self was setting up the need to protect itself, and since the sick self has no existence except in your misunderstanding, then the sick self—everything it talks about is meaningless. It's a blur.

Oh, the how-to-do-its are coming thick and fast. And the next one for you is to see there's never any necessity, no real need for you to ever talk about yourself again. How many are going to do that? (Laughter)

You just did it again. You said, "But how am I going to stop blabbermouthering around the world? How am I going to do it?" The blabbermouth is asking the blabbermouth to stop blabbing. You were thinking solutions instead of allowing solutions, right?

The idea of the mental level and the spiritual level deserves an enormous amount of consideration on your part, because if you think you're being spiritual, you're only thinking it. If you think about yourself and give yourself either slanderous or flattering labels, not a thing is happening except that you are doing it again. You are thinking about yourself. Which guarantees that you will stay in pain.

Now the beginning of slowing down inwardly—even physically you could do it. Walk slowly across the room sometime and notice how you notice it. Slowing down your life opens the door to you understanding why things happen to you as they do.

It can become absolutely clear to you as to why you get in trouble with other people and with yourself. You can make a connection between your witnessing of your blur in your mind and emotions, you can see the connection between the blur and the results of you living in a blur.

There's a story of the painter when he was painting a big enormous floor at a big place. And he's painting away; painting, painting, painting the floor. But his mind wasn’t where his body was. His mind was off in Jambalanga, in some romantic moonlit night. Interrupt the story long enough to remind you—are you love-starved, a lot of you people? You think as if you are. You behave as if you are. And you yourself, by the way, have given yourself the definition of what being love-starved means.

Are you fit to love? I know you can't figure out why such an attractive person as you doesn't get invited to more parties. (Laughter) You've invented yourself as someone—oh, here's another one of your favorite groans, "Oh, where am I going to meet someone?” Try meeting yourself and you'll know why people don't come around. How did we get on love stories? We were talking about a painter. And you'll never forget that phrase from the talk, love-hyphen-starved. You won't forget it. Good.

Who do you think’s going to satisfy your appetite for being loved? Haven't you been down that route long enough? Anxiety, phony satisfaction, anxiety again. Anxiety, false relief, anxiety again. Over and over.

Because you've invented the way you want your life to unfold. Oh, how sad. How sad that you have really, in the world out there—you've left the real world out of your life!

I wish—I wish you could be so shocked by that, that the shaking quivering blur would slow down just a little bit and you could recognize that farmhouse as a farmhouse, and the cow as the cow in the field. I wish you could get jolted so that you know the necessity of abandoning yourself because your self is nothing but the jittery anxious blur.

The painter was painting the big floor and it was a mechanical task, of course, painting the floor. So he decided to take various pain trips and pleasure trips. And let's leave him painting a little longer while we going to that.

Pleasure trips, pain trips. Would you examine your trips and see how you get both? Now isn't that odd? Isn't it strange? Isn't it awful? Now you would think ordinarily that you just take the pleasure trips. You like the painful ones just as much. Think of a disgrace—you know that disgrace. You know that bad behavior. You know those vicious violent emotions you once threw at someone. Was it yesterday or years ago? Reliving that past of painful things you did is painful. Why would you do that?

I'll tell you one reason. You enjoy the pain, you understand. The pain is pleasurable because it makes you. And then the pleasurable ones are painful too because the voice of reality deep inside of you is trying to break through, trying to knock on the door and tell you to wake up and stop dreaming either kinds of thoughts: painful or pleasurable. Telling you to stop dreaming all kind of thoughts and open the door to reality.

Reality’s knocking on the door all the time but you don't want to hear that because you've insisted that your life of opposites, pain and pleasure, you've insisted that that is the good and only life there is and you're not going to take any chances with it.

How often do we talk about being daring? Drop all your pleasure and painful trips and walk on over to the door that Reality’s knocking on and open it, and let it come in and explain everything to you. When the door opens, the light rushes in.

And at that time when the light rushes in, for the first time you will know that you lived your whole life in darkness. Because you were living in the darkness saying, “This has to be what they call light. Because I'm here and I can think. I can act. I can even influence people. I can make them laugh or I can make them cry. Surely that's what they're talking about which is light.”

No. That's darkness which is merely your mechanical self. And I urge you to run, not walk to the door and open it so that you'll understand the blunder you are mistaking.

Oh, that painters been working for a long long time. (Laughter) After several hours of being gone while he's working mechanically. Not painting consciously as he could have done, guess what happens? He finds himself painted into a corner, right? Here's this big hall ten times as big as this, and he's painted the whole thing. There he is isolated way back.

And this is happen to you, hasn't it? He’s got the last few pieces, strokes of his brush to put down, and he sees the unpainted part first and all of a sudden he comes back home to his mind, and he looks up and there's the edge of the paint in front of him. He looks—”Oh, no…” (Laughter) A vast hall of wet paint and nobody within 10 miles of the building.

Found yourself there, haven't you? Why? Because your mind was gone where it shouldn't be. The advice, of course, to when you paint know that you’re painting. When you're thinking know that your thinking. When you're being bad know that you're being bad.

Think he’s going to do it again if he learns the lesson from it? Knowing that he himself, by living in himself instead of being aware of what he's doing at the moment he's doing it. Don't you think—would you hope that he learns the lesson and not repeat that mistake again?

Now he’s trapped. He's going to have to wait there until the paint dries which might be several hours. Or worse yet, he's going to have to get—stomp, stomp, stomp. Now his shoes are painted as well, and he has to go back over it.

Isn't it better to not make a mistake in the first place than to have to try to correct it? And every time you correct it you make it worse.

See? That is one of the greatest principles that should attract people here. It doesn't, unfortunately. Which is, we will show you how to not paint yourself in the corner in the first place so you won't have to figure out how to get out. You'll know how to get out. If you have some work to do you’ll paint yourself toward a door where you could open it at any time and let the light in. ~Vernon Howard