Source: Brian Scott
Don’t hesitate to challenge any negative feelings you discover within yourself. That is a giant step toward their dismissal. Over many years of lecturing and counseling, I find many people hesitant to question their negative condition. They fear there may not be an answer. But we must dare to ask anything and everything, especially when suspecting that the answer may be contrary to our present opinion. This gradually awakens the intuitive self which explains everything to us.
What a pleasure to hear someone frankly admit a confusion in order to clear it! Example:
“I don’t understand. You say that emotional pains are caused by illusion. Illusion or not, I feel the pain!”
“A man certainly suffers from a frightening nightmare, but when he wakes up, where is the suffering?”
Whenever confronted by a particularly disturbing emotion, you may wonderingly inquire, “Is it really possible to arise above this?” With perfect assurance, you may tell yourself, “Yes, even this.”
-Vernon Howard The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power
Howard drew from what he perceived as being a “common thread” among several different philosophical and spiritual traditions for his insights and teachings. These included: Christian and Eastern mysticism, Gurdjieffian Fourth Way teachings, the Gospels of the New Testament, Jungian psychology, J. Krishnamurti and American Transcendentalism. He taught that there is a way out of suffering, and advocated self-honesty, persistence, the study and application of spiritual principles, and a sincere desire for inner change, according to Psycho-Pictography (page 34). He explained that a new and higher inner life is found through releasing the negative conditioned ego, which he described as the “false self”. He asserted that this new life can only be found through awareness, and that the human ego is a barrier to this awareness. Thus, he taught that inner liberation is a ridding process, and that the false self is a fictitious collection of self-images or pictures about who we think we are (Psycho-Pictography, page 33)
