The home of an authentic teacher was set within a beautiful country of colorful meadows and rolling hills.

One afternoon, when visited by a group of inquirers, he wished to impress a certain lesson upon their minds.

Inviting them for a stroll, he pointed out the natural beauties of the countryside, including a quiet brook and a grove of hardy oaks.

Upon returning to the spacious living room of his home, which was used as a classroom, the teacher made his point:

“You have just enjoyed the natural beauties of this region,” he said, “but perhaps there is something you do not know. It was not always like this, for this land was once the scene of a terrible battle. Years ago the region was torn apart by charging armies. But now you see what can happen when the past no longer interferes with the present.”

The teacher concluded the lesson, “if your life has been a battlefield up to now, your willingness to give up the past can begin your natural healing and restoration.”

Make this Experiment in Self Transformation

Your aim is to think in a new way, a way which is free from associations with the past, free from demands upon the future. A student of esotericism asked his teacher what it meant to think in a new way, and heard this reply:

“Think outside of yourself.”

You may wonder how you can possibly think outside of yourself, but it is no mystery. There exists a unique energy in every person which is not his habitual self.

When this uniqueness thinks, the universe thinks.

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Alert self-experimentation is the key to self-healing. A group of earnest people in Iowa carried out one beneficial experiment for an entire month. I will outline this experiment for your own self-transformation.

The aim is to simply watch what happens when you drop a habitual reaction of some kind.

For example, watch what happens inside your psychic system when you simply drop:

Nervousness over a forthcoming crisis

Resentment at being criticized

Guilt over a failure

Craving for social popularity

Doubt over ability to change yourself

Experiment. Drop all such negative reactions. Just drop them every time they appear. Watch what happens.

For one thing, you will feel a vacuum. You can understand why. Because you empty the space of your habitual response, there is nothing there.

Do not think it necessary to fill this emptiness. Leave it empty.

Now watch what happens. You will feel something you never felt before.

(Transcriber’s note: This can be difficult at times. It is important to honor and recognize feelings as they arise. Don’t force them to do anything they aren’t already doing. Simply watch without the adding layers of thought, judgment, or effort. See it as an opportunity: the neuroplasticity of the psychic system is adjusting to allow for a deepened well of being.)

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What results from experiments such as this? Whatever is wrong is corrected. No exceptions. We win freedom from those haunting anxieties we rarely mention, even to ourselves.

We look at life with clear and healthy vision.

Harmful habits disappear.

There is no worry over the future.

We know what life is all about. Because we are right, our day is right.

—

Dean H. who had studied Eastern thought, spoke up:

“Zen teachers say we have nothing to get, therefore our cravings are false. Please explain.”

Reply:

“A mind with a certain thought projects the opposite of that thought, for example, a lonely mind dreams of non-loneliness, or, a frustrated mind yearns for satisfaction.

This division of the mind into opposite parts- loneliness and non-loneliness- is an illusion.

A whole, undivided mind does not project anything, therefore it does not create false ideas about satisfaction, therefore it has nothing to get.”

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We do not use what we have. Our mistake can be reduced to that. We do not use what we have because we have not taken time to be aware of what we have.

Socrates told a famous story about men in a cave who refused to believe in the existence of the outside world, which condemned them to misery.

Walt Whitman invites psychic cave dwellers, “Whoever you are, come forth!”

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To see how trueness and calmness go together, we can examine how falseness and nervousness go together.

Because man fails to see his actual completeness, he assumes he has a self which must be made complete through pursuit, capture, possession.

But since the assumption is false, he is putting money into a bottomless safe, which demands a new filling every second, much to his frustration.

As he understands his original error, his desire for possession vanishes, as does his nervousness.

—

From: Secrets for Higher Success by Vernon Howard