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Q: How can we recognize and remain on the right path?
A: Imagine yourself hiking a forest trail with the aim of reaching the peak of a distant mountain. Coming to many forks along the trail, you don't know which way to turn. This is not a severe problem as long as you maintain your wish for the mountain. See why? Your clear goal enables you to recognize the wrong path, for you see how it takes you away from the mountain, not toward it. Loyalty to your lofty aim is your corrective guide.
Q: Too often we do not know where to look for answers.
A: To understand where you must not look for answers is superb progress in itself. This means you must attain healthy disillusionment. Start by being disillusioned with glittering but empty social schemes for human betterment.
Q: How can we experience higher power?
A: You are not condemned for anything but you are also not excused from anything. See these two ideas together at the same time and a powerful third force for self-awakening is created.
Q: Why do we fail to understand answers to our question?
A: The true answer to a question resides on a higher level than the question. Therefore a sincere person asking a question should not expect the answer to be immediately clear to him. He should not be discouraged by his lack of comprehension, but should patiently lift his consciousness up to the level of the answer. When an insincere person hears a true answer he gains nothing, for he instantly and fearfully distorts it to fit his own egotistical illusions.
Q: We need help from those who really know the answers, but must retain mental independence. Please comment.
A: At the start we need others to remind us of what we must do, but eventually we remind ourselves, like having an internal guidebook which can be read instantly by our spiritual eyes.
Q: How can we contact right guidance?
A: Truth invites. Its invitation is always open. Anyone can accept the invitation any time. But understand something quite clearly. Truth invites--and then stops. It stops because it knows the individual must make the next move. Truth never pleads or compromises or wavers. It invites and awaits your acceptance.
Q: I feel like someone trapped in a big and brawling city. I feel helpless, ignorant of what to do.
A: You may not realize it as yet but you can always go home. You can always do that. Then you will know what to do, just as you know how to handle the stove and refrigerator in your physical house. You cannot know what to do while remaining in the noisy city, for you are still part of its confusion.
Q: By going home I think you mean we must return to our real nature.
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Cosmic knowledge and personal vanity do not mingle.
A: That is one way to say it. But let's emphasize a particular point. In order to reach home where you have the guidance of cosmic insight you must first depart from your present location. You cannot remain in the noisy city of your own vanities and expect to know what to do. Cosmic knowledge and personal vanity do not mingle.
Q: So going home means to deliberately depart from everything wrong within ourselves.
A: Exactly, so do it. First you will catch a faint glimpse of your restful residence, and then you will be one with it.
Q: Where are we overlooking right help?
A: A new employee at a mountain resort was instructed to repair a sign which stood on top of a hill. He was about to start the long upward hike when he was told, "Take that electric car over there. That is what it is for." Cosmic knowledge works for you. That is what it is for. Take it.
Q: Guide us toward intelligent action.
A: It is the highest form of active intelligence to let whatever is right within to grow at the expense of whatever is wrong.
Q: Please identify a common wrongness.
A: No longer waste thoughts over what others think of you, instead, think how you can be free of all such worthless thoughts.
Q: Life piles on the difficulties of frustrated plans, ill health, domestic quarrels. I never know which way to turn.
A: Whatever the difficulty there is only one way to turn. Turn to study. Study your mind, study surrounding life, study human nature, study cosmic ideas. This is turning toward the Supreme Source of Solutions. This is rejected by the self-deceived who trust in social solutions. But it is perfect guidance and great relief to those who have caught a glimpse of something higher than themselves.
Q: Where should we be cautious when seeking help?
A: Never permit a defeated person to convince you that he can help you win inner victory for he is simply exploiting you to maintain his own delusion of being a victor.
Q: Where might we make a mistake when consulting someone who really knows the answers?
A: When requesting help from an authentic teacher we must not try to impose our stale ideas upon him, for that would be like the patient telling the doctor what to do.
Q: Sometimes I feel I am on a collision course that nothing can stop.
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Q: So much is asked!
A: So much is given.
Q: Our illogic causes our ills.
A: Then develop two kinds of logic. One can be called everyday logic. It keeps your day running smoothly. You use everyday logic when shopping wisely or driving safely. Spiritual logic consists of understanding and living within cosmic laws. With it you know what life is all about and have self-independence. Strong spiritual logic can build stronger everyday logic.
Q: What bars us from developing higher logic?
A: The assumption that we already have it. Remember, illogic never sees itself, as with the man who asked indignantly, "Why didn't you say so before you spoke?"
Q: Please comment on the need for going beyond spiritual knowledge.
A: The acquisition of spiritual facts is necessary, but it is only the first section of the upward path. This section ends at the edge of a cliff. To continue to climb we must bravely leap over to the opposite cliff where essence becomes alive. The leap is made by dropping vanity over knowledge and by a willingness to become nothing in order to become everything.
From the book by Vernon Howard Treasury of Positive Answers