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A person obsessed with the need to be happy will never be so. The obsession is the obstruction.

Vernon Howard

An obvious fact about negative feelings is often overlooked. They are caused by us, not by exterior happenings. An outside event presents the challenge, but we react to it. So we must attend to the way we take things, not to the things themselves.
VERNON HOWARD

Challenges Feelings Gratitude
Bitterness is the outcome of a wrong mental movement – the attempt to force external events to conform to internal fantasy. The cure is to see fantasy as fantasy, which will reveal it as neither necessary nor rewarding.
VERNON HOWARD

Events Movement Outcomes
If you call one thing good, you must call its opposite bad. If you think it wonderful to make a big profit in your business, you will also think it terrible if you incur a large loss. The idea is to live above the opposites.
VERNON HOWARD

Loss Opposites Thinking
Truth does not really hurt, rather it is our resistance to its message that causes us pain.
VERNON HOWARD

Hurt Pain Resistance
The world consists of imaginary people, claiming imaginary virtues and suffering from imaginary happiness.
VERNON HOWARD

People Suffering World
You can not escape a prison if you do not know you’re in one.
VERNON HOWARD

Escape Knows Prison
Ignorant people remain ignorant because they have a secret agreement to call one another intelligent.
VERNON HOWARD

Agreement Intelligent People
A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep.
VERNON HOWARD

Inspirational Strength Strong
Truth is not a matter of personal viewpoint.
VERNON HOWARD

Hygiene Truth Viewpoints
Aloneness is a wise teacher. Kierkegaard remarked that one sign of spiritual maturity was the ability to be comfortable when alone.
VERNON HOWARD

Spiritual Teacher Wise
Examine every action and reaction. Do you act naturally or do you act because you feel compelled? If you feel compelled, stop. Compulsion is slavery. Example: Refuse to go along with the crowd.
VERNON HOWARD

Completed Examine Naturally Refuse
Whenever encountering a troublesome person, do not identify him as being cruel or stupid or rude or anything else like that. Instead, see him as a frightened person.
VERNON HOWARD

Frightened Rude Stupid
We clearly realize that freedom’s inner kingdom cannot be touched by exterior attacks.
VERNON HOWARD

Freedom Kingdoms Realizing
The need to impress others causes half the world’s woes.
VERNON HOWARD

Half Needs World
We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception.
VERNON HOWARD

Conflict Conscious Perception
Persistence prevails, like a stream that is temporarily blocked by boulders and then collects force enough to overflow onward.
VERNON HOWARD

Mind Perseverance Persistence

A person obsessed with the need to be happy will never be so. The obsession is the obstruction.

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A person obsessed with the need to be happy will never be so. The obsession is the obstruction.

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