A Secret of Life by Vernon Howard
“You will save yourself tons of grief by remembering and following this advice. Do not allow anyone into your personal and private life except on your own terms – except on your own terms of spirituality and trueness. That is the cause of all grief and trouble between people because someone didn’t do that.
And the rest of this talk will contribute mightily to you not allowing anyone into your intimate personal life except on the standards that you have allowed reality to set up inside you. And by living with that trueness when a tempter comes along in human form, individual or group or propaganda, when it comes along, without working hard at all, you will know whether to accept that invitation or to reject it, whether to follow that particular line or not.
You will be safe because you will have cosmic protection, because you have cosmic wisdom. And the days will be long over when you used to sell yourself to the best offer, the most charming-looking man, the most beautiful lady. Those days and those disasters are gone, because you walk through this world of people and events wide awake, knowing that the lures are always there, the lures with the dangers in back of them.
You’ll be so instantaneously conscious of the difference between good and bad in whatever you observe, that other person, all of them, no one will be able to fool you about anything. The spotlight, the spiritual spotlight will shine on everything and you wouldn’t dream any more of entering into a relationship, into a business partnership, you wouldn’t dream of entering into it except on the terms of what is Godly, of simply what is right, what is honest, what is wholesome; you wouldn’t dream of it. Because you’re going to remember the many, many times when you got taken; how many have got taken? Will you think about why you walked, ambled so carelessly into that trap. It’s because you wanted something and you wanted something that you didn’t have to have.
Please remember this rule: except for repairing your car or selling you a loaf of bread, or fixing the roof on your house, no human being has anything of value to give you.”
