Twenty Special Secrets

The Power of Love Among People – “Twenty Special Secrets”
(From “Mystic Path to Cosmic Power” by Vernon Howard)
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1.  When two people meet, the prize always goes to the one with
the most self-insight.  He will be calmer, more confident, more at
ease with the other.
 
2.  Never permit the behavior of other people to tell you how to feel.
 
3.  Pay little attention to what people say or do.  Instead,
try to see their innermost motive for speaking and acting.  (Now,
apply this very same rule to yourself and you become an enlightened
person!)
 
4.  Any friendship requiring the submission of your original nature and dignity to another person is all wrong.
 
5.  Mystically speaking, there is no difference between you and
another person.  This is why we cannot hurt another without
hurting ourselves, nor help another without helping ourselves.
 
6.  When we are free of all unnecessary desires toward other people, we can never be deceived or hurt.
 
7.  You take a giant step toward psychological maturity when you
refuse to angrily defend yourself against unjust slander.  For one
thing, resistance disturbs your own peace of mind.
 
8.  You understand others to the exact degree that you really understand yourself. Work for more self-knowledge.
 
9.  Do not be afraid to fully experience everything that happens
to you in your human relations, especially the pains and
disappointments. Do this, and everything becomes clear at last.
 
10.  The individual who really knows what it means to love has no anxiety when his love is unseen and rejected.
 
11.  If you painfully lose a valuable friend, do not rush out at
once for a replacement.  Such action prevents you from examining
your heartache and breaking free of it.
 
12.  Do not be afraid to be a nobody in the social world. 
This is a deeper and richer truth than appears on the surface.
 
13.  Every unpleasant experience with another person is an
opportunity to see people as they are, not as we mistakenly idealize
them. The more unpleasant the other person is, the more he can teach
you.
 
14.  You can be so wonderfully free from a sense of injury and
injustice that you are surprised when you hear others complain of them.
 
15.  We cannot recognize a virtue in another person that we do not
possess in ourselves.  It takes a truly loving and patient person
to recognize those virtues in another.
 
16.  Do not mistake desire for love.  Desire leaves home in a
frantic search for one gratification after another.  Love is at
home with itself.
 
17.  There are parts of you that want the loving life and parts
that do not. Place yourself on the side of your positive forces; do all
you can to aid and encourage them.
 
18.  You must stop living so timidly, from fixed fears of what
others will think of you and of what you will think of yourself.
 
19.  Do not contrive to be a loving person; work to be a real person. Being real is being loving.
 
20.  The greatest love you could ever offer to another is to so
transform your life that others are attracted to your genuine example
of goodness.