Sanctuary Sun

"Think of the many descriptions you put on yourself daily, con-
stantly, descriptions which are critical, which are favorable. You
call yourself perhaps as many as a thousand different things a day.
You’re a success, or you’re a failure, or you’re a frightened person,
or you’re an aspiring person going somewhere important, or you’re
someone who fakes a lot or you’re someone who’s perfectly sincere
in everything you do. Hundreds and thousands of labels over a
period of time, often very contradictory. And you don’t quite know
sometimes how to label yourself, whether you’re a good person or
a bad person or generous or selfish or whatever.

Now look at the people you live with and your friends and your
associates. You will see that you do the very same thing to them,
that you’re constantly describing them in many different ways and
again contradictory very often. Someone is likable one moment, the
next hour or so you have a difference with them and they’re not
very pleasant. So this whole business of going around calling our-
selves and other people names is a constant practice, the mind rolls
forward in it all day long.

Now I want you to know that is a purely human habit and a very
dreadful destructive wasteful habit, but it all connects with
human beings giving themselves and other people labels so that
they think they can understand them if they put a label on them.
But it is the very label that prevents understanding, it acts
as a wall toward you seeing and comprehending the other person’s
motive, what he’s like, and prevents him from seeing you and
understanding you. I said this was a purely human practice.

Now there is another source, another power outside of the human
mind that has nothing to do with this wasteful practice, that
never does it, has no connection with it. And this other source
you can call what you like, but we’ll call it Truth tonight
with a capital T - something which is not a part of the human
mind, therefore, not a part of the labeling process."

Vernon Howard