Copyright 1981 by Vernon Howard

Millions of men and women suffer terribly simply because they can't say NO. Few understand this strange situation. You can.

There are many powers on earth. You have heard of solar power, the great power of wealth and of public authority. There is the power of knowledge and propaganda and organization. You may have none of these, but it makes no difference. You can do a thousand times better. You can be the king of your own life with one overwhelming power.

NO!

That is the power. You possess the great power to say NO to people and events. It is a weak yes that lures people into trouble and it is a powerful NO that can keep you safe. But you must learn how to develop and use it.

You learn to say NO by understanding how and why a crafty world wants you to say yes. People want your yes as a first step toward getting whatever else they want from you. This is not cynicism. This is a plain fact and those who choose to ignore it will remain as victims. Of course cunning people will always mask their personal greeds with fancy phrases and pleasant smiles. Does the hungry wolf ever tell the little lamb his true motive?

So ask yourself constantly, "Why do so many people want me to agree to their offers?" Reply to yourself, "They want my yes for their own gain, which will result in my loss. In brief, they want mine to become theirs. But who said I had to give it to them? No one." It is exercises like this that prove that you not only possess the potent power of NO but that it can free you from bothersome and intimidating people wherever you go.

There is no end of tricks people use to prevent you from coming back with a firm and final NO. They try to make you feel guilty, they appeal to your loyalty, they warn you of danger unless you agree. They shout, plead, weep, threaten, coax, lie, accuse, pretend, promise, whine, shock, laugh, divert, rage, grieve, demand, persist.

Just think! All these tricks collapse in defeat before the single reply of NO. Remember, NO is a high form of intelligence backed up by Reality itself. Reality wants you to be free, while hoaxers want you to be theirs.

There is the story of a country where everyone lived in his own little house on top of his own little hill. All day long the citizens would peer out their windows and worry that a neighbor might sneak over and push them off their little hills. While pretending that they were happy and secure they lived in concealed tension and antagonism.

Does that remind you of how most people live? If you don't want to you don't have to live like most people. No matter how long a person has been trapped in a nervous life of the little hilltop he can leave any time he chooses to do so. He can begin his interesting journey to a new and solid land. He can see how NO is based in reliable spiritual principles, that is rightly exciting to employ, and that is proves its own power in daily situations.

EXPOSE THESE YES-TRAPS

There are dozens of places where you are now saying yes simply because you don't realize that you should say NO. It is a spiritual and psychological law that awareness of the wrong makes room for the right, so you should regularly uncover these unseen yes-traps. As examples, you may be harmfully saying yes because:

The harm of a wrong yes is easily seen. Anyone can look back in life and see how an affirmative answer created problems that a NO would have avoided. But here is cheery news. Even the damage of past mistakes can be cancelled, which is a fascinating process. You will eventually learn how to say NO to painful memories which try to drag you back into the past where you don't belong. You will dwell only in the freedom of the present moment.

It will feel strange the first few times you start switching from yes to NO. But the strain is no different from that experienced when you first learn a new game or learn to play music. But the strangeness fades away naturally, leaving you at ease with yourself. Guilt is one of the feelings that will rise up to consciousness but finally disappear. Guilt is one of the tricks used by your old nature which does not want you to leave it for a new nature. Don't feel guilty over leaving a shack for a castle!

We learn to escape from self-defeating behavior in small ways at first. You can do this by thinking of present situations where you now say yes but wish you could stop. Recall several small situations. Perhaps you have agreed to meet regularly with a friend or relative but realize that it is really a burden. Maybe you agreed to take the leadership in a certain project but now wish you had declined. You now know where you must say NO. The next step is also clear. Say NO. Make the necessary contact and resign. Just like that. Do it even if you feel nervous about it. Don't listen to your timidity. Do what is right. Do you know what you are doing? You are getting your life back!

Learning to say NO consists of two steps, the mental and the spiritual. The mental comes first and consists of knowledge about NO. You are now collecting these needed facts. In this stage you can think about the power of NO but cannot as yet say it with inner authority and certainty.

The second step occurs when you yield yourself to something higher than your own intellect. This is the same as saying that you permit the spirit of Truth to enter and guide your life. This superior spirit gives total power to your NO, just as a sudden charge of electricity gives life to a television screen.

It is really this higher force that says NO for you. This makes it quite easy for you to express outwardly that which you know inwardly. And what you know inwardly is that the higher power sees what is right for you in every circumstance. It then acts and speaks thru you for your own benefit and safety.

YOUR INVISIBLE SIGNALS

Do you know someone who stumbles from problem to problem in his human relations? There is a reason for it, which we will explore.

Everyone sends out a psychic signal which tells others all about him or her. Whether aware of it or not, everyone is a walking signal. This invisible message publicly declares the life-level of the sender. If the signal broadcasts a life-level of weakness and dependency and desperation it attracts those who will take advantage of the sender. But a signal of strength and command is a warning signal that keeps plunderers at a distance.

How does a deceiver study the signals? He watches you very carefully, while appearing to be very casual about it all. He notices the way you walk and gesture and nod your head. He picks up clues from your manner of dress. He pays special attention to your eyes and face and their changing expressions. All these turn into signals by which he judges his chances for scoring at your expense. Hoping that you are an extreme yes-man or yes-woman he quietly pokes and pries to see how far he can go. And he will go as far as a weak signal permits.

Imagine three men in a room. One man radiates a signal of self-command and of powerful insight into human nature. The second man's signal reveals ignorance, instability, indecision. The third man is a charlatan who seeks human prey wherever he goes. The strong man's signal keeps the charlatan powerless, but the weak man becomes the schemer's helpless victim.

Stated another way, a weak person is treated the way he unknowingly asks to be treated. His aim should be to clearly see his signal as the invitation-to-disaster that it is. As he studies and develops inwardly he raises his life-level and also therefore increases the power of his invisible NO.

The story is told of an evil king who captured several enemy soldiers in a battle. Taking them back to his estate he put them to work as slaves. To outer appearances they were treated well, for they were given sufficient food and comfortable living quarters. But one day one of the slaves dashed away in an attempt to escape. Grabbing their swords the guards pursued the fugitive into the woods, but the slave made good his escape.

We have several vital lessons in the story. The slave is anyone who has been captured by inner negative states. He appears to be treated kindly but only as long as he does not try to escape. When the slave started to dash away, all the surface kindness vanished and cruel swords took its place. Once you start to use NO for your escape you will see angry forces both inside and outside that don't want you to break their evil grip on your life. Simply expect this and realize that your spiritual weapon of NO is stronger than all the hostile forces in the universe!

Since those who request something from you hope for a yes they may react in a negative manner to your NO. But any anger or sarcasm on their part is their problem. You must not let them make you feel that you have done something wrong. The opposite is true. You have done something right.

Don't let anyone cause you to become doubtful or irritable. The denied person will sense this as the weakness that it is, and weakness is an invitation for the schemer to come and get it. You are the it.

Once saying NO you need only remain in the power and wisdom of this spiritual atmosphere. This keeps you firm but polite, uncompromising and innocent.

LOOK BEHIND HUMAN MASKS

No experience is more beneficial and interesting than to start to see people as they really are behind their deceptive masks. Keep the following facts in mind as your developing insight exposes the human show. When first seeing that everyone is far worse than you thought it tends to make you nervous. This is simply because you had trusted their strength and wisdom only to find they were fakes. Feeling deserted, you nervously wonder whether true help in life actually exists. It does. So don't timidly pause when seeing the shocking facts about people. Instead double your forward speed. You will reach high ground sooner.

As you start to say NO to people you see more clearly the nature of your true interests. And the more clearly you see what is truly best for you the stronger becomes your NO. You win both ways. You will learn how to say NO to:

Quite often your NO can be silent. Maybe someone is trying to bait you into an argument or is trying to irritate you. Be aware of his motive and don't answer at all. Remain quiet. Don't let the bait lure you into the trap. Your silence must not be an egotistical attempt to frustrate him but must be only a conscious NO to the temptation. You are never required to answer hostility. Your refusal to reply breaks off his attack, giving it no place to go.

Almost all human advice is worthless. This does not refer to technical advice, such as necessary education in science and mechanics and other subjects of daily need. It refers to psychological advice in which one deluded human being says he knows what is best for another human being. He doesn't know. He is a lost wanderer in the desert, teaching others in a desperate attempt to convince himself that he knows the way out. He hides his despair and ignorance behind a false front of confidence and authority, but he can't deceive himself. His advice is not only useless but downright dangerous and cruel, for he prevents human beings from finding the pure cure of Reality.

No one knows more than you what is best for you. Do not surrender your intelligence to anyone. Just realize that your inner knowing must be released to do its good work. NO-power supports this release.

You cannot be happy with a person who is unhappy with himself. His unhappiness will lean on you, snap at you and drain your very life. These facts will become clearer as you employ NO-power. Accompanying this higher clarity will be a wish for freedom from all wrong relationships.

Your aim is to change yourself, not the other person. You cannot change another human being any more than you can breathe for him. Personal change is personal responsibility.

Great relief comes to anyone who stops trying to reform others and turns his energies toward spiritual elevation.

YOUR GUIDING LAMP

Human beings groan and stagger under the burdens of economic problems, domestic difficulties, terrifying tomorrows and much more. All man-made solutions have failed and will fail always. There must be a spiritual solution or none at all. Where human intellect has failed, spiritual intelligence can succeed. Human intelligence has created mechanical religion, which is a brick to carry instead of a lamp to guide. You, the reader, can acquire a guiding lamp by seeing the difference between mechanical religion and conscious spirituality.

Mental and physical restlessness makes a man the victim of one yes-trap after another. The restless and insecure wanderer roams around seeking something solid enough to stand upon and soft enough to rest upon. The world with all its sinister schemes is eagerly waiting for him. He then bounces from one dashed hope to the next -- all because he does not understand the true purpose of life.

The real purpose of life? It is to develop inwardly, to experience deep spiritual transformation, to actually become a different kind of human being, to find one's true self, to contact Reality. The restless wanderer makes the mistake of finding only himself in every experience, like looking in a mirror and hoping to find something new, but seeing only the usual. The restless person is caught in the painful contradiction of demanding at the same time both his old nature and a new nature. That is like insisting on being both outdoors and indoors at the same time. This impossible condition tears him apart. The methods in this publication show him how to rise above the agonizing contradictions by rising above himself. Then he is no longer tormented by his own restlessness. The weary wanderer has at last arrived home.

The individual who discovers the purpose of life is pleased at how he also finds a single new meaning in life. He was once confused as to the many apparent meanings in events of life, which turned out to be meaningless meanings. If he won the affection of a certain woman, he thought that meant he was attractive and desirable. If he bought a new home, he thought that meant he was financially successful. But the more of these kind of meanings he collected, the more desperate he became to find real meaning. The entire problem collapsed by seeing life's true meaning -- it means everything to face yourself as you actually are, then let Reality change you.

Don't feel bad if you don't understand this all at once, for these ideas are new to the mind. With patient study your ideas will change into effortless powers. Even if you don't presently understand, the understanding already exists. It is marvelously alive right now, even as you read these lines. It is as if you are searching in a large library for a new book that you heard was richly rewarding. In your search you may pick up dozens of wrong books but your persistence finally places the prized book in your hands. Just as the desired book was already there, awaiting your approach, insight into life is already in place, ready to welcome you.

Use the following valuable and interesting exercise for building NO-power.

Notice the dozens of small and distressing decisions you must make each day. You just don't know which way to go. It is like coming to forks and more forks along an unfamiliar path. Take any one of these small frustrations. Perhaps you don't know whether you should go shopping today or tomorrow. Or maybe you hesitate to speak to someone about a minor problem. Here is how to break the torment. Just think it thru the best you can and then select one of the two choices. Stick absolutely and finally with this decision. Once making your choice the opposite choice will start screaming for its rights. Ignore it. Don't let it intimidate you. Firmly tell it NO a thousand times if necessary. Let it know your decision is final. Once the opposite choice sees it has no chance it will go away and leave you alone. Use this technique several times each day. Watch how it sets you free.

UNDERSTAND HUMAN WEAKNESS

To stay free from the yes-mess, understand weak and hostile human nature. There it is. If you are tired of being deceived and hurt, know the foe. Once you know the enemy you can easily NO the enemy. Here is a three-part system for success.

First, peer closely at the faces and lives of yes-people. What do you see? You see pathetic men and women who have agreed to their own defeat. They have meekly and foolishly surrendered to a life of exhaustion and chaos and futility. Your face-watching is truly a positive and revealing exercise. It exposes the full horror of a life wasted in a mechanical agreement with a lost world. Your examination of yes-people should arouse an urge in you to do just one thing -- to have nothing to do with such folly.

As a second step, select a specific person in your life. Study his nature. Notice what he is like at any particular moment. Study his words, acts, moods, pretenses. Notice what condition dominates him at any particular time. Here are ten examples of dominating states:

As a third step, observe how his moods and attitudes change all day long. He may go from depression to elation to confusion and back again to depression. This means that exterior events control his life. And this means his desperation toward life makes him a yes-seeker, out to grab anything to ease the pain. Have your NO ready when he comes around.

Make a note of the following fact. Just because someone demands something from you it does not mean that he has a right to it. In fact, his very demand is his disqualification. An angry demander is a desperate person who refuses to do his own inner work of self-development, and you only add to his dependency by yielding to his demands. Also a desperate demander is a part of negative life and you must not serve negative life. The last thing he wants is for you to realize this, which means it should be the first thing you should realize.

Declare your personal independence. Say NO to human nonsense. No matter how popular it may be with others, you cannot afford it any more. Remember the letters NTN -- NO TO NONSENSE. Write these three letters on a slip of paper and carry it with you. Glance at the secret code every so often during your day. It contains the great secret for a new you.

MALE-FEMALE RELATIONS

Remember the term life-level. It is extremely important to connect it with your aim of building NO-power. Your life-level consist of everything that makes your life whatever it is, good or bad. Your life-level includes your thoughts, emotions, actions, responses, beliefs, ambitions, fears, inhibitions and so on. It consists of anyone's actual inner conditions, not any self-flattering imagination one has about himself.

These facts are of great help in establishing and maintaining good and pleasant male-female relations. A man attracts a woman on his own approximate life-level. A woman moves toward a man whose psychology matches her own. When a couple meet who have matching low life-levels there will be quarrels and heartaches. But if both have reasonably high levels they will enjoy each other.

Take a woman with a fairly low life-level of which she is unaware. It will do her no good to go out and try to meet a strong and kindly man. The law of matching levels is absolute. She can find only someone like herself, with resulting strife and stress. To find a truly good man she must first raise her own level by studying and applying spiritual teachings. Only then can she recognize a decent man when she meets him. You can recognize only your own level. To recognize the higher level in another person you must also have that superior level in yourself.

Your NO-power will be as weak or as strong as your life-level. They fly together, like a pair of bluebirds. And the bluebirds can choose to dwell either in a dark canyon or on a sunny mountaintop.

Of course there are right times and places to say yes, but you must know these right times and places from your own spiritual nature. Above both yes and NO is Reality, whose judgment is perfect every time. By placing yourself in contact with Reality that perfection becomes your expression.

It is like a single soldier traveling across the desert. He is in contact with army headquarters located on a mountaintop at the edge of the desert. Whenever necessary the soldier glances up at the secret signal coming from the mountaintop. He travels accurately and safely across the desert by obeying either the signal of yes or NO.

Your spiritual yes is an agreement to whatever is good and healthy and natural. Look how quickly all this puts an end to the painful indecision between the common kind of yes and no!

Picture a man wandering around in a dangerous storm. You rush over and ask him why he is placing himself in peril. But he denies both the storm and his danger. After observing him you understand that he had fallen down and was in a daze from a bumped head. He did not know where he was or what he was doing.

That is humanity. Under the spell of immature thinking a man cannot see and admit the problem he is to himself. In his unconsciousness he suffers from his inner storms of chaos and hostility and vanity but he cannot understand them. And it is only his refusal to understand that keeps his life the terrifying storm that it is.

NO wakes him up.

YOUR INVISIBLE POWER

Most problems and threats are invisible. Have you ever noticed that? You may think that your problem is an irritating relative or a low bank account but these are really psychological and invisible problems. Since a man knows little about his inner and invisible world he has no skill for entering and conquering it. Here is where NO rides to the rescue. Being an invisible force itself it understands and commands all inner conditions.

Here is one way in which invisible NO does for you what you cannot do for yourself. Suppose a certain crisis is coming up tomorrow involving other people and you don't know what to do. Dozens of possible actions and decisions whirl around in your mind but painful indecision remains. Then you become aware that nothing good can come from all this, so you quietly say NO to your whirling thoughts. Your invisible power of NO chases out the invisible confusion, replacing it with calm and practical procedures.

Just as surely as a harmful yes worked against you a beneficial NO will work for you. A NO-man or a NO-woman will even find definite improvement in financial conditions. Nothing saves money like NO!

Do you suffer from anxiety? There is a wrong way and a right way to handle it. The wrong way is to simply relieve its pressure. This is what people do when they angrily blame others or fall into self-pity. To merely relieve anxiety makes its return a certainty, like a haunting ghost. There is another way to handle anxiety. Dismissal. Once and for all.

A special reward awaits anyone who comes to know the power of NO. He can direct it inwardly to banish hardened and harmful conditions. Here are just a few of the useless conditions that will feel the force of your authoritative NO:

You should NO these inner states away because they duplicate themselves in your outer life. See for yourself how your inner and outer lives match each other. This will make you want to change the inner cause in order to have a higher external result.

Few people ever realize the great prize they possess in the exclamation of NO. They take it as a mere word, but you will learn how to employ it as a permanent power for self-security and lasting happiness.

Picture yourself outside and alone playing some kind of game. You invented the game and you made up the rules. As you play you feel a natural and spontaneous pleasure. A few minutes later someone comes along and asks to join your fun. You reluctantly say yes. After a few minutes of play the newcomer insists that you change one of the rules to suit him, and you agree regretfully. Then a second and third and fourth person asks to join the game and you sadly admit them. All four newcomers now pressure you to change the rules to please them.

Your game is no longer your pleasure.

But you know what to do, so you do it. You just walk away and start a new game. No outside interference permitted.

That is how an individual loses his life-freedom. And that is how he can win it back.

Your life is your life.

TRUTH IS THE TEACHER

The average person is like a haunted house with dozens of dark rooms filled with ghosts and phantoms. These rooms are the unconscious and unvisited parts of his inner life. The rooms are occupied by repressed angers and terrors, by baffling voices that whisper weird and dangerous things to him. And by strange urges and pressures that he can neither express nor dismiss. It all adds up to a life of painful chaos that he is glad to hide from others. But since he can't hide it from himself he suffers endlessly, never really knowing what to do.

Unknowing is unnecessary. Because Truth exists. It will teach you all you need to know.

It is basic spiritual law that an individual must first see what is wrong with him before he can build what is right. Wrongness is his actual and present nature, therefore that is the only thing he can see if he is honest. If he lies and credits himself with nonexistent virtues he prevents inner change to true rightness. It is like a doctor who first sees a patient's actual illness in order to start the cure.

Have you ever noticed how often an argument runs thru your mind? It is usually an agitated attempt to solve a problem or push away a threat. And the only thing that results is an agitated mind unable to solve the problem. This is because you are trying to find solutions where they can't be found. You can't solve a life-problem on the mental level. You can correct an error in business or in cooking with the ordinary mind. But life-problems require a higher view.

Let NO grow and you will end inner difficulties as easily as you now solve problems in business or cooking. It is even better than that. When living the higher life all those painful mysteries will not appear in the first place.

A beneficial NO is automatically followed by an equally beneficial yes. To say NO to people who try to impose themselves upon you is to say yes to the pleasure of living your own life. When you decline to accept society's subtle bribes you agree to stronger inner integrity. Saying NO to the destructive excitements of the world is the same as saying yes to the security of a sane mind.

Happiness is to not have to explain anything to anyone. So notice how much unhappiness is included in explaining yourself to other people. The apologetic attitude has gone so far in some faces and manners that you see little else of their owners. How pathetic and how useless.

Timid explanations and apologies are based in fear. And fear is based in an individual's false self, the self made up of all his delusory beliefs about himself. This invented identity continues to control a life only because the individual carelessly says yes to it all day long. But with less yes the NO will grow, and the compulsive need to explain falls away.

If you do not know who you are, have no fear. Let all your labels and opinions about yourself fall away, for they are useless weights. Let yourself float freely in the sky above all earthly ties. You will finally be drawn into the gravitational pull of a new planet. Upon your arrival in this new world you will know at last who you really are. Then all is well forever.

SUMMARY OF PRACTICAL TRUTHS

~~~end~~~