"Welcome Your Higher Nature - your costumeless nature
You know what a costume is. A costume is something that is not natural to
you at all. The ordinary clothes that we have on now - this is our
natural clothing. That's right, that's good. But a costume is something
that's artificial, that you put on uselessly, for the purpose of trying to
feel good fortune of some kind.
You have the experience of being offended by another person, so you put on
the costume of being an indignant man. Or someone else offends you more
deeply, and you put on a very definite monster costume of being furious
toward him, fury being the monster costume. You want to attract the man,
ladies, and you know how to play the game. You've been playing it since you
were a fourteen-year-old girl. And you put on the pleasant girl costume,
the person who's affectionate, someone who's nice to be around. That's your
costume. The boy does the same thing when he meets the girl.
And so our closet is jammed with artificial actions, hundreds of them,
all mixed up. You're never quite sure which costume to put on, are you?
Notice this.
Have you ever noticed yourself coming to a crisis situation? Maybe an hour
from now you have to meet some people, and it's going to involve you in
some way. Have you observed the costume changes you make in your mind,
hundreds of times, before you get there? And you talk it all out with
yourself. See, you're relying on the costume to get you through. But it
won't! There's no such thing as a right costume. They're all wrong. The
whole wardrobe should be moved away and sent down to the neighborhood
yard sale! (Laughter)
So what you have to do is be an alert, observant person. Before this crisis
meeting that you have to attend an hour from now, you're going to have to
consciously say _no_ to all costume selections. This will relieve you of
the madness of rushing around inside of that huge wardrobe you have and
trying to get the right one. I told you, there is no right one. The only
right dress is no costume at all - just your normal clothing."
Welcome Your Higher Nature
Your Power of Natural Knowing, Chap. 3, p. 23 (Previous version)
Chap. 3, p. 21 (Current version)