Your judgment of me is powerless to punish or otherwise belittle me without my own mistaken belief that you are the keeper of all things valuable!
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Enlightening articles by Guy Finley on a wide range of topics address practical life issues and deepen your spiritual understanding.
Short but powerful quotes by Guy Finley will inspire you throughout your day.
Heartfelt inner-life questions from people around the world, and Guy’s enlightening answers, will shed light on your own issues.
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Watch or listen to the specific talk we will all be discussing during this week’s Online Study Group meeting.
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Enlightening articles by Guy Finley on a wide range of topics address practical life issues and deepen your spiritual understanding.
Short but powerful quotes by Guy Finley will inspire you throughout your day.
Heartfelt inner-life questions from people around the world, and Guy’s enlightening answers, will shed light on your own issues.
Read Guy’s newest insights as he jots them down, spontaneous and uncensored.
Watch or listen to the specific talk we will all be discussing during this week’s Online Study Group meeting.
If you have a few minutes, and want a burst of enlightenment, watch or listen to these brief talks by Guy, filled with concentrated wisdom.
Hearing Guy interact with an interviewer is a delight. Listen as he makes deep spiritual principles easy to understand.
Be encouraged by hearing fellow members share their experiences and discoveries as they bring higher ideas into their daily lives.
The Life of Learning singers and instrumentalists perform beautiful music that will inspire and uplift you.
Join us for exclusive live broadcasts of select Guy Finley talks.
Start your day off right with a nugget of wisdom that can transform your experience with everything you do and everyone you meet.
Inner-life exercises and special writings deepen your understanding.
Longtime local members speak for 10 to 15 minutes on a special topic. Hear the explorations and discoveries of others on the inner journey.
Dive deep into a subject on your own! Work at your own pace with a series of talks by Guy on topics critical to your inner development.
Catch Guy Finley’s weekly message that focuses on spiritual and personal breakthroughs. This is updated weekly and is available in video, audio and text.
Join a lively online discussion with other members each week of “This Week’s Topic” – a new Guy Finley talk selected for in-depth study.
You are not alone on the inner journey. Listen to lively, weekly online discussions between members.
Every Saturday Guy leads an open discussion. Local members share their discoveries, and Guy’s comments deepen everyone’s understanding.
Guy regularly holds open Q&A sessions. Often members of our global community send in questions, or speak directly to Guy online.
Access to all our private Facebook updates, student Facebook discussions, and our LIVE Saturday lunch roundtable discussions.
This member forum is where you can write in your observations and experiences, and receive feedback from fellow members. Read-only access for Free and Basic members. Full access for Premium & All Access members.
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Shop eCoursesYour judgment of me is powerless to punish or otherwise belittle me without my own mistaken belief that you are the keeper of all things valuable!
We go through life looking for approval from others. This unending search for approval runs deep inside of us as we unknowingly nurture a relationship with the idea that if we could just be accepted, then little by little we would come to know who we are. We actually buy into the notion that if we could get enough people to approve of us, then this ache in our soul that is always trying to figure out who we should be would finally come to an end.
To break the bonds of this secret form of captivity, we must ask ourselves: What happens to someone who is always looking for approval? The answer is clear: They sell themselves! This unconscious, self-destructive behavior has become so habitual to us that we don't catch it... but there is more than that, and you can see it when you watch people.
Just listen to a group of people talking over lunch and you can see that the casual conversations of human beings are really fencing competitions -- one person saying something and then another person trying to top it. There is this continual tug of war, a real competition going on. Lunches in a social situation can be exhausting! Then there are our families... at a family dinner, all the old business is brought up, and everybody is competing and trying to prove that they did better than we did. Why does that go on? Why do we take part in it?
What is it that is taking place inside of any of us when there is a continual longing for this acceptance by which we will then feel approved, and in feeling approved, feel like we've finally found our real self? The fact of the matter is, anyone can look askew at us, someone can say the smallest thing to us, and all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put us back together again! The smallest barb can sink our boat.
What is the root of this endless compromise that takes place in us where we want to be accepted, and to be accepted we have to gain approval -- and we sell ourselves no matter how we do it? And further, why is that if we are actually confirmed by someone, we need two someones to do it after that? Why is it never enough? Never enough possessions, power, authority, etc.... why is that?
The root of that which is forever seeking acceptance and approval in us is that which is forever telling us that we are unacceptable as we are. There is something figurative that lives in us that actually causes, by its very nature, that feeling in us that as we are, is just not enough.
Do you ever think to yourself, "I'm not enough. I need more money"? So you go out and make more money. Then something happens to what you had defined yourself by, and as soon as what defined you goes away, what happens to you? You go straight down. You crash. Then you have to find something new to define yourself by again!
Think of the definition of anything, and it doesn't exist without comparison, which means all definitions have their root in a form of comparison. You might wonder, "what's wrong with that?" Nothing, when it comes to practical thought, to hot and cold, and the natural things we need to do as human beings. But when you start talking about "who am I?" or "what's my life about?", if the only way I can know who I am, what my true nature is, is by comparing it to something else, then am I not the subject of whatever it is that I've compared myself to?
We want to be free, and to be free means to understand what the path of freedom is about. The path of freedom is not winning acceptance from the world around us; in fact the path of freedom, of coming to possess our own life, cannot be gained by anything we might imagine. If we are to be free then we must begin with discovering what it is within us that causes us to see ourselves as needful of those things we now sell our souls to win. And if we will agree to let go of whatever is found -- that binds us to the false idea that we are somehow incomplete -- then freedom follows naturally. It is done for us. And we will know that Life and Liberty for which our heart longs.
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Break the Bonds of this Secret Form of Captivity
Posted by Guy Finley in 459 Galice Road, Merlin, OR 97532 on , and updated on .
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