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Articles
Enlightening articles by Guy Finley on a wide range of topics address practical life issues and deepen your spiritual understanding.
Inspirational Quotes
Short but powerful quotes by Guy Finley will inspire you throughout your day.
Guy's Letters
Heartfelt inner-life questions from people around the world, and Guy’s enlightening answers, will shed light on your own issues.
Guy's Blog
Read Guy’s newest insights as he jots them down, spontaneous and uncensored.
This Week's Topic
Watch or listen to the specific talk we will all be discussing during this week’s Online Study Group meeting.
Short Talks
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.
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Hearing Guy interact with an interviewer is a delight. Listen as he makes deep spiritual principles easy to understand.
Student Reports
Be encouraged by hearing fellow members share their experiences and discoveries as they bring higher ideas into their daily lives.
Sacred Music
The Life of Learning singers and instrumentalists perform beautiful music that will inspire and uplift you.
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Join us for exclusive live broadcasts of select Guy Finley talks.
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Start your day off right with a nugget of wisdom that can transform your experience with everything you do and everyone you meet.
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Inner-life exercises and special writings deepen your understanding.
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Longtime local members speak for 10 to 15 minutes on a special topic. Hear the explorations and discoveries of others on the inner journey.
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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.
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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.
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You are not alone on the inner journey. Listen to lively, weekly online discussions between members.
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Every Saturday Guy leads an open discussion. Local members share their discoveries, and Guy’s comments deepen everyone’s understanding.
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Guy regularly holds open Q&A sessions. Often members of our global community send in questions, or speak directly to Guy online.
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Student Q&A with Guy on "Escape the Unseen Prison of Painful Dependency" (11/15/23)
Posted: Thursday, November 16, 2023
Meeting: Wednesday, November 15, 2023
Duration: 21min 14sec
Topics Covered
How long do you want to live a life in which you can be carried off at any time, beaten up, and then released whenever your captor is done with you?
The beginning of the end of useless suffering is in seeing that, at present, you do not really know why you suffer. There is not one solution that you think you know that is going to save you.
If you ever want to stop being thrown into a prison whenever conditions seem to conspire against you, then you are going to have to explore the consciousness that creates the prison.
The psychological prison that we often find ourselves in is never created by other people or exterior conditions. The bars of the prison are made out of identification.
We are not lovers of facts, we are lovers of fantasies.
The struggle to win freedom in a time to come doesn't occur without the unexamined belief that you are locked in a prison in the first place.
There could not be any such thing as identification without the illusion of duality, in which 'I' and what that 'I' depends upon are believed to be separate things.
We are sure that we are separate from what we are trying to escape from. At the same time, we are also sure that we are separate from what will liberate us.
We want things from other people in order to confirm the identity that wants those things.
In reality there is no such thing as struggling to "not identify," because that in itself is identification with an idea about what it means to not identify. The awareness of the identification is the freedom from it.
Be willing to see that there is no prison outside of identification with your own reactions.
The key to freedom from the prison of duality and its accompanying identification is the revelation of that whole mechanical system of consciousness as it is in operation.
The part of us that is in psychological prison prefers being in prison because its identity does not exist outside of the prison.
Freedom from the prison of thought will never be found by depending upon another thought to get you out.
Judging yourself for a misstep is an extension of the level of self that did what it did. Work to understand the operation of that nature until it can no longer deceive you into following it into a prison cell.
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