In this short talk, Guy Finley discusses the importance of understanding the idea of "levels and scale" inside of our own consciousness, so that we can gradually begin to break our identification with the familiar sense of self that is produced by the level of mind that unconsciously talks to itself.

We must attend to our practical responsibilities. That is part of being a human being. But there is no inherent pain in fulfilling the natural purposes of this physical life. Pain comes in when we turn a natural purpose into something personal and become identified with a role that we believe we have to keep in place. When a purpose of ours has run its course, we must be willing to see the ne...

We live from a bottomless basket of endless wants that drive us everywhere, including crazy! Hoping to find comfort and life direction in your wants is like trying to find shade under a swarm of stinging flies -- while it may be cooler, you also have to keep running. Your pleasure is your pain. Real pleasure is not the opposite of pain, it is the absence of it. Think about it. What you re...

For the man or woman who persists with the wish for Truth/God to be first in life, there really is no such thing as failure.

We're often led to act against ourselves by an undetected weakness that goes before us -- trying to pass itself off to others -- as a strength. This is secret self-sabotage. It sinks us in our personal and business relationships as surely as a torpedo wrecks the ship it strikes. Any person you feel the need to control or dominate -- so that he or she will treat you as you "think" you should b...

Who among us hasn't found themselves conjuring up some imagined pleasure when faced with the pain of some contradiction in life that seems greater than our ability to deal with? If we're honest, we can see that most of our time is spent identifying the so-called cause of our discontented conditions, and the rest of our time is taken up trying to change our unwanted situations into what we ima...

Real self-command dawns within us as we realize that reliving the past is powerless to change a present misunderstanding.

When you think that who you are is connected to something you are not, you are identified with it. To make this clear, think about how you felt the last time you accidentally scuffed your brand-new shoes or tore your brand-new pants. It felt like it was you who got damaged! Remember? That's what it means to be identified with something or someone. It hurts! None of this is too difficult to und...

Our attention connects us to life; it establishes our relationships with all that unfolds around and within us.

When we are hurt badly, the higher lesson hidden in this trial is to recognize the time has come to let go of who and what we have been up until the moment of loss.

Once we start to see, to know in our innermost heart, that life itself is already complete, we can let go of whatever -- or whoever -- would have us believe otherwise. Old attachments and their long-standing aches are now seen for being what they have always been: appendages of days gone by, worthless to the Higher Self we have agreed to become and by whose stillness we realize this need for a...

If you haven't noticed this yet about yourself, it's easy to see in others: we each seem to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. The nature of this burden may change with age. When young, we feel the weight of having to choose a direction in life. As adults, we feel encumbered by all the perceived requirements of an active life: trying to control events, win acceptance, maintain rel...