In this short talk, self-realization author Guy Finley talks about how we have been deceived into thinking that we need to control everything in our lives in order to meet the world's standards of success and happiness. But as Guy explains, if we feel a painful compulsion to control everything we see outside of us, then it is fear that is in control.

In this answer to a viewer's question, self-realization author Guy Finley talks about some of the opposition we will encounter -- within ourselves -- when we realize the need to let go of painful ideas we have long held about what it means to be "in control" of our lives.

Have you ever been drawn into a fight with a loved one where - by the time you got knee-deep into who's "right" and who's "wrong" -- maybe over the most trivial of matters -- it felt as if, somehow, your very life depended on the outcome of that fight We've all had moments like this, perhaps too many times; which is why it seems strange that we've yet to see the following...

When we look at life and we see a problem, are we looking at life that has a problem that's fixed, or are we looking at something in our own consciousness that has fixed something and called it a problem? We're looking in our own mind and it is showing us something that is fixed, yet we know it's not because life itself is fluid; it is potential. But our mind doesn't relate to what...

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...

When we try to avoid or manipulate a moment in order to just get through it, we will meet that same moment again because we are the same. We cannot separate the moment we don't want from the level of consciousness that fears it. Seeing this is the same as realizing that the fear, though we may feel its presence, is not the power that it claims to be.

There is a part of us that wants people to be dependent on us. But the part of us that creates dependency in others is the exact same same thing that creates fear and resentment in us when we imagine that the other person will not behave in the way we want.

What many of us have yet to understand is that dark, negative reactions to unwanted events do nothing to cure them. In fact, these painful impulses have just the opposite effect. They actually "cement" things -- fixing both themselves and the false sense of self through which they then are empowered to run their unhappy course.

Every living thing is searching for something to fulfill itself. Raindrops rush down to slake the thirst of a parched earth, even as water-laden clouds are drawn high into the skies so they can pour themselves out. Streams seek out rivers that rush down to merge with the sea. It's really quite clear: the great circle of life is imbued with a unique kind of "gravity."

There is no greater feature that we human beings have than the presence of a living Light within us whose very nature knows what is our own and what is not our own. When at last we let go of all that is not our own -- all the mistaken conclusions and the painful contusions they cause as we anxiously search to remedy what ruins us -- we find that we already have everything we have ever needed.

Even though we often find ourselves feeling so, in truth... there is no such thing as being powerless. We see how a person who resists life--who hates or fears unwanted changes--becomes the instrument of a power that effectively renders him powerless to do anything but struggle. But we've seen the converse as well...