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.
Interviews & Radio Shows
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.
Livestream Classes
Join us for exclusive live broadcasts of select Guy Finley talks.
Daily Meditation Emails
Start your day off right with a nugget of wisdom that can transform your experience with everything you do and everyone you meet.
Special Lessons
Inner-life exercises and special writings deepen your understanding.
Student Talks
Longtime local members speak for 10 to 15 minutes on a special topic. Hear the explorations and discoveries of others on the inner journey.
eCourses
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.
Advanced Inner Life Talks
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.
Online Study Group
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.
Study Group Recordings
You are not alone on the inner journey. Listen to lively, weekly online discussions between members.
Saturdays with Guy
Every Saturday Guy leads an open discussion. Local members share their discoveries, and Guy’s comments deepen everyone’s understanding.
Student Q&A with Guy
Guy regularly holds open Q&A sessions. Often members of our global community send in questions, or speak directly to Guy online.
Facebook Private Group
Access to all our private Facebook updates, student Facebook discussions, and our LIVE Saturday lunch roundtable discussions.
Discussion Forum
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.
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.
Interviews & Radio Shows
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.
Livestream Classes
Join us for exclusive live broadcasts of select Guy Finley talks.
Daily Meditation Emails
Start your day off right with a nugget of wisdom that can transform your experience with everything you do and everyone you meet.
Special Lessons
Inner-life exercises and special writings deepen your understanding.
Student Talks
Longtime local members speak for 10 to 15 minutes on a special topic. Hear the explorations and discoveries of others on the inner journey.
eCourses
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.
Advanced Inner Life Talks
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.
Online Study Group
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.
Study Group Recordings
You are not alone on the inner journey. Listen to lively, weekly online discussions between members.
Saturdays with Guy
Every Saturday Guy leads an open discussion. Local members share their discoveries, and Guy’s comments deepen everyone’s understanding.
Student Q&A with Guy
Guy regularly holds open Q&A sessions. Often members of our global community send in questions, or speak directly to Guy online.
Facebook Private Group
Access to all our private Facebook updates, student Facebook discussions, and our LIVE Saturday lunch roundtable discussions.
Discussion Forum
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.
Our eCourses focus on specific topics, building your understanding through a series of related talks. Most eCourses include MP3 audio and MP4 video formats you can play online.
Student Q&A with Guy on "Go Beyond this One False Belief and Bring an End to Useless Suffering" (8/20/23)
Posted: Monday, August 21, 2023
Meeting: Sunday, August 20, 2023
Duration: 41min 57sec
Topics Covered
Between awakening and rebirth there has to be a death. Nothing is born anew that doesn't die to what it was before.
Our lives are presently the experience of our own creation.
Until we are aware of what dwells in the dark of ourselves, we are subject to whatever that nature does in the absence of that awareness.
Imagined security requires an imagined self to keep it in place. Imagined security must always be defended from an imagined threat.
At any moment of uncertainty, the chaos of thought will reimagine a new plan so that there can be a sense of certainty again.
You can't separate a painful psychological state from the reasons that the mind gives as to why that suffering is there.
"The central urge in every atom, to return to its divine source and origin." -- Walt Whitman -- This is the same as the story of the prodigal son, in which he went out from home, followed by a return journey.
Between awakening and rebirth there is unbecoming, the process of liberation from the illusory idea that we have to create our own lives.
All the great teachings say, "Lose your life to find it." Follow these iterations of suffering and the imagination that tries to escape from it: 1. There is no suffering without unconscious desire. 2. No unconscious desires without imagination. 3. No imagination without something wanted or not wanted to imagine. 4. No imagination without identification with what's being imagined as missing. 5. Nothing is imagined as missing without a sense of self in need of it. 6. No incomplete sense of self without time needed to close the distance -- or enlarge it -- an imagined distance within which lives and journeys an imagined self... filling the journey with imaginary victories and losses. 7. And all leading back -- never actually leaving the original suffering -- There is no answer to this suffering in time... The world of time is the source of it.
There is no incomplete sense of self that can exist without time. Time is the imagined distance between the incomplete sense of self and what is imagined is needed to complete it.
"Say nothing more to yourself than what the first appearances report. Suppose that it has been reported to you that a certain person speaks ill of you. This has been reported, but that you have been injured has not been reported... Thus then always abide by the first appearances, and add nothing yourself from within, and then nothing hurtful happens to you." -- Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180)
The "fallen maker" never stops talking to you in order to bring you into its world.
The more you know the fact that you can't save yourself, the more you realize that there is no self that needs to be saved.
"Unbecoming" is not becoming something else. It is shedding the illusion that you need to become something other than what already is.
In the story of Adam and Eve, they were tempted to become something, when what they already were was what they needed.
Suffering over being in the make-believe world seems to prove that the make-believe world is real.
If you want to comment, you must have at least a Basic membership in our online Wisdom School.
Please Sign in or create an account now to join the discussion