In this answer to a viewer's question, "letting go" author Guy Finley explains that it is possible to know and experience higher forms of love only when we allow everything we come into contact with -- including our so-called enemies -- to introduce us to the parts of ourselves that we would never discover otherwise.

We each have ideas about who we are, how the events in our lives should go, and how other people should treat us. We believe that if everything goes according to our plan, we will be safe. By the same token, anything that threatens the fulfillment of the plan is seen as an enemy. What might some of these enemies be? Other people who don't give us the respect we deserve.

Anytime you blame someone else for how you feel, you avoid seeing your pain is self-inflicted by a level of consciousness that lives to have enemies.

The real adversary in our lives, that proverbial thorn in our side that leaves us aching and angry, and then sends us looking for someone to blame, is not what we have always believed. It is not something "out there." It's something "in here": an intimate enemy.

Topic: Transform Any Painful Relationship into a Spiritual Triumph (Classroom Talk 4/3/24)

Topics covered: When does the world change? When you change the way you see the world; The blessed ones through the ages have tried to convey the idea that you need new eyes to see what is in front of you all the time but that you don’t currently see. And the reason you don’t see is because the impressions that are intended to produce a real change are deflected by all kinds of buffers — beliefs, conditions, longings.

Classroom Talk: 4/3/2024 - When it comes to conflict between us, and any other -- let alone a person we may love -- anytime there's some kind of painful drama being enacted... each of us is responsible for whatever continues to be played out on that stage.

Student Talks: 9/2/2022 - Key Lesson: Who is to be counted the most dangerous of all my enemies other than the one I see as being a "friend"... who is not.

Topics covered: Do you know a "friend" who is always promising some order of freedom, but who is never able to deliver on the promise? You would drop that friend immediately, wouldn't you? So why won't you drop the interior "friend" that is always whispering promises in your ear?; Anything that you see in nature is not separate from the nature that created it. Anything that is created is...

Topic: How to Exchange Anxiety and Fear for Endless Freedom (9/9/20 Classroom Talk)

Classroom Talk: 9/9/2020 - The strength of my enemy is no greater than the fear of my weakness.

Topic: Stop the Pain of Judging Yourself and Others With One Simple Word (7/15/20 Classroom Talk)