In this answer to a viewer's question, "letting go" author Guy Finley talks about the painful deception of fighting for one side in a conflict because we feel threatened by the other side. Nothing will ever change in any meaningful way by struggling on the level of the opposites. It is useless to try to change a world that is not interested in knowing what is useful to the soul.

In this question and answer session, Guy explains that we are not meant to be the servant of a mind that believes conflict is the way to solve any problem. Seeing the part of us that finds a peculiar enjoyment in conflict is the beginning of separating ourselves from it.

Most of us like sitting by a river and watching the water or anything else come downstream and then disappear in the distance. When watching a river, we don't usually focus on one thing in the stream and then resist it as it floats by. We are intended to be the observer of the stream of our interior life in much the same way that we would enjoy watching a river.

Classroom Talk: 2/28/2024 - The unwanted moments that move in-and-out of our lives are like shadows that pass through a forest on a sunny day; they do not come as some blind force set against our best interests; rather, they come to help us realize what our best interests actually are.

Classroom Talk: 2/21/2024 - Spiritually speaking, we have but one problem: we are unable to see that the source of our conflict with life -- including the suffering it induces -- is inseparable from an unseen false belief, as follows: unless we keep struggling with unwanted moments, we'll never reach, let alone realize a time in our life... when we can finally rest from our struggles!

Classroom Talk: 11/1/2023 - When it comes to being in conflict with one another -- at whatever level or scale in which that painful relationship plays itself out -- each of us is responsible for what is happening to both of us.

Classroom Talk: 4/19/2023 - The less we try to "teach" others about their shortcomings, the more insight we gain into our own.

Classroom Talk: 9/7/2022 - Nothing makes us more common, more like all those we constantly judge, than being identified with a false sense of self that would have us believe that -- by some "act of God" -- we're so much better than all we see.

Classroom Talk: 6/1/2022 - Trying to assess, and then assign blame to the stress that exists between you and whatever you may be struggling with in life... is like trying to judge which side of the rope in a tug-of-war is to be blamed for the tension (in it).

Classroom Talk: 4/20/2022 - No one is free who has an ax to grind with any other person, let alone who grind themselves down with painful self-judgment believing, in vain, that self-punishment is somehow connected to self-perfection.

Classroom Talk: 5/24/2020 - Struggling to escape the mind-breaking pain of any past regret is about as useful as hating ourselves for having fallen into a pit of quicksand... Where the more we fight to escape the hold it has over us, the deeper into it we sink.