Letting our "plans" for life take the place of actually living . . . is like hoping to catch the delicate scent of a rose by flipping through a book on how to successfully grow a flower garden.
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Enlightening articles by Guy Finley on a wide range of topics address practical life issues and deepen your spiritual understanding.
Short but powerful quotes by Guy Finley will inspire you throughout your day.
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Enlightening articles by Guy Finley on a wide range of topics address practical life issues and deepen your spiritual understanding.
Short but powerful quotes by Guy Finley will inspire you throughout your day.
Heartfelt inner-life questions from people around the world, and Guy’s enlightening answers, will shed light on your own issues.
Read Guy’s newest insights as he jots them down, spontaneous and uncensored.
Watch or listen to the specific talk we will all be discussing during this week’s Online Study Group meeting.
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.
Hearing Guy interact with an interviewer is a delight. Listen as he makes deep spiritual principles easy to understand.
Be encouraged by hearing fellow members share their experiences and discoveries as they bring higher ideas into their daily lives.
The Life of Learning singers and instrumentalists perform beautiful music that will inspire and uplift you.
Join us for exclusive live broadcasts of select Guy Finley talks.
Start your day off right with a nugget of wisdom that can transform your experience with everything you do and everyone you meet.
Inner-life exercises and special writings deepen your understanding.
Longtime local members speak for 10 to 15 minutes on a special topic. Hear the explorations and discoveries of others on the inner journey.
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.
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.
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.
You are not alone on the inner journey. Listen to lively, weekly online discussions between members.
Every Saturday Guy leads an open discussion. Local members share their discoveries, and Guy’s comments deepen everyone’s understanding.
Guy regularly holds open Q&A sessions. Often members of our global community send in questions, or speak directly to Guy online.
Access to all our private Facebook updates, student Facebook discussions, and our LIVE Saturday lunch roundtable discussions.
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.
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Shop eCoursesLetting our "plans" for life take the place of actually living . . . is like hoping to catch the delicate scent of a rose by flipping through a book on how to successfully grow a flower garden.
If we wish to realize the Real Life that only a life of Truth can provide, we must each agree not only to put Truth first in our lives, but to will this highest of intentions every day with all we can gather within ourselves to do so. There are no shortcuts to reaching this higher ground in us. However, we may be rightly encouraged to know that there is no substitute for the naturally prevailing sense of peace and harmony that attends this inner world, much in the same way as warmth and light surround our great sun.
The encouragement we need to proceed with our quest is all around us... hidden in some ways, and yet present in plain view for those whose inner eyes have begun to open. Take, for instance, what happens to us inwardly, when we round a bend and see before our eyes a pasture of sun-brightened flowers. In this moment, the emerging array of delicate colors slowly fills our senses and we are drawn into its community.
Drawing nearer still in our approach, our consciousness increasingly takes in this pastoral realm, and even as it enters into us, do we enter into it. But consider herein the following truth: We neither create the beauty of this moment nor the consciousness now absorbed within it. The whole of this relationship already exists or else it could not have become part of our experience. This beautiful idea reveals the truth of how our exterior world of experience provides for us a special kind of mirror in which it is not only possible to see ourselves, but to enter consciously into these deep, undetected realms of our True Self.
It is impossible to enter into something that doesn't have prior existence, just as nothing that exists could enter into us unless its existence were already a part of our consciousness. Now, with this truth in your mind, substitute the idea of the field of flowers that we approach for the principle of higher understanding, of Truth. What do you see? What have we discovered here?
It is not we who grow in understanding, in the Light, any more than that field of flowers grows as we approach it from around a bend. The field was already present, with all its forms and colors, only awaiting a fortunate discoverer. This exact same principle holds true for the presence of higher understanding and those truths by which we approach it. This Wisdom is already flowered and awaits only a special wanderer to enter its private domain. This interior Ground of all that may be discovered belongs to anyone and everyone who will do the work needed to realize it. No one owns this Ground, yet we may each possess as much of it as we are willing to exchange our lives for. Everyone has the same right to the deep riches of these eternal essences. And any spiritual seeds planted within them grow equally for whosoever will stoop to plant them.
The great Sun above this Ground never stops shining, so that there is Light enough everywhere in all times for all its creations to develop and grow. These things I tell you are intended to convey this one truth: The true spiritual life cannot be separated from the ground of discovery out of which it springs, and through which it lives. For us, for now, they are one thing. And this finding brings us face to face with one inescapable fact: This ground of discovery, the Ground of God's Life, remains little more than earthly dirt for us unless we dive into it and are willing to get our hands dirty. Only then are we made clean. The confusions and doubts inherent in merely speculating about the spiritual life are washed away by our honest spiritual sweat.
But there is more to this metaphor. To succeed spiritually, to discover the new man or woman waiting within us, requires going beyond being the thought-based, self-conceived creatures we are at present. We must work on ourselves. Only honest self-work heals the unconscious divisions within us and between us.
Imagine two people working the earth. Side by side they till the ground beneath them. Both know the quality of the soil, its weeds and rocks, and the heat of the overhead sun as it bears down upon them. There is no argument between them about the nature of the ground they cultivate.
Neither person at work finds it necessary to have or hold some belief about the earth beneath their feet -- or about what it can, or can't, do for them. Why? Because they stand upon it. They are in it. They can taste it in the very air they breathe. Each person shares the work and receives the rewards of his or her efforts.
One way that we can start working upon the ground of discovery is to stop speculating about the nature of Truth. We can dare to see that our beliefs about what is assumed true are worse than worthless if, because of them, we have found a way to justify self-righteousness, indolence, cruelty, or any other self-isolating, negative state of mind.
The merely mental person has no idea that his endless confusion can never be resolved by the equally endless questions he formulates to escape it... that these same questions are merely secret extensions of the very states from which he suffers. Where then is the answer to be found? We must know the truth of ourselves, for in this Truth are all other truths hidden. "But how?" you might ask.
There is only one real answer to this question. Be real. Live what you are now -- in this moment and in every other moment. Watch life within you without resistance to what you see. To be real is to realize the reality of our selves, whatever that may be in the moment.
And again you might ask, "But how?"
Each time life finds you without a clue, stop supplying yourself with answers you think you know. Instead, stand upon the ground of that moment. Dig there! Enter into the ground of discovery now at your feet. Consciously work these virgin soils and watch how new life begins to root and grow.
As we grow to understand that the ground of discovery, along with its hard work and priceless reward, is always right beneath our feet wherever we are, whatever we may be doing, we realize that there is never a moment wherein we can't be cultivating our relationship with Truth.
Add to this truth the fact that the only real change that can occur in the conditions we call our life must begin with a change in our consciousness, and there is only one course of action remaining. We must agree to enter into the ground of discovery, embrace our findings there, and go to work on what we uncover! If we will do our part, the Truth will take care of the rest. What grows from our efforts will never falter or fail us.
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Use the Ground of Discovery to Realize Your Self
Posted by Guy Finley in 459 Galice Road, Merlin, OR 97532 on , and updated on .
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