Joy

In this video clip Guy addresses the following question that was submitted by an online viewer: "I watched negative states telling me to react to this and that. I stood there. Then I was driving to work and I didn't stand there. They surrounded my mind. I felt consumed by I's. Is being overwhelmed a trick of the mind?"

Watch this short excerpt by Guy Finley in which he tells two poignant stories that illustrate our deepest wish to know our purpose in Life and answer the ultimate question, "What am I doing on this planet?"

In this answer to a viewer's question, "letting go" author Guy Finley dives deeply into the concepts of "joy and happiness," noting the important distinction between imagined "joy" and the kind of joy that is the natural outcome of life's authentic wholeness. Imagined joy turns into painful resistance to anything that interferes with the image. Seeing this with more and more clarity is freedom from the stressful compulsion to pursue an imagined happiness.

In this short talk, Guy talks about how there is no fear of the future when we live in the present moment, where everything that we need is being given to us.

Plants in nature are created to be heliotropic, which makes it possible for them to receive the greatest amount of life-giving light that is possible. We could say that flowers, grasses and trees keep their "attention" on the sun for as long as they can. We on the other hand, are currently not heliotropic. We are self-tropic. As we are now we follow our own thoughts. We give our attention to what...

Why is it so fulfilling to just sit and watch a child playing, or a dog running, or some other creature having a good time? The answer is because it's all part of our consciousness. We're not actually separate from what we are seeing, and to miss that understanding is to miss being part of the whole of that consciousness.

Topics covered: We don't want to escape our consciousness, we want to transform it. Negative thoughts and feelings don't need to be overcome, they need to be understood; You cannot resist something and learn about it at the same time. To resist is to separate, to push away; The problem with our attention is not that there are too many distractions. The problem is that we do not possess our own minds. Until we possess our own attention...

Topics covered: The spiritual path is the path of negation, not affirmation. You must lose your life in order to gain it; Immortality is the gradual realization that you are already whole; We were raised to believe that our worth is based upon how others see us; We were raised to believe that there should never be any disturbances; When the observer and the observed are not separate for us, we are a participant in creation, rather than the observer...

The only thing a thousand failed attempts to find the peace we seek proves is this: some unknown part of us -- we've mistaken as being us -- keeps us looking in all the wrong places! This is why we must have new, true self-knowledge, because the journey to silent joy begins within us, or not at all.

Classroom Talk: 9/24/2023 - True joy is uncalled for; it is like a breeze you didn't know you were waiting for; a silence that speaks of things eternal; (it is) to experience and realize the completion of something within you that you didn't even know was missing.