Topic: Out with the "Old Addictive Self" and in with a New Dedication to be Free (Classroom Talk 1/4/23)

Topics covered: True exploration of your consciousness cannot be for the purpose of escaping from something, nor to confirm what you already know; The defintion of "insanity" is doing the same thing over and over again, and hoping for a different result. The same could be said about "addiction"; "Addiction" connotes the idea of unwilling service to something that is harmful.

Classroom Talk: 1/4/2023 - There is no such thing as a compulsive pleasure, let alone a contented "slave" that lives under its lash; and yet billions of human beings serve some form of addiction, willing to turn a blind eye to how much they suffer for the sake of a pleasure they cannot keep, a security that cannot be possessed.

Where is my attention? Guy Finley explains why this is an important question. The resistance I feel when things don't go the way I want them to go isn't resistance to what's happening but to my unseen expectations of how I think things should be. Then my mind connects my attention to my body, and my body literally becomes a mirror of that internal conflict.

Everyone wants to know how to think their way out of painful situations, especially the ones that keep repeating in our lives. Guy explains how to start seeing this question with a new mind by being conscious and aware of when we start to overthink it.

Every day we are attacked by a multitude of pains, so frequent and so familiar we don't even question them. In fact, we accept them as friends, as something to occupy us. These pains can range from petty irritations to the anxiety we feel every time we write a check and see our bank balance decrease, to concerns about our health. One of the major sources of pain involves other people and our relationships with them.

In this answer to a viewer's question, "Secret of Letting Go" author Guy Finley explains that the ending of any form of addiction begins when we stop following the suggested actions for resolution that come from the very problem itself.

Have you ever noticed that you get rid of one person in your life, and you get somebody just like it? But you didn't get somebody just like it. You got you again! That's the lesson, isn't it? You should be so tired of pointing your finger at other people...

In this answer to a viewer's question, "Secret of Letting Go" author Guy Finley explains that a genuine resolution to psychological pain will never be found within the very system that produces the pain in the first place. Awareness of this fact is the answer that you're looking for.

In this answer to a viewer's question, "letting go" author Guy Finley talks about how self-knowledge is the power needed to triumph over any kind of chronic addiction, physical or psychological.

Student Talks: 1/14/2022 - Key Lesson: Poorest of us all... are those who "hear & obey" only their own reactions, because as long as that in-the-dark level of self remains in "power" -- calling the shots -- we will never see how our struggle to escape unwanted moments serves but one useless end: to escape a prison of our own making.

Topics Covered: Every mechanical psychological reaction is ignorance passing itself off as intelligence; There is no intelligence in an unconscious, mechanical reaction; There is no finding liberation through avoidance; Our habitual reaction in an unwanted moment is inseparable from the painful pattern that the reaction blames and resists; Something in us always knows what it wants...