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...

Classroom Talk: 1/9/2022 - 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.

In this answer to a viewer's question, Guy explains that there's nothing that you can look at in your life that doesn't teach you about yourself, if you know where to look.

Student Talks: 8/6/2021 - Key Lesson: Part 1: Whoever doesn't know himself, suffers uselessly for the sake of ignorance. Whoever works to know himself, agrees to suffer for the sake of wisdom. Whoever becomes wise, slays the suffering born of ignorance. And whoever transcends the useless suffering of ignorance shares in the birth and burden of creation, in which can be found...

Classroom Talk: 8/1/2021 - Part 1: Whoever doesn't know himself, suffers uselessly for the sake of ignorance. Whoever works to know himself, agrees to suffer for the sake of wisdom. Whoever becomes wise, slays the suffering born of ignorance. And whoever transcends the useless suffering of ignorance shares in the birth and burden of creation, in which can be found...

Any form of suffering or conflict that tells us to look into the past for its "cause" -- or to the future, in the hope of some imagined freedom to come -- isn't just useless, it's wasted.

Classroom Talk: 7/30/2021 - Our greatest gift -- our highest possibility -- may be summarized as follows: not only are we created to give ourselves to what we love, but we are able to discern the difference between an order of Love that sacrifices itself for the sake of something greater than itself, and a kind of love that lives only to give itself what it imagines will make it great.

Student Talks: 10/16/2020 - Key Lesson: Part 1: We cannot live in fear of discovering the truth about ourselves, about our life... and hope to find the truth at the same time. Part 2: Here's an immutable spiritual law: we will never know all it's possible for us to be until we agree to consciously empty ourselves of all that we have been...

Topics Covered: Real life is actually set up to help you succeed at becoming a better human being; The lesson in an unwanted moment is an unexpected gift, and the gift is the realization that it is time to make a real change in our life; There is a level of consciousness that keeps covering up moments that it doesn't want with what it does want. The only real solution lies in the...

Classroom Talk: 10/11/2020 - Part 1: We cannot live in fear of discovering the truth about ourselves, about our life... and hope to find the truth at the same time. Part 2: Here's an immutable spiritual law: we will never know all it's possible for us to be until we agree to consciously empty ourselves of all that we have been moment-to-momen...