Responsibility

If you haven't noticed this yet about yourself, it's easy to see in others: we each seem to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. The nature of this burden may change with age. When young, we feel the weight of having to choose a direction in life. As adults, we feel encumbered by all the perceived requirements of an active life: trying to control events, win acceptance, maintain relationships, on and on, with each new self-shaped solution...

It is no stretch of the imagination to say that many days most people wrestle with some form of discontentment about their lot in life. Add to this an equal if not greater amount of time spent searching for the solution they think will "cure" this confliction, and it might surprise us how pervasive runs this human pastime of trying to dodge these feelings of being discontent...

There is an unseen source of daily suffering that is the constant companion of humanity. It is in one respect one of the great driving forces behind the darkness that encompasses this planet -- the unremitting wars, the violence, the greed, the fear, the desperation -- all the things we see in the world around us...

In this short video, Guy talks about how revisiting the past is a present pain that produces more unnecessary, useless suffering. Catch the temptation to revisit the past and realize a life that is being fulfilled and completed in the present moment.

To believe that we’re only as worthwhile as others agree to see us burdens us with feeling that winning the good opinion of others is somehow our responsibility. Such a mistaken mindset leaves us the perennial victim of our relationships, and never the victor in them. The only way we can be released from any painful sense of false responsibility is to see that it is based in a false belief...

There are unique challenges for the human being who wants to have a relationship with the source of his or her being. We try to control events outside of us in a futile attempt to find a fearless life, when our energy would be better spent attending to our inner lives. Yet at the same time we are in a body and we do need to take care of our basic householder responsibilities...

Either we live in the freedom that we know is real -- choosing to embody it in the moment, regardless of the cost -- or we wave a flag called "liberty tomorrow" and suffer the indignity of serving what has already betrayed us.

In this short talk, Guy Finley talks about how it is possible to give all of ourselves to something that we love to do, and yet at the same time have no painful attachment to the outcome of our endeavor.

In this short video clip, Guy Finley explains that because children learn mainly from visual cues and emotional signals, the best and most effective way to teach them is by being a living example of the understanding that we wish to impart.

Guy Finley explains that being a good householder means that we are able to properly attend to what is practical before what is pleasing. By placing ourselves in right relationship with our responsibilities, we become better able to discern our true needs, and realize that all we receive from life is ultimately for the good.

As we realize that there is no way that painful concern can positively affect any outcome, we drop that concern, and bit by bit, we begin to hear what real life has been trying to tell us all along.