Self-Compromise

In this answer to a viewer's question, bestselling "letting go" author Guy Finley talks about a strange part of ourselves that actually thrives on the sensations it receives when it does something harmful. It is the very awareness of this inner dynamic that brings about the gradual end to all self-harming behavior.

In this answer to a viewer's question, "letting go" author Guy Finley talks about how there is a part of our consciousness that will seek to derive a false sense of self out of anything, even if it means going into pain over something that is unwanted.

In this short video clip, Guy talks about two words that we can use in our relationships with others for the purpose of exposing the part of us that wants to gain a personal advantage at the expense of what is true.

Topics covered:  One of the signatures of a small mind is the tendency to make mountains out of molehills; The sky has no reaction to the clouds that pass through it. But unlike the sky that allows everything to move through it, we identify with just about every passing thought; What we suffer over in any unwanted moment is not the event itself; we suffer over our reaction to the event. The reaction tells us that something outside of us is responsible for the negative experience of the moment.

Student Talks: 05/9/2025 - Spiritually speaking, the Light of awareness is the universal solvent.

Topics covered:  Most human beings believe that they already know what love is, as well as what it means to be loved; To discover what love is begins with seeing what it is not; We believe that power is found in the part. It is that very belief that is the pain.

Topics covered:  We are the way we are because of what we turn to in unwanted moments. As long as you spend your life not wanting, you will have the life you don't want; You do not know how to be yourself. All that you have are the derivative images that have been picked up through the years about what it means to be a successful human being; Our sense of self is based on a fight with life, trying to make it to conform to the images we have about who we are.

Topics covered:  One particularly pervasive lie in our culture is that we believe that we are only as valuable as other people see us as being; Until what is concealed in us is revealed, it can never be healed; "This above all: to thine ownself be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." -- William Shakespeare

Student Talks: 7/12/2024 - Key Lesson: Believing that avoiding the experience of an unwanted, or otherwise unknown moment is the same as freedom from the fear of it is like being lost in the African bush, crossing paths with a hungry lion, and hoping that if you just look the other way... it will too!

Topics covered: Presently our lives are much more about the avoidance of life rather than the fulfillment of its  possibilities. That consciousness cultivates pleasures and avoids pain: We avoid running into anything that we don't presently understand: Something inside of us that is more than just the physical body wants to go beyond the physical, to understand more about the whole of life: Spiritual development is voluntary...

Topic: Take the Secret Path that Leads to Perfect Peace (1/13/21 Classroom Talk)