Self-Observation

When we have moments where someone or something does what is upsetting to us, we look out and see a world that is out of order, do we not? And the pain we are experiencing in that moment cannot be separated from our perception that this person, this thing is wrong and out of order.

Self-observation is the key to a higher order of awareness; it is how we learn to become inwardly vigilant to our own thoughts and feelings, even as they pass through us. When we can observe ourselves in this new way, our higher nature naturally prevails over any troubling thoughts or feelings that want to drag us down into their lower world...

In this short video, Guy talks about the difference between observing thoughts versus identifying with every thought as if it were your own.

Every relationship that we have in our life -- our contact with each person, place, and event -- serves a very special, if yet to be realized, purpose: it is a mirror that reveals things to us about ourselves that can be realized in no other way. I think this is one of the reasons that so many of us love to be out and about in that great showroom of life called Mother Nature.

In this question and answer session, Guy explains that we are not meant to be the servant of a mind that believes conflict is the way to solve any problem. Seeing the part of us that finds a peculiar enjoyment in conflict is the beginning of separating ourselves from it.

In this answer to a webinar attendee's question, Guy explains that trying to prepare and rehearse what we are going to say or do in a moment is the same as living in fear of the moment. Instead what we need to do is make the intention to see everything that we can so that we can leave those moments as wiser, more awake human beings.

What's the first thing that any of us do when trouble comes? The first thing that happens when we get into trouble is that we start thinking. Our little think machine just gets geared up, and it starts to go. And it goes. Now, what is it thinking about? It's thinking about the trouble it's in and it's thinking about ways in which to get out of trouble...

Human beings walk around in a kind of self-made suffering that is the expression of something in us that is afraid of seeing ourselves as we are. We've come to think that avoiding a unwanted fact about ourselves is the same as escaping the effects. Our lives should be a ceaseless realization of where we miss the mark, because that is the only way to transcend the idea that...

Our relationships, but especially with those we love, are a kind of "magic mirror." Our partner helps bring us into an awareness of qualities and characters that otherwise we'd never see as dwelling within us.

Self-observation is how we learn to become inwardly vigilant to our own thoughts and feelings, even as they pass through us. When we can observe ourselves in this new way, our higher nature naturally prevails over any troubling thoughts or feelings that want to drag us down into their lower world.

In this life we are only given two things that are purely our own to use: attention and time. Sadly, most of us squander our gifts of time and attention. Rather than learning to be in command of our attention, which is the same as using our time for its highest purpose -- the realization of our immortal Self -- we hand it over to almost anything that floats by in the river of time. Either we...

Real spiritual strength is realized, slowly, by daring to drop any self-blinding negative states that we have allowed to define us.