Spiritual Growth

Almost every day I receive a letter, an e-mail, or phone call from an aspirant who wants to know, essentially, the following: "What must I do to succeed spiritually?" Or, in a slight variation on that theme: "What's the right way to do what I must in order to awaken?"

The truth is that letting go is very simple and, above all, natural; as natural for you and I as it is for a tree to shed the heavy, sun-ripened fruit that clings to its branches. Why? Because both man and tree, in fact all living things, are created to drop what is no longer needed. For the tree, the falling fruit carries its matured seed to the ground. No unnatural force is necessary. In a similar fashion -- that is to say, under higher but equally exacting laws...

In this question and answer exchange with an online viewer, "letting go" author Guy Finley answers the following question: Could you please comment about the relationship between human condition and divine order in us?

At some point, our appetite for a life that will satisfy or stimulate us can no longer be fulfilled by the life that we see around us. It just doesn't work anymore. We've tried and tried to find ways to feed ourselves, but what we have found (mostly) is that with all we've done from ourselves based on how we look at life, we never feel "I don't need anything more than this right now."

Letting go and spiritual growth are as rain is to a field of wildflowers: we blossom as beings only as we release ourselves from what is self-limiting. But why do this kind of work within ourselves? Even though it's obvious, it needs to be stated: we struggle with whatever we do -- with whatever personally compromises us or our contentment in life -- so that we might realize a greater...

There are these moments where a person is introduced to a great clarity that the world they have been looking in, in order to find themselves through, is incapable of revealing the worth they are looking for. This first shock (have you had it, by-the-way?) is when a person realizes, "Uh oh. This is a dead-end. Oh no." And when a person has enough of these moments..."

Any true self-aware state must include the presence of a humility that tempers the temptation inherent in all forms of self-evaluation; otherwise, what we might call self-awakening is really just a form of secret self-admiration.

Topics covered: When we have pain in our relationship with others, we never turn to ourselves and wonder, "What is this about?"; We have no idea what to do about our pain, let alone why we have it; The people and problems in your life are not there to produce suffering, they are there to reveal to you something latent in your consciousness that you do not yet understand; There is no "self" without relationship. It is a mutually dependent experience...

There are so many things for a person to love, but if we ever want to be what it is that we say we want to be, then we must have one love. It is the extent to which we love -- and the degree to which we make the appropriate sacrifices for that love -- that the very thing we love rewards us with the relationship we long for.