Your True Self cannot be made a captive of any dark condition any more than a sunbeam can be caught in a bottle.
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Enlightening articles by Guy Finley on a wide range of topics address practical life issues and deepen your spiritual understanding.
Short but powerful quotes by Guy Finley will inspire you throughout your day.
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Enlightening articles by Guy Finley on a wide range of topics address practical life issues and deepen your spiritual understanding.
Short but powerful quotes by Guy Finley will inspire you throughout your day.
Heartfelt inner-life questions from people around the world, and Guy’s enlightening answers, will shed light on your own issues.
Read Guy’s newest insights as he jots them down, spontaneous and uncensored.
Watch or listen to the specific talk we will all be discussing during this week’s Online Study Group meeting.
If you have a few minutes, and want a burst of enlightenment, watch or listen to these brief talks by Guy, filled with concentrated wisdom.
Hearing Guy interact with an interviewer is a delight. Listen as he makes deep spiritual principles easy to understand.
Be encouraged by hearing fellow members share their experiences and discoveries as they bring higher ideas into their daily lives.
The Life of Learning singers and instrumentalists perform beautiful music that will inspire and uplift you.
Join us for exclusive live broadcasts of select Guy Finley talks.
Start your day off right with a nugget of wisdom that can transform your experience with everything you do and everyone you meet.
Inner-life exercises and special writings deepen your understanding.
Longtime local members speak for 10 to 15 minutes on a special topic. Hear the explorations and discoveries of others on the inner journey.
Dive deep into a subject on your own! Work at your own pace with a series of talks by Guy on topics critical to your inner development.
Catch Guy Finley’s weekly message that focuses on spiritual and personal breakthroughs. This is updated weekly and is available in video, audio and text.
Join a lively online discussion with other members each week of “This Week’s Topic” – a new Guy Finley talk selected for in-depth study.
You are not alone on the inner journey. Listen to lively, weekly online discussions between members.
Every Saturday Guy leads an open discussion. Local members share their discoveries, and Guy’s comments deepen everyone’s understanding.
Guy regularly holds open Q&A sessions. Often members of our global community send in questions, or speak directly to Guy online.
Access to all our private Facebook updates, student Facebook discussions, and our LIVE Saturday lunch roundtable discussions.
This member forum is where you can write in your observations and experiences, and receive feedback from fellow members. Read-only access for Free and Basic members. Full access for Premium & All Access members.
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Shop eCoursesYour True Self cannot be made a captive of any dark condition any more than a sunbeam can be caught in a bottle.
Whenever we find ourselves in some "unwanted" part of ourselves, perhaps reliving an old heartache or caught in the throes of some irrepressible anger, old fear, or unyielding worry, part of this unwanted moment includes our certainty that we're trapped in this condition. And compounding our confusion over feeling ourselves captive in this way are all of the attending negative inner voices. They tell us not only are we hostages of these disturbing states, but that the pain we now feel will be with us forever.
Bit by bit we come to accept what we see as the inevitability of our unhappy, captive condition. And should we hear from a still, small, free part of ourselves, "Try once more, you don't belong there in that cell of yourself," from within us rises a chorus of negative voices to drown it out -- a choir constructed from our own past experiences that sings out, "There's no use." So we go to sleep within ourselves, preferring to dream of better times or in the imagining of what we will never know outside of our fitful reveries. But we can wake up! We may awaken from not only the unsatisfying dream-life into which we've slipped, but from the unconscious dream-self that would have us remain there as captives of the lies it weaves. Shattering this dream world -- and its hold over us -- begins with bringing real light into it. This needed new light comes to us, first, in the form of new knowledge -- an insight such as the one that follows into the actual nature of these negative states and the self they capture.
Regardless of the assertion of any negative state that seeks to convince you otherwise (using its painful presence within you as "proof" that the prison you're locked within will stand until the end of time), apply this one great truth:
All punishing self-states are "lies." They must break down if they don't succeed in breaking down your willingness to test their reality. How do you conduct such a test? You learn to look at their presence within you with the quiet understanding that, in reality, nothing in life is fixed. All things change. Everything passes. This is truth. Knowing this to be true is power over what holds us captive.
On the other hand, according to another great truth, everything in life tends to become more of what it is, so that the only thing "fixed" in us are those parts of our presently unenlightened nature that convince us to resist life's natural changes. As this fear-filled, downward-trending nature tricks us into accepting its conclusions, they become the same as our captivity. We unconsciously accept the limited and painful life this alliance-in-the-dark produces. We can do better!
Real self-change begins with seeing that Real Life is change itself. This means there is no condition that can hold you captive without your unconscious cooperation. Withdraw it. Wake up. Walk out of yourself by changing how you see what you call your life. Realize that while the contents of your life may come and go, turn dark, or suddenly seem delightful, regardless, these things will pass. Resting in the awareness of this Truth while working to stand upon its higher ground, you come upon the Life within you whose nature is the unchanging witness of these movements. This Self dwells outside of change, even as all that changes moves through It.
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Wake Up and Walk Out of the Cell of Yourself
Posted by Guy Finley in 459 Galice Road, Merlin, OR 97532 on , and updated on .
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