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Enlightening articles by Guy Finley on a wide range of topics address practical life issues and deepen your spiritual understanding.
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Student Q&A with Guy on "Learn to Release Painful Anxiety and Self-Doubt and Realize Your True Self" (8/15/21)
Posted: Monday, August 16, 2021
Meeting: Sunday, August 15, 2021
Duration: 42min 24sec
Topics Covered
We are awash in a world of resistance which isn't just global in its formation, but finds in us a willing instrument.
It doesn't matter what this world does because this is not your world; We all suffer from SFS and FOPPS, which stand for "Stage Fright Syndrome" and "Fear Of Poor Performance Syndrome."
The symptoms of these syndromes are anxiety, worry and self-doubt. We suffer from these whenever we feel compelled to take on a role.
Every identity that washes over you is a role that you feel compelled to play on a stage with the spotlight on you. This is useless suffering.
Any actor without a role to play does not know who he or she is. Who are we without a role to play?
We don't want to encounter anything unexpected because we don't know who we are in those moments.
If you need conditions to confirm your identity, then that proves that your identity is a mechanical role.
You cannot be present to the role you are playing if you are identified with it.
If you can see the role that you are playing, then you will see the anxiety behind it, as well as the useless suffering.
As you unconsciously shift roles, there's a gap between the role that is going out and the role that is coming in. We must be awake in these moments to see the changing of roles and not accept it.
All roles are forms of unconscious compensation, where I act out what I must to compensate for what I am not.
Life is disturbance. Without understanding how to use the disturbances, you are in the useless suffering of trying to escape your nature.
Exercise: Catch yourself in the act, and the moment you start to act out a familiar role, start seeing that the act is part of a very limited set of acts. The thought that calls up the role is inseparable from the role being called up. When you find yourself in one of these roles, walk off the stage.
We only fawn towards others when we want something from them.
Everyone who is playing a role lives in perpetual fear of being found out.
Unconscious reactions set the stage for roles.
Don't look for true self, instead work to be consistently present.
Love your enemies, because your enemies will always help you to see where you are playing a role.
Fear belongs to a level of consciousness that either does not know what role to play, or that knows that the role it is playing is false.
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness, and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
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