In this short talk, bestselling "letting go" author Guy Finley talks about what it means to wake up from spiritual sleep, which does not include comparing ourselves to what the world says it means to live an awakened life.

Whenever there is an unconscious inner dialog going on in our heads, we are actually looking in a mirror that we don't know is a mirror. And what we see in our mind's eye talks to us about what we must make ourselves into so that we might finally find rest and be at peace. Freedom from the dark inner dialog begins by seeing that the "self" that is talking to us only exists as long as we...

The depth to which we see something is directly proportionate to the consciousness that is attending to what is being presented in the moment. As we are now our lives are very superficial. But we're meant to be in relationship with life at a much deeper level.

Topics covered: To paraphrase the well-known koan: If a tree falls in the woods, and there's no one there wishing it didn't, does it create fear or suffering?; The very struggle to escape the captivity of the consciousness that you are born into is why you remain a captive of that consciousness; The task is not to save yourself. The task is to realize a relationship with a part of you that does not need to be...

Topics covered: What we have called our life up until now cannot possibly be the totality of our possibilities; The first person to feel any form of hatred or resentment is the one who holds it, protects it, and projects it; Unconscious choices are made in order to protect what that level of consciousness deems as being valuable; Truth is a pathless land and belongs to another order of being that is already in you...

Topics covered: Every psychological pain is the outcome of a unseen desire having been thwarted; The source of your pain is the disparity between what you desire and what you can't possess; What seems like a new, reconfigured desire always comes in to fill the hole left by an old desire that was not fulfilled; There is really no such thing as a new desire. The only things that seem new are the objects of desire.

Topic: Release Yourself from the Circle of Stress, Fear and Sorrow (Classroom Talk 3/2/22)

Topics covered: What is eternal and timeless exists even within the seemingly mundane; Energy that is not squandered can be used to find the truth that from lower consciousness is hidden, but yet that is found in the center of all things; The stage of life where you are now is just as necessary as every other stage that comes before or after; The kind of freedom that is connected to...

Topics Covered: Being willing to see ourselves as we are is the practice of meditation; A relationship with the Divine doesn't require control or strength; None of us want to be without something to do; We must learn to see equally above and below, light and dark; You are free, the why is a lie; When you talk to yourself you are not the one talking and you are not the one who is...

Topics Covered: Our hope is not in things seen; Being the witness of useless suffering; Use the fear of the future to find the fearless heart; Accept the moment as it is given as an act of higher Will; We don't want to fix ourselves, we want to see ourselves; Dismissal of habitual reactions; Awareness of the play of creation; Replace the idea of "faster" with "more aware"...