The Observer Is The Observed

In this answer to a viewer's question, "letting go" author Guy Finley talks about what we need to understand when faced with any challenging moment that seems to lead to negativity: No condition creates conflict in our consciousness... Our consciousness is conflicted, and the condition reveals it.

There is a simple, self-evident truth, a certain kind of insight that is the ground of self-realization. It is actually the ground of a person's gradual entrance into a new level of being. Using a simple analogy, the more still the waters are in a lake, the truer the reflections from that body of water. If the surface is rippled, you see nothing. If it's just barely rippling, you see just some of what is being reflected from above.

The mind that wants to know the truth of something, and that's willing to do the work required for such a discovery, will inevitably find that for which it is searching; our highest aspirations are reflections of unrealized possibilities. All scripture, from the east to the West, confirms this timeless truth: We need only ask, and it shall be given.

There are possibilities in every given moment that exist solely for us to become new -- to change what we've been -- but we must learn to open ourselves. What does it mean to open myself? It means that -- in this moment -- I must understand that when I'm looking at your face, at what you do or don't do, at the weather, even when I'm looking in the mirror at myself...

Plants in nature are created to be heliotropic, which makes it possible for them to receive the greatest amount of life-giving light that is possible. We could say that flowers, grasses and trees keep their "attention" on the sun for as long as they can. We on the other hand, are currently not heliotropic. We are self-tropic. As we are now we follow our own thoughts. We give our attention to what...

Why is it so fulfilling to just sit and watch a child playing, or a dog running, or some other creature having a good time? The answer is because it's all part of our consciousness. We're not actually separate from what we are seeing, and to miss that understanding is to miss being part of the whole of that consciousness.

Student Talks: 4/7/2024 - Key Lesson: Part 1: We can't be anxiously looking for real Life, and take part in its rebirth at the same time. Part 2: United we see; divided we fall.

Topics covered: In any moment that you see beauty, you are not searching for anything to complete yourself; The world tells us that the way to complete ourselves is through acquisition, achievement and approval; We spend almost our entire lives trying to find the "partner of the moment" to complete us. Every partner we imagine has to be re-imagined when it doesn't live up to what we thought it would be...

Student Talks: 3/1/2024 - Key Lesson: Just as the eyes that see the sun cannot understand its light by which they behold the shape and beauty of all things, neither can the heart understand the love that calls it to know and encompass all things. Eye and heart are creatures in time, but Light and Love are not. Even so, all meet; and to be a silent witness to their inexpressible union... is to realize the pathless journey to the indwelling Divine.

Topics covered: Useless struggle is the effort to maintain the self that believes outside conditions to be the cause of its experience; The mind that cannot see itself is forever set against itself; The sole/soul purpose of all true teachings is to get an individual to see that nothing is missing; Our present level of consciousness sees transformation as a process of becoming, through the acquisition -- in a time to come -- of something that is missing...

Topics covered: The purpose of spiritual studies is not to create a new identity. The purpose is to change. But why is it so hard to change? Part of the problem is that we don't know what real change is; Real change is always due to a revelation, a shock that shows us a part of ourselves that doesn't want to change. Shocks reveal everything that is not real change but claims to be...