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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 "The Power to Put Painful Wants Behind You" (6/12/22)
Posted: Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Meeting: Sunday, June 12, 2022
Duration: 50min 32sec
Topics Covered
Not wanting to see something that is right in front of you is willful ignorance. You have to be willing to see the truth that you don't want to see.
There is no such thing as a painful want that is natural.
The constant state of "I want" goes before you to make the straight places crooked.
When you meet a moment that you don't want, you immediately know what you DO want in order to bring an end to what you DON'T want.
Who are you without what you want? Presently, your overriding identity is intimately connected to what you want / don't want.
The number of wants that you carry around with you is proportionate to the number of things you don't want.
Whatever you do through thought (through the content of your past) to fill the hole in your soul only serves to make the hole bigger.
Something in you wants the painful feeling of not wanting.
"How do I get what I want?" is the same question as "How do I get rid of this disturbance?"
An incomplete consciousness asks incomplete questions that solidify its divided state.
Temptation is almost always connected to the attempt to complete yourself, to get what you want and at the same time get away from what you don't want.
Learn what it means to be conscious of a desire so that it does what you have asked it to do. Otherwise, without awareness, the desire that appeared naturally becomes unnaturally painful and makes you its prisoner.
To be in this world only is to be a captive of the purgatory of wants and not-wants.
Fear over what is going to happen tomorrow is connected to what you want.
Want and not-want are already a singularity, yet perceived as separate things through the eyes of the divided mind.
You cannot have freedom from a condition without first being free from the captivity of the consciousness that plays a role in creating that condition.
The next time that you are on fire with a want, see what that want is making out of you.
Genuine consolation is built into awareness of every single moment as it is.
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