In this answer to a viewer's question, "letting go" author Guy Finley explains that you would not clash with life -- nor with yourself -- if you did not first cling to imagined ideas about peace and prosperity. Freedom from this conflict begins with witnessing the unfolding of this dynamic within yourself.

Negative states don't want to leave. They don't want to lead you to the end of a relationship with them. They want you to follow them so that they remain your guide, and essentially your god. That's what negative states want. So every time you're angry or frightened or worried and those thoughts and feelings are talking to you and you're listening to them and doing as they instruct...

What causes disputes between human beings? What is this business of "what I believe" vs. "what you believe"? Can we see that you cannot separate what you believe in from what you want? When I say, "I believe in this," and "I believe that you should be like that," what I'm really saying is that I insist you be what I believe you should be, because if you don't, we have war...

In this short talk, Guy Finley talks about how we are not intended to manipulate or control everything that we see within ourselves. We are instead intended to watch and witness what is being revealed so that a higher kind of reconciling force can act upon what has been disturbed within us.

The rush to judge what we see as some character flaw in another human being is the speed at which the false self races to hide from itself a similar imperfection.

The more clearly we can see that it's impossible to reach a place of rest by rushing to get there, the sooner we'll arrive at the true solutions that allow us to relax, slow down, and realize the relaxed pace of an inwardly liberated life.

It is within relationships that we grow as individuals in everything valuable, because it is through them that we become stronger and wiser, allowing us to realize a love that transcends our unseen self-limiting self-interests. What do we have to do to change the balance sheet of our lives so that for every measure of impatience and intolerance there may be at least an equivalent sum of co...

Student Talks: 9/2/2022 - Key Lesson: Who is to be counted the most dangerous of all my enemies other than the one I see as being a "friend"... who is not.

Topics covered: Do you know a "friend" who is always promising some order of freedom, but who is never able to deliver on the promise? You would drop that friend immediately, wouldn't you? So why won't you drop the interior "friend" that is always whispering promises in your ear?; Anything that you see in nature is not separate from the nature that created it. Anything that is created is...

Topic: Enter the Place of Perfect Peace Within You (Classroom Talk 3/16/22)

Topics covered: The kind of peace that can so easily be turned into conflict is not genuine peace; When it comes to our spiritual life, there is nothing more important than "location, location, location," which is the place where we invest our attention, time and energy; There is a psychological location within us where there is perfect peace. That location of perfect peace will never be found in the outer world.