It is no stretch of the imagination to say that many days most people wrestle with some form of discontentment about their lot in life. Add to this an equal if not greater amount of time spent searching for the solution they think will "cure" this confliction, and it might surprise us how pervasive runs this human pastime of trying to dodge these feelings of being discontent...

Featured Study Group Topic for the Week of January 28, 2013. In taking thought, always thinking about what one must do, or have... one never stops asking to "become." But, in remaining awake -- aware of one's thoughts, instead of driven by them -- one asks, "to be"... and this living prayer is always answered.

ED: Hello. I'm Dr. Ellen Dickstein. Welcome to a fireside chat with best-selling inner life author, Guy Finley. Today I thought we would talk about a topic that you actually gave a whole series of talks on, and something that you mention quite often: the "turning point." Now, most people when they use the expression "turning point," think of a unique moment in time when maybe they had to make...

Topics covered: Our task as spiritual aspirants is to explore. And whatever qualities we discover within ourselves are neither good nor bad of themselves, but thinking makes them so; When you discover something about yourself, the revelation of that discovery has its own corresponding action; Punchline of the story about the professional actor: He does not know anymore when he is on stage...

Topics covered: The reason that life has stopped being precious to us is because we live in constant judgment of everyone and everything; When you really want to understand something, you don't try to understand it with thought only; Our lives are presently shaped by incessant thinking and judgment, which is why our lives are misshapen; Have you ever found freedom from...

There is a passage in the Lord's Prayer which states, "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." The evil that is referred to in this passage is the temptation to complete ourselves -- the urge to satisfy our longing to understand our true purpose in this life through thinking about ourselves. When we begin to understand that it is possible for us to find real happiness and...

In this short talk, self-realization author Guy Finley talks about how we have been deceived into thinking that we need to control everything in our lives in order to meet the world's standards of success and happiness. But as Guy explains, if we feel a painful compulsion to control everything we see outside of us, then it is fear that is in control.

Classroom Talk: 12/1/2021 - The more we think about what's wrong with life, with others, or about ourselves, the less we see this self-evident, but simple truth that once realized... helps set us free: the more we think about any disappointment, or the prison of some lingering pain we can't seem to escape, the more we are made a captive of those very same thoughts.

Topics covered: The Law of Order; We're conditioned to believe we can control the outcome of any moment; Control of life is an absolute illusion; Thinking is a form of complaint; Changing the manifestation of a consciousness that's out of order; What does it mean to say "I exist"; The relationship of "I am" is unity; Freedom is unimaginable; Everything is a reflection; Silence permits seeing;...

Topics covered: The world is dark, and darkness reveals; The path that doesn't work; What is true and loving always prevails; A crisis brings new understanding; Love, wisdom, and compassion are immortal; What it means to integrate consciousness to become a new man; Strength doesn't seek out strength; Making demands on others; Thinking is not the actual experience; Awareness is the key to integ...

How many times have you found yourself thinking you'd like to develop a new skill or sharpen an old one? Maybe you've wanted to learn another language or play a musical instrument; further your education; or get up out of your easy chair and do some catch-up on that correspondence you've been putting off for weeks! But in each, or at least most, of these instances, before you can even get sta...

It isn't something of which most of us are aware, but we human beings are "marked" with a certain strange feature: and that is...we want to change. Perhaps you're thinking: "What's so strange about that?" After all, who amongst us isn't familiar with this ever-present longing (of ours)? Granted, taken by itself, this desire doesn't seem so strange; that is, until we realize the obvious: we a...