Many students ask (and I paraphrase), "What must I do to win more of God's love, to be in greater contact with the Divine? How can I learn more about the celestial life, and begin to have more light in my life?" In truth, there is an answer to this kind of question, but no matter how the answer is stated, the only ones who can really hear it are those who are tired of listening to themselves...
Freedom is not overcoming what you think stands in your way. It is understanding that what is in your way is part of the way.
The meditative life is not limited to sitting down someplace quietly, nor is it limited to someplace in time where we can control conditions so that we can experience something of a quiet mind. It can be said that meditation is the active relationship that an individual has with the whole of his or her life. Indeed, if we were able to see clearly enough into our own life, we would see some...
Can we agree that our fearful conclusions about our life experiences are born of an incomplete perception? That when I see something wholly, there is a different quality to the event than when I look at something and it formulates for me my sense of identity? And then the next thing I know, I feel isolated. And when I'm isolated, strangely enough, I'm still overwhelmed with fear!
Think for just a moment how different your life would be if you knew -- beyond the shadow of a doubt -- that you couldn't fail no matter what it was that you wanted to do. Imagine knowing that any feeling you may have of being inadequate is always a lie, and then being able to walk through that fear, regardless of how real it seems to be...
When a mind is at rest, anything that stirs it is instantly recognized. When we can be awake to what stirs us -- become conscious of what is always pushing us, moving us, drawing us along -- then we have a chance to actually begin to recognize and realize what it would mean to be able to sit in a room and not have our mind pulling on us from a thousand different directions about a thousand dif...
Have you ever noticed that the more negative you get, the more difficult everything about your life becomes, including being able to do the simplest things? Even your intention to work spiritually in some way -- to develop and transcend yourself -- now sits in the hands of a very negative self, a dense level of self that sees nothing but darkness ahead of it.
Have you ever noticed that when you're under the cloud of some negative state, what you do to try to "make things better" actually makes the situation worse? Struggling to free yourself from your own negative reactions is a bit like throwing gasoline onto a fire, isn't it? Recognizing that you get trapped in this pattern of taking action that neither relieves nor rescues you from...
What very few men and women ever come to realize, spiritually speaking, is that life is a ceaseless series of inner choices about where they want to live.
Can you see that there is something inside of you that immediately begins to tell you what any event means and what you need to do about it? You've been with this storyteller for so long, it's an unquestioned presence in your mind. It's just part of what we call our life. But this storyteller isn't really alive. Its story is to ensure the continuation of its life...
ED: Hello. I'm Dr. Ellen Dickstein and this is a Fireside Chat with bestselling inner life author, Guy Finley. I thought that today we would explore the topic of regret. Most people have things in their life that they regret. Memories come up of embarrassing experiences or lost opportunities, or maybe mistakes that they made or things that they're sorry over... and these things that may have h...
GF: Welcome to our chat tonight. Before we start, I want to examine the interior Work at the root of our efforts to realize Truth and the real reason why we attempt what we do along these lines. Virtually everyone will admit they want a spiritual life; for starters this just sounds like something that one should have! But probe a bit deeper and by default, in stages, you will hear various dec...