Most of us spend a lot more time trying to deal with discontentment than is obvious at first glance. Depending on how the day breaks for us, we may find ourselves feeling discontent about our life whenever we: * Compare our present level of health and energy to those better days when we felt a stronger wind at our back * Take that almost daily inventory of our personal possessions or lack of...

Reality is very different from our distorted ideas about it. For instance, there are many parts of us that are secretly afraid that should we earnestly reexamine our ideas about life we'd just stir up some things better left alone. However, if we don't stir them up, we'll never find out that these things we're afraid of are nothing more than "ghosts" created by our own minds. The following sto...

The will to be free belongs to that special part of us able to remember that we are here on earth to grow beyond the limiting influences of our own unawakened nature; it knows we are not created to participate with anything that causes us to suffer unconsciously. Our task is to awaken ourselves to this Higher Will within us that won't be compromised. How is this done? We must remember -- now a...

ED: Hello. I'm Dr. Ellen Dickstein. Welcome to a Fireside Chat with bestselling inner life author, Guy Finley. During a number of our chats, we've talked about negative emotions, and I thought that this time we would hone in on a particular emotion that is a great problem to many people, if not everyone, and that is fear. Guy, there are many different types of fear, and people react in differe...

ED: Hello. I'm Dr. Ellen Dickstein. Welcome to a "Fireside Chat" with bestselling inner-life author, Guy Finley. Today I thought we would talk about a bad habit that many people have, including myself, and that is comparison. We compare ourselves to other people, we compare ourselves to an image we have of the way we should be, we compare an event with other events it's just endless. A great...

In nature, hurricanes occur when walls of thunderstorms are driven up the center, producing a vortex -- an "eye" -- where, while everything else is total turmoil in and around it, there is complete silence and stillness in the center.

Light, love -- all that is good and holy -- already exists. All the wisdom you and I will ever need already lives within us. It's just that we are not where the wisdom is. Why? Because we want to know, to prove, to get. We want to be seen as something special. All of us with that mindset are set to suffer ourselves until one day we see, "This doesn't work." In that same moment the epiphany comes, and suddenly we can see what we have been...

GF: Welcome to our chat tonight. Before we get going I would like to look at a certain psychological condition common to all seekers of Truth -- a pervasive and often punishing inner state we must either learn to use or end up being abused by it. I am speaking about being discontent -- its true nature, its purpose in existence, and our almost daily relationship with its onset in us. It is no...

ED: Hello. I'm Dr. Ellen Dickstein, and I'm here with inner life author, Guy Finley. We're going to be talking about letting go of negative states. Guy, I was thinking about this topic today and I actually had to laugh, because I thought you'd never expect to hear two people talking about letting go of a hot pot handle. There seems to be a wisdom of the body that knows if something is causing...

The first challenge before any person who wants to find a way out of some hurtful codependent relationship is to see that while we do have the awareness required to interact with life -- and even to learn challenging new skills -- this level of awareness is not enough.

Question: Your teachings say that making demands and having expectations just sets us up for trouble. I know it's true. I always plan how other people should act and how things should turn out, but they never do what I expect, and then I become angry and disappointed. I sense that I am causing all my own pain. If I could just learn to want for myself what life wants for me maybe I wouldn't...

GF: Welcome everyone to our chat. Before we get started I wish to send along some thoughts on the new understanding required of us if we ever want to become truly free. There is no substitute for freedom. And, as we shall find out, we all share in many mistaken ideas about what it means to be free. To prove this point, let me pose two simple questions that will help set us on the path to rea...