The only thing "special" about wanting to be seen as such is the special kind of pain we put ourselves through to win what amounts to nothing.

One must lose hope in the false idea that winning the approval of others has any real power to quiet the nature within that doesn't know what else to do with its sense of being incomplete save to imagine itself as being something it's not. If I am what I believe myself to be, why do I need anyone else to confirm it; and if I am not what I believe I am, then can anyone's confirmation of this il...

Better the whole world should turn against you, because you choose to do what is true, than the whole world approve of you... because you've agreed to do what is false.

We are set free from the nightmare of self-inflicted pain called "judging others" as we awaken to see within ourselves that nothing is true of any one of us . . . that isn't true of all of us.

No animal hides in shame for being itself. No tree bends to the opinion of others. No wind avoids the granite face before it. Only human beings cultivate ways in which to fawn or cower before one another, and all for the sake of winning nothing but a fleeting feeling that for their cunning they have made it through one more day.

Topics covered:  The true interior path is about ceaseless exploration, not about coming to conclusions. We get stressed every time we come to a conclusion. Exploration stops when we come to a conclusion; The advanced spiritual life is already here in every moment, not in what you imagine the spiritual life is supposed to be; Nothing can grow without humility, because for anything to grow it must be in a position of receiving, yielding to what is above. No humility, no transformation.

When at last you decide you would rather find your own way, you will also find that you have found yourself.

When all is said and done, what matters is not whether or not the world loves us, or approves of us; what matters is what we love, for that is what determines the true and final course of our lives.

Topics explored in this dialogue: When we believe in things we don't understand, we suffer; We aren't powerless until we agree to be powerless; Nothing can happen to us that we can't turn into a personal treasure; There is no shortcut to freedom; We can't change the limitations we meet until we meet the self that believes in those limitations; Once we understand that there's no end to our abil...

Guy Finley explains why fear is a form of spiritual sickness, and what one must do to return to spiritual health.

Once you realize that you can't separate some imagined fear from the level of self that believes in what it has imagined, you are near the end of your fears.

No one finds freedom who believes their individual liberty depends on some consensus of how others view either their choices or character.