Hoping to find the truth of ourselves in any thought or feeling that moves through us is like trying to measure the expanse of an open sky by using a breeze that's passing through it.
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Enlightening articles by Guy Finley on a wide range of topics address practical life issues and deepen your spiritual understanding.
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Enlightening articles by Guy Finley on a wide range of topics address practical life issues and deepen your spiritual understanding.
Short but powerful quotes by Guy Finley will inspire you throughout your day.
Heartfelt inner-life questions from people around the world, and Guy’s enlightening answers, will shed light on your own issues.
Read Guy’s newest insights as he jots them down, spontaneous and uncensored.
Watch or listen to the specific talk we will all be discussing during this week’s Online Study Group meeting.
If you have a few minutes, and want a burst of enlightenment, watch or listen to these brief talks by Guy, filled with concentrated wisdom.
Hearing Guy interact with an interviewer is a delight. Listen as he makes deep spiritual principles easy to understand.
Be encouraged by hearing fellow members share their experiences and discoveries as they bring higher ideas into their daily lives.
The Life of Learning singers and instrumentalists perform beautiful music that will inspire and uplift you.
Join us for exclusive live broadcasts of select Guy Finley talks.
Start your day off right with a nugget of wisdom that can transform your experience with everything you do and everyone you meet.
Inner-life exercises and special writings deepen your understanding.
Longtime local members speak for 10 to 15 minutes on a special topic. Hear the explorations and discoveries of others on the inner journey.
Dive deep into a subject on your own! Work at your own pace with a series of talks by Guy on topics critical to your inner development.
Catch Guy Finley’s weekly message that focuses on spiritual and personal breakthroughs. This is updated weekly and is available in video, audio and text.
Join a lively online discussion with other members each week of “This Week’s Topic” – a new Guy Finley talk selected for in-depth study.
You are not alone on the inner journey. Listen to lively, weekly online discussions between members.
Every Saturday Guy leads an open discussion. Local members share their discoveries, and Guy’s comments deepen everyone’s understanding.
Guy regularly holds open Q&A sessions. Often members of our global community send in questions, or speak directly to Guy online.
Access to all our private Facebook updates, student Facebook discussions, and our LIVE Saturday lunch roundtable discussions.
This member forum is where you can write in your observations and experiences, and receive feedback from fellow members. Read-only access for Free and Basic members. Full access for Premium & All Access members.
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Shop eCoursesHoping to find the truth of ourselves in any thought or feeling that moves through us is like trying to measure the expanse of an open sky by using a breeze that's passing through it.
One thing is certain: whether in our waking life, or in the dreams that visit our evening's rest, thoughts and feelings fill our every present moment. But just because you can feel or sense all of their diverse characteristics -- such as worry, fear, impatience, courage, or compulsiveness -- doesn't make the "you" that experiences these movements real -- any more than standing under the cascade of a waterfall, and feeling its flow, means that your nature is water.
Thoughts and feelings are energies. They're forces that we have passing through us continually. And each has a distinct nature. But neither any one, nor all of these mental or emotional qualities put together, is who we really are.
Again, we feel the heat of the sun on our face, but we know better than to think that we're ablaze. And yet when we feel the fire of an angry thought or emotion, we believe we are that burning sensation. We are not! We only make the mistake of thinking that we are -- which is why these painful and unwanted internal fires go on and on, but never out.
Like the invisible winds that move the branches on the trees, we live in a world of an unseen, but ceaseless, flood of thoughts and feelings. In one sense, we're constantly being washed over by the waves of all past human experience. These ancient forces, combined with our individual mechanical associative reactions to present events, all serve to give each of us the sense of a self with both a past and a future.
But this self is fictitious. Its nature is a kind of ghost house, a complex but empty structure created by the stream of thoughts and feelings that provide it with its false sense of life.
English author and scholar D.L. Pendlebury says of this false nature: "(This) self is an entirely illusory entity, constantly changing, full of contradictions which only habit prevents us from discerning. But above all the self is -- selfish. As if flying in panic from any recognition of its own nothingness, it feverishly erects edifices of self-importance, self-aggrandizement, self-love. More binding than any prison, since we unthinkingly take its very walls for reality, it prevents us from ever realizing the true significance of our being here."
We can now summarize the central point of this part of our study as follows: the false self has no control over the thoughts and feelings that tie it down because its only life is derived from their constant movement. The sense of self this lower nature creates is nothing but an effect of thought considering the content of itself; as such it is as powerless to change the world it considers as is an echo to change the voice that gave it birth.
Only as this lower mind is made conscious of its own actual deceived condition are we released from the psychic grip it has upon us. That's why our task is to become increasingly aware of ourselves. Inner light is the only power that can resolve the captivity created by the inner darkness.
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The First Step to Realizing Your True Self
Posted by Guy Finley in 459 Galice Road, Merlin, OR 97532 on , and updated on .
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