Getting tense and all stressed out for fear you won't finish some task "on time" makes sense only to a mind that believes squeezing the bud of a flower will make it bloom faster!
Access over 500+ Hrs of Basic Content for as low as $4.97/month!
Sign up today!Select Category
Browse from A-Z
Go Deeper!
Make self-realization part of your daily life – become an aspirant and join Life of Learning’s online community.
You'll gain access to:Click for Quick Inspiration!
Welcome to Life of Learning's Online Wisdom School
Access an In-Depth, Multi-Media Resource of Higher Wisdom, Online or On-the-Go!
Sign up today!You need an active subscription to enjoy more access.
Subscribe to unlock more content.
Access Over 500+ Hours of Premium Content Today! Try it Completely RISK FREE for 30 days!
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.
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.
You need a membership to access this content.
You need a membership to access this content.
You need a membership to access this content.
You need an membership to access this content.
Pick a Plan and Sign up Today!
Access 500+ hours of Basic Content for as low as $4.97/month!
Sign up today!You can find softcover and hardcover books in our store. Many of Guy’s works are also available as eBooks.
Shop BooksListen to Guy’s talks on CD or MP3. Some of his books are also available as audiobooks.
Shop AudioWatch Guy on DVD or MP4 as he presents talks on a wide array of topics related to your spiritual discovery.
Shop VideoOur eCourses focus on specific topics, building your understanding through a series of related talks. Most eCourses include MP3 audio and MP4 video formats you can play online.
Shop eCoursesGetting tense and all stressed out for fear you won't finish some task "on time" makes sense only to a mind that believes squeezing the bud of a flower will make it bloom faster!
In the early 1900s, before the age of superhighways, supermarkets, and the giant food manufacturers, things were very different, better in many ways. Small family farmers used to truck or cart each season's harvest to a small centralized buyers' market that had been set up in their area. Some farmers, more isolated than others, had to travel great distances just to sell their crops. For these hardy people who lived and worked the small outlying farms, this was about the only time they would see any other people outside of their own families. Everyone looked forward to going to these great open markets. There were crafts to exchange and store-bought goods to buy, the newest catalogs to see, and the warmth of at least a thousand hellos. All of this, plus the hard-earned financial rewards that came with the close of another season, made the marketing of their harvest an exciting, happy time for everyone involved.
That's why, as he stood there taking the whole festival feeling in, the old farmer couldn't understand why anyone should be standing around looking tired and distressed. But sure enough, leaning up against the side of one of the large tented areas stood a very unhappy young farmer.
"What could possibly be this boy's problem?" the old man wondered to himself. The recent weather had been more than kind, and every farmer at the market, including this young man, had brought in a bumper crop. He thought about it for a moment and decided to do the neighborly thing. He walked over to the young man.
"Anything I can help you with?" he asked, as gently as he knew how. When he got no response, he tried another approach. "Hope you don't mind me asking. It's just that you look like maybe you could use a helping hand."
The young farmer looked up at his elder without raising his head. "Thanks, but there's nothing you can do to help."
"How do you know?" the old man asked.
A long moment passed, then the young farmer spoke. "You don't understand," he said. "It's that dumb tractor of mine. Dang thing is more trouble than it's worth."
"Oh? And what's wrong with it?"
"I don't really know. It's harder to use some days than others. The dumb thing just tuckers me out sometimes to where me and my family don't want to farm anymore."
Something wasn't adding up in the mind of the old farmer as he listened to the young man speak. "Harder to use, you say? Maybe I could take a look at it sometime. I'm pretty fair with these new contraptions."
"Sure," the young man's eyes brightened momentarily, "but I don't think there's much you can do. We'd be pleased to have you come by anyway, and we'll fix you a nice supper for your trouble."
So they exchanged directions.
A few short weeks later, after half a day's travel, the old farmer rolled his horse-drawn, tool-laden cart onto the young man's farmland. Straight ahead of him in a distant field he could see the young farmer and his wife, along with their two sons. They were struggling to push a small tractor along the raised crop beds.
"Hello!" the old man cried out as his cart drew into hearing range. "She's still not running right, I see."
The young farmer smiled back at him and said, "What do you mean? It's going pretty good today!"
The old farmer sat there, shocked, for a moment. It just couldn't be. He knew he had to ask the next question, but he had a hard time getting the words out.
"Do you mean to tell me," the old man tried to find the right pitch, "that you always push this tractor to make it work?"
The young man looked back at him as though a little irritated with such a stupid question. "Well, how else do you get it to do what you want?"
Realizing everything all at once about the young man's deep weariness and defeated appearance earlier on at the farmers' market, the old farmer said as calmly as he knew how, "My son, a tractor is something you are meant to ride on, not push!"
It took quite a bit of explaining, several trips to town, and a lot of greasy work, but by the time the old man finally said farewell to the young man and his family, the small tractor was up and running in high gear. And so was everyone's spirit. At last, everything was as it was intended to be. Life was good.
I realize, as I am sure you do, that such a story probably never did or ever could happen. However, this tale of the misunderstood tractor contains a highly valuable lesson for anyone who is genuinely tired of pushing against life. Let's look at this lesson and see what it teaches us about our everyday experience: stress exists because we insist! It's really that simple. It is our mistaken belief that we must push life in the direction we choose that keeps us in a strained and unhappy relationship with it. Our wish to have power over life comes from this wrong relationship with life. Reality has its own effortless course, and we can either embrace its way or struggle endlessly with our own. We do not need power to flow. In other words, why push when we can learn to ride?
With a new kind of effort, we can climb aboard an entirely new kind of life that always has fair skies and the wind at its back.
Comments (0)
<p><strong>If you've ever longed to have more, to experience more, to BE MORE -- then this is your chance!</strong> Discover the keys to a bigger, better, and brighter life in <em>The Secret of Letting Go.</em> This completely new and refreshed version of Guy's original international bestseller has been thoroughly rewritten and features 70 pages of inspiring new material...</p>
Starting at $5.99
<p>Stress drains our vital life forces, ruins our immune systems, keeps us on edge so that all our relationships are compromised, leaves us exhausted -- and worst of all, it destroys the possibility of our coming to know what we all want more than anything else in life: <em>a mind at peace with itself, and a quietly contented heart.</em> Think of how rich, vital, and creative your life would be if str...</p>
Starting at $3.99
<p>In today's modern world, success and stress seem to be constant companions. Success in business means "workaholism." Success in love means constant sacrifice and "working on the relationship." Success in school, or art, or music, or sports means ever increasing pressure to perform. Success in our society is just plain crazy... but success is not supposed to be like that. Success is suppose...</p>
Starting at $5.79
To make the most of our life we must first know our true purpose – one that emerges from Love and enables us to make a real difference in life. This is the key to true fulfillment, as this talk reveals and explains how to attain.
Starting at $3.99
Audio seminar presented by Guy Finley at Life of Learning Foundation. Key Lesson: It is the things we think ourselves to be that cause heartache and pain, for there is no such sorrow in the still, whole depths of who we really are.
Starting at $3.99
Learn the "why" of stress and the "how" of ending it. Here's the secret to taking command of your life. Helpful pocketbook version of the new material added to the revised Design Your Destiny. Where Stress Becomes Unnatural Natural stress and tension keep the earth orbiting the sun. They test and strengthen trees that struggle upward against gravity, wind, and rain...
Starting at $1.50
While there's no question this talk contains ground-breaking information on the topics of fear and worry, it is truly earth-shattering for the picture it paints about what it is that's stealing your possibilities in life... what it is that keeps you from changing. In this program Guy Finley addresses the twin problems of spiritual inaction and spiritual forgetfulness. Together these two m...
Starting at $3.99
Letting Go Into the Power Flow
Posted by Guy Finley in 459 Galice Road, Merlin, OR 97532 on , and updated on .
Get Guy Finley’s Bestselling eBook for FREE!
Freedom from the Ties that Bind
Simply by Joining Our Newsletter List!