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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.
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Shop eCoursesED: 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 man, Vernon Howard, once said that "Comparison is the essence of sickness." Could you explain that?
GF: First, I think we should move away from a blanket idea like that, and then see whether or not it's true as opposed to trying to prove it as though it were true.
First, Ellen, our lives are by and large so entirely uninvestigated that we don't know much about how and what it is in us that meets life as it does. We don't have self-knowledge. The reason I'm taking this tack at the start of our chat is because thought is the principal instrument by which we not only communicate our needs and wishes to a world around us, but through which we actually more or less communicate with ourselves at some level about who we are and what we should be doing. The idea that this comparative process is a problem is true, but only when we really understand for ourselves what makes it a problem.
I can't even talk to you without a certain activity of comparison going on in my mind. But we're not conscious of how our minds work. As I sit and choose the words that I'm speaking to you, hoping to use English that is "swell," I have to compare the impressions and the thoughts that are formed around those emotional movements to what it is that I actually hope to impress upon you. There's a process of comparison going on all the time.
ED: Right. You have to compare what you know to what I know so that you know what to tell me.
GF: That's exactly right. And not only do I have to compare what I know against what I intuit that you know, I also have to consider in that comparison what you are capable of receiving when I'm speaking. So, at the root of our physical existence is this necessary comparative action of thought.
Now, where it becomes a problem is not when it is used practically as intended by a mind awake to itself -- allowing thought to do what thought does in order to produce the finest possible outcome -- but where thought begins to compare (within us) ourselves to someone or something for the purpose of defining and deciding who and what we are.
An example: Let's say I'm sitting here, and as I'm speaking to you, I'm thinking to myself, "Am I being clear?" Here's a thought, and it's asking me to compare what I'm doing to whether or not I'm actually clear. Now, how can I know whether or not I'm being clear? Do I judge by your facial expressions? Do I look out at the group of people that I'm talking to and decide they're all asleep so I can't possibly be being clear? Or, is the fact that they're asleep proof that I am clear?
What I'm trying to get at here is that there is this incessant turning that's going on inside of us by which we are measuring ourselves. This is where comparison becomes the root of psychological sickness -- not in its practical application as necessary to communicate, but where we begin to try to figure out who we are, and what we're about, and how we're succeeding at life by measuring what we're doing in the moment against an idea of how it should be done.
ED: So there is always a judgment involved.
GF: Yes. Now, we add another word to this mix. No one can compare something to something in himself without a certain imitation taking place. For instance, I hear someone who speaks eloquently. I watch someone who has a great golf swing. Then, I swing the golf club or try to speak, and as I'm doing that I think, "Look at that. That's terrible. I can't do it at all."
Now I'm actually in conflict and suffering as a result of this comparative process because something in me is looking at me while I'm doing what I'm doing, and comparing what I am to what I imagine I ought to be. That's where we get into trouble, because imagining how I should be, and then being punished by that image, literally isolates me from the opportunity of directly experiencing what I am doing so that I might grow and change.
So, comparison is a natural activity of thought necessary for its functioning. Comparison as a process by which we define ourselves and know ourselves relative to others (or the world that we're in) is the source of conflict and all of the sickness that follows that kind of unconscious action.
ED: While you were speaking, I was thinking that through this kind of comparison we hope to elevate ourselves, but in fact we freeze ourselves into this negative, really frightened person who is continually being judged and failing.
GF: Not many of us really understand how deeply rooted in us is this "imitation" life. We can be sitting at home and we get a letter from somebody that says something denigrating, or we pick up the phone and somebody says something to us about what we did yesterday -- in every moment of our lives, because we're not attentive to ourselves, we literally turn over the power to this part of our nature that really doesn't know any other way to measure us other than through comparison. And all we do is imitate.
We know who we are by a process of comparing what we evaluate ourselves as being against what we have estimated ourselves we should be. All of this estimation about what we're supposed to be -- every last part of it -- is connected to someone or something we've seen that we think if we could imitate, then we would derive certain pleasures or powers out of that imitation. We become a completely imitative creature.
ED: Right. We can't really become the individuals we're meant to be as long as we're constantly in a state of comparison.
GF: Individuality and imitation are antithetical. They never go together. I don't care where you go in life, whatever you look at if you watch the animals, the birds, the flowers, the trees, the bees none of them imitate. There is no imitation life in nature. Every last rose is a rose unto itself, just as every human being is intended to be a human being unto himself, an individual expression of that Great Life that animates that being. Instead, we become self-animating beings, born out of trying to figure out who we are by comparing ourselves to some socially contrived mandate.
ED: Why do we make this mistake over and over again?
GF: Ellen, that's why there is no substitute for true spiritual education. There is no substitute for self-knowledge. The mind is continually looking at the elements available to itself and making a series of comparative choices from those elements through association in order to arrive at the best result. That's how thought works. That's how that train goes down the track. The train only knows to go down the track that way, and when you put that train into this world, and it begins to interact with people and to try to measure itself, the only way it knows to do what it does is that way. So, it brings what works in one world into a world in which not only doesn't it work but that it wrecks, which is the world of our self-completion, of fulfilling ourselves.
ED: So we're going down the track, but the track is going in a circle.
GF: In essence. The track can't lead anywhere because as we are presently constituted, we use the same thought process in its unconscious form.
Try this sometime: Watch yourself while you're talking to somebody. If you actually could do that instead of wanting to make an impression (which again is imitation-born), you would be able to see the way your mind works. You wouldn't be just the mouth moving because the brain is stimulating it to do that. There would actually be "someone" (a nature within you) participating in the process of choice, of selection. Watch that.
Now, once you gain a certain understanding like that, then you can start to recognize where it is that your choices are being made for you by something that seems to be in your favor, but that is secretly sinking the possibility of your individuality.
ED: And everything that it's giving us is based on the past because it's all in thought.
GF: Let's pursue that. Can one imitate something without referring to an image that must of itself be filled with past content?
ED: No, that's the essence of it.
GF: That's right. It's impossible. So, anytime that I'm measuring and comparing myself to what I'm doing, in a manner of speaking I am not in the moment at all but rather my attention is fixed upon this image filled with the past content that I find some pleasure or power in, and so I'm not here at all. My mind is literally operating on its own, doing what it needs to do (and this is what is so baffling) in order to keep this familiar sense of self in place even though there is suffering involved in it.
ED: Yes, and so we never experience the present moment at all.
GF: No, Ellen, we really don't. Look, we're doing an interview, but bring yourself back; come awake. There is really no need to say anything which of course would be a very boring "chat." Understanding the need to communicate, we choose to communicate. We use our minds for the purpose that we have these minds, which is the exposition (in this instance) of principles by which we can become free human beings.
But no one is free who has to think! People don't realize their lives are spent underneath the whip of something that is persistent in the pressure of: "You must think about this. You must resolve this. You've got to figure out how to get that going." None of that takes place without comparison, because I wouldn't be active the way I'm active unless I were trying to change or escape something else.
ED: Comparison is often associated with a feeling of being discontented.
GF: Very much so, but we don't get the actual taste of the discontentment because the comparison process lets us identify with an imitation image, a picture of something to come, and I take the pleasure from the image -- which of course is an empty pleasure. And when the conditions finally fall apart that allowed me to even hold that image in my mind, lo and behold, I'm right back to that same discontentment. Then, I'm driven through that loop again by which I compare who I think I am to who I think I should be -- which is comparison rooted in imagery -- and I'm lost in what I call "the circle of self." There is no out, because thought cannot understand itself. This is our biggest problem. We are creatures tied to trying to resolve the negative effect of thinking by thinking about the negative effect.
ED: I want to take a little different direction for a while here. Comparison destroys relationships between people. We get into envy and all of these negative reactions to other people -- what they have, and how we should be instead. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about being an individual and how presently our relationships with other people can't really help us to grow, develop, and become the individuals we're meant to be.
GF: First, because we always have to start as close to the foundation of things as we can, unconscious comparison destroys the relationship that I have as an individual with that life that I'm given as an individual. That's the first thing. I have no relationship with the present moment, with the true now, with the giver of that life that animates that moment and my relationship in it. I have nothing of that true nature as long as I am in comparative thought. That's so obvious; you can just see it. If I'm thinking about myself, I am in comparative thought. When I'm thinking about myself, am I the one I'm thinking about or am I the one thinking? Which is it?
ED: It's both.
GF: Yes, but I don't know that because as I think about myself, I believe that this me that is doing the thinking and arriving at all these conclusions is truly a separate entity from the one I am thinking about. But all I'm really considering is an image of my own, projected by my own mind, that then I sit and look at. And as I look at that image, am I not comparing myself to it in order to know what to do about it? Am I in life, or am I in thought?
ED: In thought.
GF: Can anything restorative, truly refreshing, flow into a human who stands between the two pillars of "what I am" and "what I hope to be"?
ED: No, we've cut ourselves off.
GF: Yes. Nothing can happen. Now we can take the next step. If I'm cut off from myself, Ellen, what can I possibly be to you? All I can do is use you to try to match the images I have so that I feel better about myself.
ED: Right. Just as I interact with myself according to images, I'm interacting with my image of you.
GF: And we treat everybody the same way. That's exactly right. You want to know how a person treats themselves? Look at how they treat other people. You see somebody frozen here, they're frozen there. It's such a beautiful truth, Ellen. There are so many beautiful things inside of the understanding as a person begins to recognize the classic spiritual axiom: as within, so without. If I'm cut off within, of course I'm cut off without. And if I'm cut off within and I'm trying to give myself a sense of life based on all of this thinking and struggling to make things according to my ideas (comparatively), I'm cut off from relationship here. I cannot have this and have that.
But if I begin to recognize that my life is given to me in such a way that what's the passage? "Take no thought for the morrow." If I begin to recognize that there is something effortlessly giving me not only the force that I need to be a whole man but the very source of the individuality I seek wrongly in thoughts about myself, then I can start to have a relationship with other human beings.
What does that mean? I don't have to get you to be who I think you need to be so I can be who I think I am. I don't have to do that. I'm free. I'm free from the need for you to be anything at all to me. I'm free of the notion that if you misbehave, then I'm going to be in pain. So, a man or a woman who begins to actually be free of this comparative thought nature allows other human beings to be who they are too. Then we take these restraints away from one another, and we're actually able to help each other.
ED: Part of the pain we feel when we compare ourselves to other people and find ourselves wanting is the belief that as I am, I'm not enough. I haven't been given what I need in order to become what I need to be. And yet, in a way, all of our lives are perfect for us, aren't they?
GF: Yes. Yes. Yes. I go back to the rose. There is nothing that appears in this universe that is not unique in the substance and fabric of whatever comprises its soul nothing. The elements that make up an Ellen, a Guy, a Patricia, a J.R., a Chris, or whoever those elements are put together in a way that nothing can undo, and that nothing could be greater than for that person.
There was a great moment in a movie with Richard Gere that I think was called "Red Corner." I'll never forget this, because it strikes right to the heart of what I'm saying. At the end, he was talking with this Chinese woman who had literally saved his life by representing him and risking everything that she held dear. They were saying goodbye to one another, knowing their lives would never meet the way that everyone who was watching hoped they would. They're talking there in China, and she points out to him this big stand of bamboo, and she says, "Do you know what that bamboo is doing, why it's there?" And Richard Gere, being a traditional Westerner, didn't know. She said something like, "It's waiting to be touched by the wind." That stayed with me, because each stalk of bamboo has five hundred individual leaves, and each stalk and each leaf can only be touched for what it is by the wind that passes through it. So, it has a totally unique experience of the wind that passes through the stand of bamboo. Human beings are meant to have that kind of totally individual experience when the wind of life, the wind of spirit passes through this essentially unequaled nature. No matter what it is, no one is cut out. We are given what we need in order to experience that.
ED: The miracle is that there is enough wind for everybody.
GF: Yes. But here is the problem. I'm sealed off. I'm not bamboo; I'm an oak. See? And then I hate myself for exhibiting bamboo tendencies.
ED: And I don't get what I need, and I hate everyone else because I think they're getting what I'm not getting.
GF: That's exactly right. But you are getting it. It's just that you're identified in a comparative way with an image inside of yourself that is born through this psychopathic society that inculcates itself in us to the point where we can't see the forest from the trees.
ED: And it all has to do with what our true purpose is. If we think our true purpose is to get certain things, then we'll never feel that we're getting what we deserve and what we need, but if we understand that the real purpose is the transformation through being touched by the wind, then we're open to whatever it is that comes to us.
GF: And then and only then (and I realize that some people may not like this, but I feel it, and I'll say it), as that wind passes through us and begins to reveal to us the qualities of ourselves and the potential for the transformation of those qualities by the passage of that wind, then we can begin for the first time to truly give glory to God. That's the only way it's true and sincere. The rest of it is nothing but sentimental nonsense and trash talk. But when a person has a direct relationship with those living forces, as they move through him revealing the blemish on the bamboo -- in other words revealing whatever those qualities are that are inherent in this unique compilation that comprises this soul, this nature -- as that wind moves through it, it reveals it, soothes it, changes it, and it makes that nature go through what only it can go through in the only the way it can because of its relationship. Then, the person knows: "This is great! Yes! Blow harder!" This incidentally is a comparative idea. You don't really go through that, but you do start to recognize how wondrous it is that you're part of a cosmos whose very purpose is the perfection of this individual nature.
ED: Each individual.
GF: Each individual, Ellen. You. Me. I don't need to be anyone other than myself. In the long run, what a person starts to understand is that this self that they don't need to be anything other than, isn't really a self at all the way that we imagine it, because there again, no self exists as an individual, isolated element without comparison to a world that it's not a part of! Now, I know that's pretty deep to throw in here at the end of this interview, but by and large, the whole process of this discovery, and where comparative thought turns out to be something that compromises and punishes us, little by little, Ellen, we begin to let go of all the need to know ourselves that way, and we begin to live in true relationship with this wind that changes us.
ED: Yes, and when we compare, we're turning our back on what God wants to give us.
GF: We could say that, but it's not really "I" that does that. It's part of this thought nature. That's why self-knowledge is so essential -- learning to watch, be attentive, present, understanding. These things bring to us the final fruits, or at least the beginning of them, for why we're here.
ED: Thank you, Guy.
This has been a Fireside Chat with best-selling inner life author, Guy Finley. I'm Dr. Ellen Dickstein. Thanks for joining us.
Realize the Source of True Individuality
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