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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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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 eCoursesIn the news yesterday came this story: David Carradine, star of the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu" – whose career roared back to life when he played the assassin-turned-victim in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" – was found dead Thursday in Thailand. Police said he appeared to have hanged himself.
By any account, this is sad news, and all condolences go out to family and friends. But the serious aspirant must look into this kind of unhappy event with a wish to read between the lines, to see and realize the underlying story that leads to such tragedies.
First, it must be pointed out that this is a man who not only played the television role of a Shaolin monk for many years, but he also taught tai chi, meditation, and martial arts as part of his career and life path. The contradiction between his spiritual background, the subsequent (world's) perception of his character, and the tragic way he ended his own life seems almost inexplicable...after all, how is it that one with so much knowledge, fortune, and fame comes to such a sorry end? Here is one answer for your consideration and study:
There is a direct and proportionate relationship between the amount of inconsolable pain we have and our misunderstanding of the purpose of our life here on Earth.
There is no other explanation for the virtually endless accounts of how individuals with great fortune of one kind or another – including the adulation of countless people – end up destroying themselves, as well as the lives of those who have loved them. In fact, as evidence suggests, winning recognizable success in this world acts like a grinding stone upon the souls of all those conditioned to believe that the purpose of their lives would be fulfilled through that same success. After all, what does one do when – having come to possess everything hoped for – one still finds oneself empty...even of the hope there might still exist a solution to such growing discontent. In this case, and in many like it, un-answerable despair leads to acts of desperation.
The shock of such stories, as in the sad case of Mr. Carradine, is that we are predisposed – readily deceived – into believing that the way someone acts (around us) is the same as their actual character. Of course, and to the point of this blog, nothing could be farther from the truth.
The reason we believe in any "public performance" is that we are all, to one extent or another, actors on stage. We too believe we are who we pretend to be in any given moment, embrace those who agree to see us as we would be seen, and reject those who challenge our role. In a sense, it's not too far from the mark to say that many of us have come to believe that being a good performer in life is somehow the same as fulfilling the purpose of life! Here's the strange logic behind the self-created misery that follows it:
For each successful "performance" we pull off – around others or within ourselves – it feels as though we've won – for the moment – what we've imagined will make us whole and happy – but the drawback here should be self-evident: not only is it wearisome to walk around having to juggle the masks one needs to wear, but no one knows better than the actor that he or she is not the same as the character being played. Conflict between what is real within us and the role we are playing mounts until the inevitable collapse on stage. In fact, any time we outwardly express a negative state it's because we can no longer maintain our role of being cool, calm, and in control...the mask has come off!
One of the principal tasks of the true spiritual aspirant is not only to see through the masks of others, but also to see through and remove the many masks he or she wears on a daily basis. It can be rightly said that we judge others not so much because of the masks they wear, but to keep us from seeing what is masked within us by finding fault with them. And yet, as we work to see through these masks, and become aware of the frightened actors beneath them, our compassion (for them) grows instead of our conflict with them.
(More to come...)
See Through the Act and Choose to Lose the Mask (Blog)
Posted by Guy Finley in 459 Galice Road, Merlin, OR 97532 on , and updated on .
BEST-SELLING "LETTING GO" author Guy Finley's encouraging and accessible message is one of the true bright lights in our world today. His ideas go straight to the heart of our most important personal and social issues -- relationships, success, addiction, stress, peace, happiness, freedom -- and lead the way to a higher life.
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