Special Lessons

Self-observation is the key to a higher order of awareness; it is how we learn to become inwardly vigilant to our own thoughts and feelings, even as they pass through us. When we can observe ourselves in this new way, our higher nature naturally prevails over any troubling thoughts or feelings that want to drag us down into their lower world...

Welcome into your mind the following insights from Guy Finley's book, 365 Days to Let Go. Taken together they help illustrate and illuminate a grand design in which we first see the wholeness of life -- and then, as our awareness grows about this unfolding story, we enter into its native freedom. We are about to discover that more than being just a part of life's plan, letting go solves the mystery of it. We are about to see how the act of letting go...

In the end, and to the point of this work we do, the journey is from outward to inward. The journey takes a person from "out there" (powers and possessions, travel, drugs, new hobbies, friends, relatives, approval, etc.) to an understanding that as long as they look to anything or anyone outside of themselves, it is never going to reconcile or bring an end to the overwhelming negative states such as fear that are wrecking their life.

The Divine journey involves the preparation of an individual by another, higher order of awareness (that already lies hidden within us), so that we're able to see that the ceaseless, seemingly individual waves of the passing events of our lives belong to a much broader, grander relationship. And they exist for the purpose of our development, and not to torment us with what we fear is going to be...

Our "normal" way of dealing with pain is to ignore it until we can't any longer -- at which point this mounting pressure drives us to ask ourselves those familiar "What can be done about this?" questions -- our perception being that coming upon the correct answer to the cause of our concern will eliminate the ache being felt. And any time we don't know the immediate answer to some pressing question...

All of us know what it's like to be dogged by parts of us that want to drag us down. Call it what you will: some compulsion or obsession seems to follow us into all our relationships, only to wreck them in one way or another. We struggle as best we can to free ourselves from these dark states but invariably find ourselves short of the mark.

In the still uncharted realms of mind and heart, there exist parts within every person that are drawn to seek out relationships with thoughts that are self-wrecking. For instance, we can often become transfixed by our own troubles, turning the image of some fear-producing picture over and over in our mind. And who hasn't found himself drawn into an argument where the antagonistic voice in his head is nothing...

When it comes to our wish to make real changes in ourselves, good intentions cost (us) nothing... and that's why the road to hell is paved with useless coins. On the other hand, making a conscious effort to change -- in the moment that calls for it -- comes with the cost of seeing ourselves as we really are. This awareness shows us not only the possibility of being released from our worry and fear...

As a race of beings, we have become completely complicit in the pain that visits us. A thought from the past pops up and punishes us. Someone says something we don't like, and we try to punish them and feel the pain of the blame that we place on them. There is an endless series of relationships with a part of our own nature that has convinced us that the pain is produced by a condition outside of us...

Question: I live as if things are coming to an end. No matter what good thing is happening in my life, I am looking at it as just temporary. This is horrible for me, and I don't want to miss out on any more of life! Answer: If you want to be free, I'm going to explain "how." Why would any of us want to meet every moment of our life with a certainty that, "Nothing's going to work out...

It's there... and then it's not, The shadow of the sun. You can neither control the moment it appears, Nor the way it runs to hide itself, Mingling in the shadow of dusk... Until it simply just disappears.

If you were empowered to change life -- in order to give yourself whatever is always good and true for you to know and have -- would you ever make any other kind of changes? For example, would you fear unexpected events, such as a loss of some kind? No! Even though they may come as a surprise, you already know that they herald a new beginning of something better.