Read
-
Mar 01, 2024
Realize the Fulfillment of the Purpose of Your Life
The proof that every moment - including the most painful of them - is unlimited in its Divine possibility is that one soul perishes for the fear of them, while another (soul) is perfected, and liberated by the same.
Simply put, that means that every single moment of our life holds within it, if you will, a kind of fork in the road. "I came upon a fork in the road and I took the one that was least traveled." Every moment of our life offers what we could call the possibility of either further realizing the fulfillment of the purpose of our life on this planet, or deepening the sense of futility most of us have all the time that we are not fulfilling the purpose of our existence.
This talk -- which is basically intended to help us cultivate this garden of the soul, this garden of faith -- is based in the idea that we know in our heart of hearts we're meant to live a more complete life. Or let's say it the other way around, as it most likely is experienced by us -- a life that isn't so full of conflict.
I don't know how adept you are at being able to see it, but most of what we call waiting for moments to take place - e.g. waiting for this chat to start, waiting for the meeting we need, waiting for the announcement about our finances or about our family -- most of those moments, if they're not filled with some form of expectation of a fearful kind, then there's a tension in them because we're hoping that what we want to take place will go down the way we want it to go down. And there's stress in that!
It's almost incomprehensible to us that there is the possibility of a life where our familiar stress, fear, anxiety, or frustration, where all of those familiar states no longer serve as they've always served -- which is to provide the feeling that we're stuck in another situation that we have to struggle our way through -- and instead of that constant stress, there's the possibility of a completely different relationship with it.
There is no moment in life, whatever its nature, that isn't designed to be part of our preparation for discovering in ourselves this Divine ability to take whatever the moment brings to transcend it. And in transcending what that moment brings up in us, to realize the possibility of living in a relationship with every moment by which our proper understanding of it lifts us above that moment.
What is the nature of these moments that disturb us? How many of you know that life is mostly disturbance, not delight? At least that's our perception of it. How constant is the disturbance... even getting ready to go out for a good time. I don't know if you've noticed it... packing to go someplace is full of anxiety! What is it in us that's so readily disturbed? Have you ever wondered about it? Or do we just take the reaction to be the proof that there's something in us that needs things to be other than they are?
What is disturbed in us is the past. You could call it expectations, but what are expectations other than identification with something we're hoping will happen, or hoping doesn't happen. Moments that we don't want, we don't want them because they disturb the past. And what is the past? The past is who and what we have been up until that moment. And I would add: not just who and what we have been -- not just what we are identified with and have brought forward with us into the present moment -- but when I say "who and what we have been" I'm talking about human consciousness. Because you and I do not exist, we do not have a consciousness outside of human consciousness.
That consciousness is so rooted in the past, so identified with the images that have given us and this human nature its identity - politically, religiously, financially, environmentally, socially, across the board - this body of thought which has been so crystallized. You and I are so formally locked into its rigidity that when something comes along in the present moment and brings into that crystallized consciousness anything that causes it to have a tremor - it does so because it's resisting whatever that moment is revealing. Why? Because it's not part of how things should be - meaning, not the way I have been and need things to continue being.
In that moment we discover that that moment that we ordinarily want to avoid, that disturbance, is actually a moment in which "when the student is ready, the teacher appears." What is the student? The student is the part of us that aspires to awaken and to become a truer, more kind human being. And what is the teacher other than the moment that shows up, that unfolds the way it does - and as it does, it brings to light within us the fact that the image we have of ourselves as being someone who is good and kind and loving is just that - an image, not the thing itself. It's a sensation of self that we delight in when nothing is challenging it.
But the moment that any condition comes along that's contrary to this "consciousness" past, this body of thoughts and feelings, the moment they're triggered, everything that lies latent in them -- which is our identification and our dependency upon these images -- now suddenly it goes into the protective mode. It starts to push and pull in one way or another.
In the moment of that revelation of who and what we have been, we can understand the reaction that we have to any moment we don't want is actually the revelation of the consciousness that doesn't want it. And any part of our consciousness that doesn't want what is present and acting upon us as part of the fulfillment and movement of life, any part of us that resists that obviously lives outside of that movement, and therefore is in constant conflict with any part of that movement. We don't see this because we're so instantly identified with this protective consciousness, trying to make sure that what it wants and believes it must have and possess is necessary to it.
As fleeting as that moment may be... and really it's an awakening, that I'm going to explain... I'm going to give you three particular steps to help develop this idea of nourishing the soul, of what it means to not just use the moment as it's given to us, but to use the moment to give ourselves a new life, because it is being given to us in that moment by another order of being.
Sometimes those moments come -- and I hope that you'll agree with me -- sometimes here comes a moment and I'm shocked right to my socks with what I see. Every once in a while, those moments of awakening come and they're so special we wish that time would stop. We see the beauty of that sunrise, we see the massive cloud formations, we see the child delighted with joy, dancing for no reason whatsoever, a puppy running in circles, some noble creature -- a deer, a horse -- running across the field. That's an awakening, isn't it? It's awakening to something that was latent within us that suddenly realizes it has some corresponding connection to that beauty, that strength, that nobility. We love that. There's no shock in that. We can't swallow it enough.
But what about those moments when, shockingly, we see -- as life does show us -- that within us there is something that we don't want to see at all? A split second of a revelation, where instantaneously that moment has brought up inside of us and is revealing through a reflection something we didn't realize is true about ourselves. I had no idea that I could be that angry, that I could be that hostile, that conflicted, that I could turn at the drop of a hat. That what I call this "love" I have for someone could turn in a heartbeat into something that's hideous.
How is that possible? We're describing it. All of this content lays buried within us, and all of it -- in order for us to transcend it -- must be revealed. That's what these moments that we don't want do, is they bring in a split second of a realization - that, I might add, marks either the beginning of a new kind of faith, or the strengthening of a fear. It's a certain realization about ourselves that either marks the beginning of a completely different order of faith, or crystallizes the fear.
We realize in that moment, one way or the other, there is no self separate from the consciousness that is stirred, the sense of self that is brought up in that moment. In those moments, and every moment, is the sudden revelation of our own consciousness as being inseparable from what is being reflected in it. There is no me apart from you. There is no self outside of that situation. We realize the whole source of our suffering lies in this unconscious duality that this present consciousness is the keeper of.
We have these moments -- but don't recognize them as being such -- of a sudden spiritual realization of a singularity that we are, where what the moment brings cannot be separated from what the moment reveals -- and what the moment reveals is the consciousness that came into that moment that was intended to be revealed by the action of that moment.
That moment shows us there is no self that exists apart from the moment to be in fear of it. Those revelations show us there is no self that lives outside of whatever it is that is being revealed within it. There is no self outside of what is being revealed within it. That is where our true hope lies, because in one respect it's unseen, but then suddenly it is given to us to see -- and it is what we do in these moments with what we're given to see that that determines everything for us.
When we face the devil in our mind, what we are to do is understand that whatever in us that fears the devil IS the devil feared. Whatever is in us that fears the devil IS the devil feared. Does the light fear the darkness? Does the sun go, "Oh, I'm not going to rise because look at those early shadows, there are so many of them."
We must understand that the dawning of this light of every moment -- which is the dawning of a certain kind of Light -- is a gift, an opportunity to explore and discover the completion and fulfillment of a consciousness that doesn't yet know its real role, its real place in life.
Click here to watch the video excerpt of this talk on YouTube >>
Premium & All Access Wisdom School members can watch the full replay of this talk by clicking the link below:
Cultivate the Garden of Faith and Nourish the Soul
Join Guy every Saturday at 8:00am PT / 11:00am ET for a FREE 45-minute livestreamed talk plus Q&A at: InsightTimer.com/guyfinley
Sign up for our newsletter to get a reminder email before each livestream.
Comments (0) 1853 words -
Feb 09, 2024
Stop Doing This if You Want to Make Real Changes
Any moment of real change is the past made perfect through the reconciliation of the will of Heaven acting upon the will of earth, and in that union creating the birth of a brand-new creature.
Any moment of real change is the past made perfect. Not the past reconfigured, disguised as some new plan, but the past made perfect - and the past is made perfect in this intersection of what is perfectly celestial and timeless in its activity working upon what has been created in this world, in this earth called myself.
In the reconciliation of the will of the earth with the will of heaven, a union brings forth a brand-new creature. A brand-new creature doesn't have to try to change. It is the expression of what is changeless in time itself.
What is any moment of "now" that is in the world but not of it? That is, that which is created being acted on by what is the perfect creative force? What is any moment of that intersection other than an endless interaction, an endless relationship. You can see it - "as above, so below." There's no moment where change - meaning rebirth - isn't taking place.
Maybe that's the problem for us - that we don't really get this idea that when something is changed, it's changed. It hasn't become a better version of itself. It isn't some strange extension of what was almost okay and now it's nearer to that. Real change must be understood as being synonymous with becoming a new creature, a new creation in that moment. Because everything around us is, in fact, becoming reborn, remade moment to moment.
If that's true - and you can see that - then why in the name of God are you and I not changing? Why do we live outside of this celestial, harmonious relationship between what is timeless and what is in time? Between what is true and loving and that which is intended to be the reflection of that?
Evidence suggests that we don't see at all - not really. When a moment comes along and our attention is seized by it - and it always is - the reason our attention is seized by the moment is because this consciousness sees that moment as something that is set against itself. So I am literally, in that moment, looking only at a negative reaction to the moment, and the negative reaction is suggesting - as it always does - what I need to do to change the moment, what I have to do to make that moment just go away.
We don't really see at all, because this summary resistance - born of a conditioned consciousness that is looking for the confirmation and the continuation of itself through time - is a blinding force, and it is also a binding force. In those moments when we are filled with this resistance, all we see is what our negative reaction points to outside of us and then blames accordingly for the pain of our experience in that moment.
First and foremost: it is impossible to blame any moment for the pain we're in and be changed in that moment as well. If you blame a moment, there will never be any change in that moment. The change will only be what you see from the past as causing it, or the future you hope to reach where you're not in pain anymore.
If you want to change, you've got to get rid of the whole notion of blame. It has to go - it is a lie, it is a deceit. This blaming nature does not exist apart from the conditioning that measures the moment according to its expectation - and when the moment doesn't match how it is supposed to be, then this consciousness can't find fault with itself, so it blames the circumstance for not being the way it's supposed to be. Then it plans how to change it.
Have you not heard the word, the expression, "the change of life?" Mostly it has to do I think with getting older, as in, "I'm going through a change of life." I want you to understand there is no change of life, in the highest sense of being changed into a new human being, without you and I being willing to go through the change of light.
The real change of life, at every level, requires that we go through a change in light that can only take place in that light - because, as I said, what is blame other than a conditioned manifestation of a mind that, looking out, wants "that" and doesn't want "that" - or doesn't want "that" and correspondingly wants something else. It is a mind that lives in a perpetual divided state, endlessly comparing and measuring each moment to what it expects it to be. And when it doesn't hit the mark, then everything's got to change about "you," everything's got to change about the world.
The last thing that we suspect is that the reason we keep meeting these same moments is because this consciousness blames the experience of the moment on the condition instead of its own conditioned state.
Just for grins, just for 24 hours, resolve to set an intention: anything that comes up in me that wants to blame him, her, this, or that for this rush of negativity, this anxiety, this fear - anything that comes up that wants to find something to blame - I absolutely under no circumstances will agree with it. I will become the observer of this consciousness that wants to blame, instead of serving it unconsciously and hoping that the changes it suggests I make will produce a change in the way I experience my life. We have the evidence in front of us all the time, it doesn't work.
Can you see how futile it is to immediately identify with anything that wants to blame a circumstance for what, ostensibly, is this consciousness that's resisting anything that doesn't match its own image?
If we can see that, then we should be able to see - given what we've described - that what we are really blind to is that we live from a mind that never stops resisting its own expectation. That never stops resisting anything that doesn't grant it what it has desired.
A consciousness like that is never in the light of the moment, but rather is always shining what it calls its light on the moment - and when that light reveals what it doesn't expect to see in that moment, it says the moment is dark.
No moment is dark. Every moment is a marriage of infinite divine forces, each and all interacting, blending, and bringing about endless new creations, of which you and I are intended to be a part, but are not yet.
Watch the video excerpt of this talk below on YouTube:
Premium & All Access Wisdom School members can watch the full replay of this talk by clicking the link below:
3 New Choices to Help You Make Real Changes in Your Life
Join Guy every Saturday at 8:00am PT / 11:00am ET for a FREE 45-minute livestreamed talk plus Q&A at: InsightTimer.com/guyfinley
Sign up for our newsletter to get a reminder email before each livestream.
-
Jan 23, 2024
Journeying Within: Guy Finley and the Transformative Mission of Life of Learning Foundation
Taking up a spiritual journey is often a deeply personal quest, yet it becomes extraordinary when shared with a community dedicated to self-discovery.
In a recent interview with Guy Finley, founder and director of the Life of Learning Foundation, hosted by MysticMag, the roots of this transformative organization are unveiled. Guy's path to spiritual awakening, marked by encounters with enlightened mentors and a pivotal moment with Vernon Howard, led him to establish the Life of Learning Foundation in 1992.
Today, the foundation stands as a beacon for sincere seekers worldwide, offering a unique approach to spiritual exploration characterized by interactivity and active participation. As we delve into Guy's insights, we'll discover the foundation's evolution, its commitment to truth-telling, and a poignant narrative illustrating the profound impact of the Life of Learning Foundation on an individual's spiritual journey.
Can you share the inspiration behind establishing the Life of Learning Foundation and its mission in the realm of spiritual discovery?
In a way, I think it was inevitable. From the time I was a child, I was called to a spiritual life and had a number of transformative experiences. As a young man, I left a successful music career to travel around the world seeking higher wisdom. I was fortunate to find an enlightened man, Vernon Howard, right here in the United States. I studied with him for 15 years. At one point Vernon told me I would one day have my own school.
He gave me the responsibility of running the Southern California branch of his school. And he encouraged me to speak, and ultimately write my own book, which became my first best seller, The Secret of Letting Go.
In 1992 Vernon died and I moved to Oregon to continue my work. I started giving talks in the area, and the Work grew. Ultimately, I founded the nonprofit Life of Learning Foundation, a Center for Spiritual Discovery.
Our mission is to help sincere spiritual seekers realize a conscious relationship with the Divine. Life of Learning is a welcome harbor for anyone wishing to let go of harmful negative states such as stress, fear, and resentment in favor of a life filled with more love, compassion, and excellence.
How has the foundation evolved since its inception, and what key milestones or achievements are you particularly proud of?
When I first started to hold classes in southern Oregon, I didn't know what would happen, but I felt compelled to speak. At first, I spoke to a small group of students in a room provided by a local business. I continued to write books and distribute talks, at first on tape, and more and more people discovered our growing inner-life school.
Eventually, we built our beautiful headquarters in Merlin, Oregon where people are encouraged to visit and take part in our live events. With advances in technology, we developed first a tape-of-the-month club, then a CD-of-the-month club.
For a time, we held an online chat room. Now fast-forward 25 years. With the help of our volunteers, we now livestream all our talks. Twice-weekly Life of Learning talks are heard by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide through direct live-streaming via Go-to-Webinar, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, as well as through replays that people can stream whenever they want. One of our programs I'm particularly happy with is our OneJourney.net site. This site was developed in conjunction with the publication of my book, The Seeker, The Search, The Sacred.
The purpose of the book, and the site, is to show that across time and around the world all human beings have the same wish to have a relationship with the Divine. At our core, we all want the same thing. If we understood this, our relationships with one another would be based on compassion, not competition.
The Living Book on the OneJourney.net site is an expansion of The Seeker book, using quotes from great sages from across time and cultures to show they all have the same message about human nature and what we are meant to become.
In your perspective, what unique approach does the Life of Learning Foundation take towards spiritual exploration, and how does it differentiate itself in the field?
One of the aspects of Life of Learning that makes it stand apart is its interactive nature. Students are told not to rely on the teacher, but to do their own work, make their own discoveries, and prove everything Guy says for themselves. At every class, students are encouraged to go up to the mic and share what they've seen about themselves.
Long-time students are invited to lead online study groups where they give a 15-minute talk on what they've learned and take questions from the audience. This allows them to put the principles they've learned into practice and develop themselves in ways they wouldn't be able to without this extra level of work.
Life of Learning is not just for listening to truthful ideas but for working with them daily. Giving students a chance to actively work with what they learn strengthens their understanding. It has long been said that we learn by teaching. We provide many opportunities for students to learn in this important way.
As the Founder and Director, what challenges have you encountered in fostering a spiritual community, and how have you navigated those challenges?
If one is to be a true teacher one has to first, not want anything from students, and second, be willing to tell people the truth about themselves. This doesn't mean one should be cruel, but it does mean not to sugarcoat matters and to help people become objective self-observers.
Sometimes people who have a false idea of what spirituality is about are offended by hearing the truth. They want to be told that they're beams of light, that they're special. They don't want to hear that they are confused and self-centered and that the cause of their pain is not something they can blame outside of themselves but is due to a misunderstanding within themselves.
Our lower nature doesn't want to hear that there's anything wrong with it. Many people find value in their old nature and are not ready to let it go. Any true teacher tries to help people see for themselves that there's another, higher nature they could be living from. But that means seeing through the misdirection of the lower nature, and many people close off as soon as they realize they have to point the arrow back at themselves. I don't try to navigate this challenge, and I refuse to dilute my message to please others. If people aren't ready to hear the truth about themselves, there's nothing anyone can do.
But when a person is exposed to the truth, a seed is planted. It is hoped that one day, when, like the prodigal son, they wake up and find themselves eating husks, they'll remember they once heard something true, and they will seek out a true source again.
Could you highlight a transformative story or experience that illustrates the impact of the Life of Learning Foundation on an individual's spiritual journey?
Just the other day a long-time student shared an experience she had with her sister that was quite transformative. She said she's a bit of an outcast in her family, largely because she's in this Work instead of the church she was brought up in.
Her sister especially holds a lot of resentment for her. Several years earlier when their father passed, the sister just sent a text message, and clearly didn't want to talk to her. Then recently this student received the first text from her sister since their father had died, to tell her their mother had a heart attack.
Again, the student felt the sister didn't want to talk to her, but she thought this time she would do something different and call her. To her shock, the sister poured out all her hate and resentment on her. The student understood her sister was upset over their mother, and even though she couldn't help reacting herself, because of her work the student understood not to fuel the fire by returning anger for anger.
So, she worked to stay present to herself, and she saw something she had never seen before. She realized for most of her life she had bought into the view her family had of her, that she was a horrible person who deserved to be punished. But now she saw that nature was not who she truly was, and she didn't have to judge herself or feel sorry for herself, or try to gain the approval of others. To the point of your question, she said, it's in these moments of awareness that a new choice can be made and we can be transformed.
She added, that what feels like an ending is really the ground of a new beginning, and doing this work does change us. This is a small example, but it illustrates the moments of self-revelation that change us if we will continue on the path to self-discovery.
——————
Guy Finley is an internationally renowned spiritual teacher and bestselling author. He is the Founder and Director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for spiritual self-study located in Merlin, Oregon. He is the best-selling author of The Secret of Letting Go and 45 other books and audio programs that have sold over 2 million copies, in 30 languages.
Guy offers online classes every Wednesday evening and Sunday morning. These classes are free to all and have been attended by thousands of students throughout the world.
-
Apr 13, 2015
-
Apr 12, 2009
-
Nov 30, 2008
-
Jul 06, 2008
-
Jan 21, 2008
-
Nov 07, 2007
-
Dec 10, 2006
-
Nov 28, 2006
-
Aug 02, 2006
Get Guy Finley’s Bestselling eBook for FREE!
Freedom from the Ties that Bind
Simply by Joining Our Newsletter List!