In this answer to a viewer's question during a live broadcast, "letting go" author Guy Finley talks about how everything in our lives becomes rightly organized -- including the pursuit of goals -- if we will remember to put first things first.
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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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In this answer to a viewer's question during a live broadcast, "letting go" author Guy Finley talks about how everything in our lives becomes rightly organized -- including the pursuit of goals -- if we will remember to put first things first.
Full Transcript:
Kate: "So outside of listening to these talks and practicing these truths daily, is it okay to have goals and hobbies and sports you have been playing since you were young? Is the key to do the hobbies you love doing, but don't get attached on the outcome of the event? Basically, is it natural to have hobbies and goals outside of your spiritual life that are outside of God's work? I have a big bodybuilding contest coming up this year, and a lot of time and dedication is going into my training physically, but I'm caught in-between two worlds of my spiritual and physical lives. I feel I am being way too hard on myself as an aspirant."
Guy: Yeah, listen: the idea that you're caught between two worlds... it's not the world of physical and spiritual. It's two worlds of opposing desires. It's a consciousness divided - those are the two worlds. Those are the only two worlds, or for that matter, legion, the thousand worlds. I have an idea about myself: one part of me wants to build my body, I want to be healthy. And there is a part of us thinking, "I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't find something magnificent about what a specimen I am." And that's just part of growing up - being identified with the body. We don't set out, I don't think, to be identified with the body, but as we work on it to develop it - and this was true in my day - we set out and then the thing that we love becomes something that we are afraid not to do, because we're identified with it so much. So I become obsessed; it becomes a compulsion. And the compulsion is that I have to keep this going because now I have a desire to be who I imagine myself being. So, if you're following me, this desire to keep that thing going now becomes a form of what? Insistence that I do it. I think, "I don't want to go do this." "But you have to..." Then we call that discipline. And there is discipline, don't misunderstand me. I want everybody to understand. I'm not saying no to anything, other than to negativity - and even that's not "no" to negativity, because you're not going to escape it. This young man, I'm assuming it is a young man, he's into bodybuilding, but he also has a love for the Truth. I want to make it clear, there is no disparity. The disparity is that I go into the bodybuilding world and I become the bodybuilding champion, and then I'm caught up in that, and then I leave that and I realize I went to sleep. I didn't do anything, I didn't think of anything spiritual. I was caught up posing, or thinking, competing, and looking at other bodies. I got caught. Now, oh god, I'm a terrible human being because I did that. No, you're not a terrible human being because you did that. You're experiencing what is terrible in this consciousness - that it's identified with one side or the other endlessly and then judges itself for its identification. Imagine a consciousness that becomes identified with something, and then when it becomes identified with something, it judges itself for not being present to something else it desires. So if you can see that, go lift weights consciously. If you're going to look in the mirror and pose, do it consciously. Look at yourself. Do everything with full awareness. And if you even attempt that, you will see that that seems to be beyond my possibilities. I know the rightness of it. "Chop wood, carry water, wake up, chop wood, carry water." Why can't I do all of that while working to be present, remembering the Father, remembering the Mother, the Divine. There are some men here that I play golf with. I know for myself there's always an exercise... not to get caught up, identified, but to have a first. That's what I'm saying to you. If you have a first and the first is to remember yourself, everything under that is in its right place. If you don't have a first, nothing's in its right place.
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The First Aim is to Remember Yourself
Posted by Guy Finley in 459 Galice Road, Merlin, OR 97532 on , and updated on .
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