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Best-selling, Self-Realization author
The Journey from Spiritual Knowledge to Being
Key Lesson: Conscious suffering asks us to remain available to the truth of the moment. We cannot decide beforehand everything that truth will reveal. Our work is to be present, including to suffer whatever there may be within us that does not want us to stay in the presence of higher awareness.
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Most of us spend a great deal of our time struggling (in vain I might add) to sort out one conflict or another with others, with the world, or within ourselves. Part of our ever-developing plan to win these wars requires that we acquire new powers – things that we imagine will empower us to end our suffering once and for all.
But past experience proves these exercises to be pointless. The very thing that we set out to obtain to make us fearless, to relieve us of our stress and anxiety, soon becomes the source of a new fear and a new pressure.
No path, no process that we’ve ever given to ourselves to free ourselves from some suffering has ever actually succeeded… other than delivering us to where we have to try again to find the same way past a problem that didn’t exist until we acquired that new idea or image, that new path.
It’s not unlike an addict taking his drug of choice to release himself from that cyclical pain of his addiction. We continue to seek powers outside of us to free us from feeling powerless in the face of what pains us. It’s obvious that no drug the addict wants can free him from the drugs that he wants. What isn’t so obvious though is the following: Each power we imagine will liberate us only strengthens our false belief that the power we need to free ourselves is somewhere outside of us, in someone else’s hands, or in some tomorrow yet to come.
We have no idea of the power with which we have been endowed. Within each of us dwells the possibility of realizing a level of consciousness whose freedom has no contingencies – one that cannot fall apart, even when the conditions in our lives seem to come undone as they do in the shock of any crisis. This special kind of power has nothing to do with being able to control or manipulate conditions outside of us. We’re talking about authority over our own runaway negative reactions.
That’s a completely different kind of power, isn’t it? To possess ourselves as opposed to trying to possess things or relationships, possessions through which we seek the measure of security but never actually secure it.
The power to possess ourselves can’t be granted by anyone or anything outside of us. All powers of the worldly order are powerless to grant us what our heart of hearts wants more than anything else, which is to quietly be in charge of our own heart and our own mind. So, the next time that you’re overcome with a feeling as if you’re powerless, take this one interior action, and watch how that fear disappears.
Take a nice deep breath. Instead of looking at what your fear is telling you is greater than your power to deal with it – for instance a relationship that’s falling apart, a brewing storm of some kind because of unforeseen changes in the world around you, or a pending loss of some kind – instead of looking at what your fear is telling you to consider, look at the part of you that wants you to believe that who you are is inadequate to meet the challenge at hand.
Then, remember this truth: All feelings of being powerless are the false projections of a frightened level of consciousness that is not you and never has been, but has continued to steal your life, my life, everyone’s life in the endless ways in which it sees problems that then it alone has the power to resolve, or it alone crumbles beneath for the weight of its own dark imagining.
Real spiritual power is knowing that no moment is greater than our divine right to call upon an indwelling light (call it what you will), an awareness – a part of our consciousness – that for what it brings into the moment with itself transforms any darkness that it touches into something bright, true, good, and most importantly… free.
For over 40 years Guy Finley has helped individuals around the world find inner freedom and a deeper, more satisfying way to live. His in-depth and down-to-earth teachings cut straight to the heart of today’s most important personal and social issues –stress, fear, relationships, addiction, meditation, and peace. His work is widely endorsed by doctors, business professionals, celebrities, and spiritual leaders of all denominations.
Guy is the author of 45 books and video/audio programs including his international bestseller “The Secret of Letting Go” which has been translated into 30 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide.
He is the founder and director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit Center for Spiritual Discovery with over 40,000 online newsletter subscribers.
https://www.guyfinley.org
Through Life of Learning, Guy has presented over 5,000 unique self-realization seminars to thousands of grateful students throughout North America and Europe over the past 30 years and has been a guest on over 700 television and radio shows, including national appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and NPR. Guy is a faculty member at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York and 1440 Multiversity in Scotts Valley, California. He is a regular expert contributor to Beliefnet, Insight Timer, Simple Habit, and many other popular spiritual sites.
Finley holds regular online classes that are live-streamed – to register go to:
https://www.guyfinley.org/light These classes are open to all. For more information about Guy Finley and Life of Learning Foundation visit www.guyfinley.org
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