View Related
Best-selling self-realization author
Key Lesson: Revelation is not a product of time, rather (it is) the sudden appearance of an impersonal, timeless awareness within us. These “ah-ha” moments do not provide intellectual answers; rather they provide, by grace, a glimpse of a higher order of awareness whose peace is inseparable from the Divine intelligence it permeates.
For Further Study
If there’s one thing that should be more than evident to everyone on the planet, it’s that the level of pain in it is increasing. Human beings are imbalanced, forever teetering. And how do we know that? Because if you just push them a little bit, down they go!
Why are we so easily pushed down, falling into anger, fear, or worry? And why do these chronic, unwanted emotional states remain in us? Why is it that we don’t find a balance that allows us to be kind, regardless of the circumstances we’re in? Why isn’t there a patience that can withstand being pushed by anything? And why does our resolve to change this painful pattern of not wanting painful moments only ensure that it continues to repeat? These are important questions if we want to understand our present circumstances and have a fresh start at experiencing a balanced life.
You would think that human beings who are wobbling in and out of balance would want to know something about balance… beginning with understanding this extraordinarily powerful principle: Balance is the expression of opposites reconciled. Calling on this understanding in those painful moments that we repeatedly push against brings together the opposites of wanting and not wanting and produces from them something they cannot do by themselves.
Presently when we encounter an “Oh, no!” moment, we automatically call on thought. When we have a problem in life, when we’re heart-heavy, worried or frightened, we call on thought, and then more thoughts to re-establish our lost sense of balance. Thought calls on the past, its plans, its spiritual ideas in order to resolve what disturbs it. And then thought calls up a future that it creates out of reconfiguring the past. Thought will call up a future where “I won’t have this problem because I’m going to get rid of her,” or “I’m going to change him,” or “I’m going to move,” or “I’m going to get a different job.”
So, thought always calls upon thought in an attempt to create balance. But thought is not intended to be a balancing force in us. You don’t use gasoline to put out a fire, do you? Why would something as simple and innocuous as someone’s comment cause us to topple over? It’s because we live in thought, images, and ideas about ourselves. All someone has to do is psychologically accost an idea we think is real “me,” or that we believe is true, and because it is challenged, this whole sense of self comes falling down, doesn’t it? How many of you have had your life fall apart?
And when our life falls apart, with what do we put it back together? With thought, or thought’s ally – negative states. Thought loves the glue of negativity. We think that somehow, if we just get angry, worried, or frightened enough, it will put us back together again. But there’s a key misunderstanding: thought can’t balance anything because thought always adds weight to one side or the other. When we think about something, we’re always adding thoughts here or taking thoughts away there, which means we’re always working in one of the opposites. And no thought can balance what thought has created in an imbalanced state.
Then what is it that balances? What allows this divided nature that works in opposites to attain the peace it seeks? What creates balance in a human being? That which creates balance is itself greater than the balancing it does. It is larger, broader, more encompassing, and it already exists prior to the opposites. It is not thought that we must turn to for balance. We must turn to awareness of thought to create balance. Awareness of thought is the only thing that can balance thought. Why? Because the light of awareness recognizes imbalance.
So what is our work? To come wide awake and realize – in any moment we feel the imbalance of that teeter-tottering, tormenting thought trying to pull us left and right – that we can’t resolve it. We’ve tried all our lives to resolve what thought produces in us. Instead, now we turn that thought, that feeling, over to our awareness of it. And that’s it! We stay conscious instead of getting caught up in the conspiracy that thought produces when first it deceives and then drags us into its plot to resolve that problem.
We can recognize something’s taken place that’s been stealing from us a balance that we are intended to have. We are not meant to live imbalanced. We are meant to live in perfect poise. Not poise in terms of being a perfectly peaceful person, but the poise that comes with recognizing that, at every moment, we already live within something in us that has the capacity to bring balance to every moment.
This is what we have to do when the storms come, when the pains that have never healed appear: We must begin to understand that the only way these pressing pains appear and the only way they’re ever going to be truly healed, balanced, is when we do the beautiful work of turning all that nature over to that which is greater than itself.
And what is greater than a set of opposites? That which is always there prior to its appearance. Call it whatever you want. Call it the Wisdom of Intelligence, Perfect Balance, God, the Christ, Truth, the Living Light. The key isn’t what we call it. The key rests in whether or not we will call upon it in those unbalanced moments so we can see the collision of opposites – my plan vs. the way the world turned, your facial expression vs. my demand for respect. We see thoughts are actually colliding with one another, and in the collision, producing an inner storm while seeking ways to balance itself by calling on the very thoughts that produced the storm in the first place!
So the pain of the crisis, and all the thought it stirs up, must be surrendered. We will no longer turn to the self that always claims it and then promises to be the healer. When we start to feel pain, worry, fear, we won’t try to build ourselves a vessel by which we’ll escape the storm.
Never try to escape a storm! Give it up. Become the one who is awake and aware of the ache, instead of the self that is identified with the thoughts and feelings that promise to end the pain but only perpetuate it. Learn to see the difference between the two and you will discover a life in which you will participate in a beautiful and eternal balance called Love, Light, and Goodness. It is always present. Our sole task is to present ourselves to it in the right way, so that it can do for us what we have never been able to do for ourselves.
Excerpted from MP3-470 Brand New Tools for Building a Brighter, More Balanced Life [SKU D3MP3]
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
Post Article:
Submit Your Own Article