May/June 2002 Living Now
The "Secret of Letting Go"

by Guy Finley offers spiritual answers to every day questions about life

Question: Can you help shed some light on why we are here in this life?

 GF - All of our deeper personal experiences eventually come to reveal some lesson that we needed to learn. This process of events that leads us to the discovery of their cause proves both the existence of order and purpose. The outcome of each experience turns out to be for personal growth. Therefore, it is safe to say we are here on earth, in these bodies, to grow in wisdom and the love that is an outgrowth of it.

Question: In conversations with others, I find myself insisting on being "right." Why should I care so much that my ideas about life are understood by everyone?

 GF- Be willing to try to understand the moment instead of needing to be understood in it. You will lose yourself, and you will begin to have the great bliss of disappearing from your own life. At first, as you are willing to work to understand others more than you want to be understood by them, it seems a diminishing experience. But you will grow through this kind of self-negation into a new sense of yourself that actually includes all of life. You will begin to have a completely different relationship with everyone around you because you are no longer bringing yourself first and foremost into every relationship.

Question: Could you give some insight into loneliness and how to abolish it?

 GF -Loneliness is not the problem. Fear of loneliness is what drives us into wrong relationships, including despairing of ourselves. Think about it: The feeling of being alone has no negative content in and of itself. But as the mind works on it, and brings to bear all of the past negative experiences about being lonely, suddenly loneliness turns from a lamb into a lion. We can never be free of any negative state without being willing to meet it, to see it fully. Negative states continue to win the day and our lives because they know we won't look at their face. One great spiritual secret is that if we will dare negative states to do their worst to us, God will take our defense. This means we will see through that state.

Question: Without reverting to their lower level, how do you get people to stop making their hurtful, cut-down remarks?

 GF. One of the reasons people pounce on or attack us the way they do, is that they are feeding off of us in many different ways, especially when we return a negative energy. For an amazing experience, try sometime consciously refusing your own negativity in the face of someone else's. Just go silent, and then watch what happens to the person who attacked you. The odds are, you will watch this person have a change of heart right in the middle of their attack. And even if they don't change their behavior, your new behavior will leave you feeling better about yourself.

Question: How do you deal with family members and people close to you who refuse to look at themselves? They blame others consistently for their negativity. These people really upset me.

 GF: You must realize that the only way it is possible someone else's negativity can trouble you is because it does indeed set off something of a similar nature within you. This is all under law, having to do with sympathetic vibrations and resistance. Be that as it may, work as best you can to be as watchful as you can around those who are negative. Spiritual Gold is there.

You're invited to send your questions to guy@newconnexion.net or to Guy Finley, P.O. Box 10, Merlin, OR 97532.

Guy Finley lives and teaches in southern Oregon. He is the author of eighteen books and tape albums on the subject of self-realization and inner development and the founder of the Life of Learning Foundation, a non-profit, non-denominational center for Higher Self study. Guy offers classes four days a week at the center and helps thousands of students worldwide in his live monthly chat room classroom. For more information on Guy's books and tapes, or to sign up for a free weekly Key Lesson, visit www.guyfinley.com or call 541-476-1200.