A Personal Note From Orion

I hope you’re doing well and making the best out of your day. If you’re not making the best out of your day and you’re just laying in bed, that’s okay. Wherever you are, you are okay and everything will be alright. Give yourself grace. This situation we’re in right now is a lot to handle. We need all the tools and spiritual resources that we can have so we can be resourceful to handle whatever is to come.

I had an inspiring conversation with my guest today. He’s very wise and he’s one of those rare people that hang out with royalties and the top celebrities in the world. At the end of the day, he understands that what is important is what’s in your heart.

Guy Finley is an internationally renowned spiritual teacher and self-help author. He is the founding director of Life of Learning Foundation, a non-profit center for inner development located in Southern Oregon. He also hosts The Wisdom School, an online self-discovery program for seekers. Guy is the best selling author of Secrets of Letting Go and more than 50 other popular works. His newest book is Relationship Magic: Waking Up Together. And now, without further ado, on to the show.

 

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About Today’s Show

Hi Guy and welcome to Stellar Life Podcast. It’s wonderful having you here. Thank you for being here.

Oh, I’m delighted to have the time with you, Orion.

Thank you! Guy, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your passion?

Maybe most relative to what we’re going to talk about today is the fact that I was raised in an incredibly successful family, show business family actually. My father was Time Magazine Man of the Year. He was the first man to introduce the idea of variety television show before we had these talk shows, he actually invented the genre. I was raised, Orion, amongst the children of all of the notables from a time when most of the listeners here won’t even remember. That’s how old I am. 

But there was so much gleam, so much for me to see in those times because while on one hand, I was riding in the car with my father as the mayor of the Hollywood Christmas Parade, literally sitting in the lap of Jayne Mansfield, I was so aware of what felt like fear and anger. I was just conscious as a boy that there was an immense contradiction between what I was being told was good, being shown as being valuable, and the hearts and minds of the people that were showing and telling me that.

It really started with me asking questions at a very early age. I’m talking about seven, eight years old of, what am I here for? This doesn’t seem to be right. I had no idea, of course, what any of it was about, why I felt that way. But in the end, it turned out for me that the guiding, governing question was, why is there this pain? Not just in my life but in everybody’s life. And, is there actually something that one can learn or discover that brings that pain into a different kind of relationship where one understands that while it may not be escapable, like Buddha said, “This world is suffering.” What purpose does it serve? How can one use it in order to not be someone who hurts themselves or others?

Sorry for the long answer. You asked me a little bit about my past and that tells you everything about who I was and what I went through. I was a composer and a performing artist. Actually, the first soft rock artist, with my partners, ever signed with Motown Records back in 1971. I had a very successful career but I left everything in 1979 to go to the East. I traveled to find someone I hoped who could help answer some of the questions I had. 

After some journey like that, I came home and my life has been that journey completely. All of the books that I’ve written and everything I teach here in Southern Oregon is all about the further clarification of this contradiction in our consciousness that all of us experience, and how we can use it to become clear and better human beings. There you have it.

As a boy, you said you had that contradiction because you felt like everything that was supposed to be of the highest value was not what you were seeing.

Exactly.

What did they teach you and what did you find out?

In the end, who knows when you’re a child what these impressions mean. For most of us, we can see that when we come to something that is true, good, valuable, and most importantly, lasting in terms of the lessons we receive in life, they mostly have to do with discovering what doesn’t work. We stay in relationships until we can’t stand them anymore and then wish we’d done something sooner to find a new way to be with someone. We pursue our ambitions, coveting what we covet in the hope that it’s going to complete us until, at some point, we realize this isn’t the path to completing myself. 

In the East, they go, neti neti (नेति नेति), not this, not that. When it proceeds along the lines of a certain set of revelations that at first seemed dark because it seems like, what’s the point? Then the person gets bitter or cynical, but if that wish remains true to know what is true, then it’s all about letting go. That brought me to that idea because that was the very first best-selling book I ever wrote, it was called The Secret of Letting Go. That’s how I got to the point where I was ready to share what I had learned.

What did you personally have to let go of?

Me, Orion. This is the whole thing. It’s not something that most of us want to hear, but what we have to let go of isn’t the world gone mad, a planet sickened by a virus, financial situation that’s sinking all ships, what my mother or brother said to me last week, or my father did to me 50 years ago, none of that is what we have to let go of. 

Letting go is an inside job. It begins with understanding that our experience, moment to moment, is born of our relationship with our own consciousness. Until we change our consciousness, it doesn’t matter what we believe needs to be changed in the world around because we’ll just come full circle and find that we have to change something else in order to feel like we’re safe and secure.

What do we need to change in our consciousness and how do we do that?

If you had a friend, Orion, and every day he or she came over. As a rule, you were glad to see them, but gradually, you began to connect certain unhappiness that you felt. Maybe things were being stolen from your house or your purse. As incredible as it was to believe, you began to realize that this pain of what you value was imminently connected with the appearance of that friend. And then one day, because you began to suspect it, you actually discovered that was true, that they were just on the surface pretending to be your friend. How long would you stay with someone like that, Orion?

Not a second.

Yeah. Because the minute you discovered that, you would realize this has been all wrong. I’ve been involved in a relationship that compromises me and doesn’t complete me. I appreciate and like it, but I can get it now. This will never bring me the feeling of being at peace and free that I hoped it would bring. That’s a little story, an analogy of the fact that we don’t understand yet, for the most part, that when we are afraid of something and our fearful thoughts and feelings, familiar fearful thoughts and feelings, by the way, begin to prescribe for us the path to take, do this, go there, run like this, get a hold of that. That nature that is promising to protect us and make us safe doesn’t know anything at all about safety, knows nothing at all about how to bring about the peace that it promises.

Letting go is an inside job. It begins with understanding that our experience, moment to moment, is born of our relationship with our own consciousness. Click To Tweet

You asked, “What do you let go of in yourself?” What you have to do first is see that all of these parts of us that want to blame others, want to rush around and worry, that all of the things that produce fear of tomorrow, they all belong to a level of our consciousness that cannot save us from that suffering, but that is actually complicit in the creation of it. We come to this idea of how important it is that Christ, Buddha, and every great planetary teacher has taught, that we must learn what it means to be watchful and mindful. Because if we can be aware of where our own consciousness is complicit in our captivity, then that awareness begins the negation of our relationship with those parts of ourselves. 

We begin to let go. In Christian terms, we begin to die to those parts of ourselves so that in their passing, we can realize something that isn’t caught up and making a prison for us, because it’s not trying to find a time when we’ll be free. That nature’s free now. 

I guess somebody that is listening to you right now will say, “I don’t feel free. I have to stay in my house. I can’t go to work. I have a heavy financial burden and a fear of the future.” How do you help somebody that is listening right now and he’s going through all these emotions? What are some things to do?  How to change the perspective in a reasonable way that doesn’t sound so far fetched? It sounds to me like you’ve done so much work on yourself, it’s easier for you to handle those things. If somebody is in distress right now and maybe they have not experienced all the teachings that you’ve experienced, how can they handle this new reality?

Yes. It’s a good question and an important one. Let’s start with something very basic. Everybody, if you wish, get a piece of paper and a pen. However, you make a note for yourself and write this simple idea down. It’s been a guiding light for me for many years. It’s actually important in my own development as a man. Here it is: We must learn to do what is in our power and refuse to do what is not. 

Let me enlarge the idea. First, no one, only a cruel human being, would discount the suffering of another human being. We all suffer. Some of us are in positions right now that are unthinkable, even a month ago, that we would be brought to the precipice of maybe being without a job, limited income, not enough, and worrying about how we’ll feed our family tomorrow. Not to mention, God forbid, that we should contract ourselves this virus. Because then, not only are we in a financial or physical problem, but we have physical limitations to deal with it. 

Please understand, everyone, I’m capable of doing so to help you understand a way to not waste your vital energies and passion on things that are powerless to produce change and use those powers and energies to produce something meaningful for yourself, even if it’s just a new understanding about yourself that helps lighten the burden of all of this fear of tomorrow.

To that end, do what is in my power, refuse to do what is not. Let’s start with the back part of that sentence. What is not in my power? I can’t wave a magic wand and make the virus go away. It’s not in my power to make my employer pay me when I’m not working. It’s not in my power, at least in the foreseeable future, to change the authority whatever its source that’s determining my future. I’m literally locked down in my house and wish that I wasn’t because I can’t stand being by myself or I don’t know what to do with myself, but more importantly, I have all of these fears and anxiety about tomorrow. 

Now let’s look at that. What is my fear or anxiety about tomorrow? Again, I am not in any way whatsoever saying that we don’t suffer over these things. Here’s something else you might want to write down because it’ll help summarize what I’m about to describe, listeners. Please write this down. When it comes to fear, or for that matter any anxiousness or worry, the feel is real but the why is a lie.

Orion, as an advocate for your listeners, you help me make this as clear as I can. When I’m worrying about tomorrow, has tomorrow come?

Tomorrow has not come.

Really, what am I anxious over?

I’m anxious over a picture that I have in my mind and an image of a possible future.

That’s it. It’s perfect. Here’s the next important idea, listeners. No fear exists without negative imagination. There is no psychological fear without negative imagination. We have to be brave, we have to be willing to listen, we can’t just throw away the idea because we’re full of fear. I said the feel is real. But if we can see, as Orion just said, that what I’m afraid of tomorrow is really just a picture my own mind has created and then sits and goes, “Oh no, look at that.” And then wants to run away from it or try to control it. It’s like discovering that most of the despair we feel is because we’re identified with a dream. It doesn’t matter what you do in the dream to get rid of the despair, it just strengthens the dreamer. The task is to wake up, which is what all of my work is about.

Let’s look at this. I can hear some listeners saying, “I’ve got $48 in my checking account, my credit card is overdrawn, I have to feed myself, and I don’t know how I’ll pay the rent.” To that question, I ask this question. Please, listeners. Do what’s in your power, refuse to do what’s not. Is there anything that fear, worry, or anxiety can do for me in my situation other than rob me of the creative energies and the vitality that I need to intelligently respond to my situation? Or by unconsciously identifying with that negativity, am I actually compounding the conflict I’m in and ultimately giving away what I need to be present enough to make good decisions? And the answer is, of course.

When we are resisting our condition, what we’re really resisting is our own consciousness. Again, I’m not saying that these circumstances aren’t dire, they may be, but let us use the moment, the revelation of it so that we might at least be released from what is unnecessary and not in our power to change. Because then we can begin to do what is in our power. 

We are empowered- in every present moment- to effortlessly dismiss any dark thought or feeling that diminishes our happiness. Click To Tweet

What is in our power in this situation? Maybe I need to absolutely sit down and consolidate, make a list, look at what I have, what I don’t have, prioritize that, and not out of fear, but out of a wish to use my mind and heart for the purpose, it was given to me as a tool to clarify my actual circumstance. Then, once I know what I can and cannot do, what is within my reach and what is not? Then I won’t waste my time being angry or blaming things for what isn’t in my power anymore.

I would like to add that when somebody’s making that list, you can make a list from a place of extreme stress, or I should do it because Guy told me to do, or you can make that list after you did some breathing work. You inhale, you exhale, you calm down your nervous system. Maybe you meditated, maybe you journaled a little bit, maybe you went and you took a hot bath and a hot shower. Anything to calm down your nervous system. Maybe sitting and actually envisioning a more compelling future, something on the physical plan just to calm you down. 

Because like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin used to say, “We are spiritual beings living having a human experience.” As we are in our physical bodies, a lot of stress is accumulating in your body. Whatever helps you release stress, whether it’s a little exercise, go for a run in your own living room or in your backyard if you have one, anything that can relieve your stress, kiss your loved one, something that can calm down and then go and do list. Would you agree?

I always think it’s a good idea to be in our body and as watchful and quiet as we can be physically. That’s always a good idea.

What are some other ways that somebody who experiences anxiety can calm themselves down before going into this list?

I want to make something very clear. Listeners, Orion, take your left hand and hold it in front of you. Our left hand is going to represent the conditions we don’t want to be in and the anxiety that we feel about it. That’s what our left hand represents, certain things that we are identified with and we feel. Does everybody understand that? Because we all have that. That’s what our left hand represents. 

Our right hand, pick it up in front of you. It represents an idea or a wish, something that I’m going to try to formulate in order to get rid of what I’m feeling and going through with my left hand. I want to get rid of the anxiety and quiet it. Now take your right hand and put it up against your left hand and try to push your left hand out of the way. The only thing that happens when you try to push your left hand away with your right hand, is that the pressure between the two hands increases because you can’t get rid of anxiety by not wanting it. You get rid of anxiety by seeing that it’s a lie even though it feels real. This is the real interior work.

You asked me before we began talking today, Orion, what would I hope for? I will formulate that to some extent. We are fools if we believe that this is the last crisis that we’re going to go through while we’re in a body.

Believe me, I’m from Israel. I’ve been through many wars and crises. Unfortunately, sometimes history repeats itself. We’ve all been through many crises, we’ve all impressed ourselves with our coping mechanism and achieved things beyond what we ever imagine.

That’s good. Let me again reframe this, what if I begin to understand that my experience of an unwanted moment such as any crisis cannot be separated from the level of my own consciousness that is brought out at that moment and feels the fear or the anxiety. We know this is true. I’m assuming you’ll know the name, Victor Franco.

Yes.

When a person begins to understand that every one of us is capable not just of transcending the condition we’re in, even though we see everyone around us going mad. But we can use that condition to not just change our own consciousness, but by that change in our consciousness bring about goodness, light, and love that embraces the whole of our community, if not our family and friends. So that my wish in this conversation with you would be to bring or impart to the listeners that we are created to come into these moments of crisis as one order of a human being, one level of consciousness. I enter into it with my past, with my anger, my fears, my worries, my doubts, my inadequacies, the wounds that I have brought with me. I come into this moment with all of those things in my consciousness and the condition which exists for the purpose of making me conscious of that content of myself can either produce in its appearance a way in which I exit this crisis a completely different kind of man or woman that went into it.

Almost like an exchanging version of yourself.

Yes, that’s exactly right. This is what Christ talked about, lose your life to gain it. The whole idea of making this exchange. One of the great old rabbis said, “If I’m not for myself, who will be? If I’m just for myself, then what am I? If not now, then when?” 

Or in Hebrew, you can say, אם אין אני לי מי לי. That’s the first sentence.

That’s perfect. Because you see what it’s saying that this is the moment of change. Not tomorrow and certainly not yesterday, because it’s obvious we keep going through these crises, they’re just different names, but the same consciousness creating it. We’re looking at this beautiful big picture, Orion, of how as individuals we can use these moments to bring about such a fundamental change in ourselves that we are no longer the same person who enters into that unwanted problem. So that the consciousness changes, the problem goes away, or at least it’s mitigated. We don’t need to look at big strokes. I’m glad that you said what you said at the start of this interview.

But what about not this broad consciousness business, what about every moment? Every day? How I can use the fact that I’m impatient, because I’m irritated, because I’m afraid to produce not just a change in myself, but maybe a change in my whole family. We look at these ideas and we can start to understand certain things. One of the reasons that we get anxious is because our mind is telling us that something has to be dealt with right now that doesn’t exist in a way to be dealt with right now. Anxiety is a waste, surely we can see that. All anxious feelings are a waste of our vitality.

Totally agree.

But no anxious thought or feeling tells us, “Hey Orion, hey Guy, come along with me and let me waste what you need so that instead of finding a job, instead of doing what you can at home to be awake and present, you don’t have that energy. Instead, let’s squander it.” If I actually get it, then when the anxiousness comes up which it will, then suddenly, I’m present enough to recognize, “Wait a minute, you’re telling me if I will run out, or do this, or go by that, or whatever, that I will somehow the promise you make will make me whole. But I’ve been listening to your promise for 10,000 years. I don’t believe in your promise. Instead, I’m going to use your appearance to escape the old relationship I had with you while I always do what you tell me to do. No more. You are not my guide.” That’s in my power.

When you let go, a part of yourself dies. In its passing, you realize that everything that you negatively hold in the past was your prison and now you are free. Click To Tweet

Yes. It’s unnecessary, it doesn’t benefit you and yet it does have a place. I’ve been listening to Abraham Hicks for a long time now. What they say is that those dark feelings, they do have a place. They create contrast because without darkness there is no light. When you get a dark thought, it’s almost like a guided system for you to see where you do need to go. Would you agree?

Yeah. We can enlarge that to understand that each moment of our life is actually a revelation of some character or quality in our consciousness. Every moment when we go out—God willing, we’ll be able to go out and enjoy the world around us again shortly. But here, I live in Southern Oregon up on a top of a little mountain. I go out every morning and I hand feed deer that I’ve raised for five generations and if you could see out the window here, I have 10 feeders hanging for birds. I have this wonderful relationship with nature. 

I go outside in the morning to enjoy the company of these creatures because each and every one of them has their own personality and each reveals within me certain qualities that I don’t know without being in their company. The time that I spend with these creatures is a revelation of something that isn’t realized until I’m with them.

It’s exactly the same thing when it comes to these thoughts and feelings. Their purpose is to help me realize something that I don’t know about myself until they appear. By the light of that discovery, because it is light that shows me, the darkness doesn’t know itself, that’s right out of scripture. The light dwells in the darkness and darkness knows it not. The very appearance of the stress or anxiety is actually, by contrast, a way in which I can see in my own consciousness that anxiety is no good for me, it doesn’t serve anything. That fear promises to save me, but really, it’s guiding me into a circle. Then these changes become internalized and finally manifested in our day to day life to where we make ourselves better and the world around us brighter because our consciousness has been changed from inside out.

Beautifully said. Wow, what was powerful. Guy, what is your definition of happiness?

Not having a single want in the world.

That’s very hard.

Of course, it is.

I want so much. I actually enjoy my desires. I have a desire to light up the world, it does make me happy.

Why do I have to desire that? Why can’t I just be it?

Because the desire I feel is our engine to do it.

Look, I desire to light up the world, I desire to be rich, I desire to be healthy. The real question is isn’t that the same thing as saying that one day, I will become whatever it is that this desire imagines. It’s an important distinction because desire doesn’t exist without an image.

I just love the word desire. I can’t make it wrong.

I’m not asking you to make it wrong, I’m not judging. All I’m doing is showing.

Okay.

I’m just showing you that at Orion’s heart, there is a passion. The passion she didn’t put in herself any more than Guy put this passion in himself to be able to perceive what is true so as to be freed by truth. But when that passion is taken over by the mind that has an image of itself which it wants to become so it can look at itself in that way to think about itself through those means or possession, then that mind is placing itself where it’s going to run into a crisis. Because to have a desire and then imagine what I want and even acquire it, that means that my happiness is dependent upon what I’ve imagined. 

I know that you know better. My happiness doesn’t depend upon anything I can imagine. Happiness is God-given. Happiness is the gift of a spirit that begins to fulfill itself through understanding its divine relationship with them. Every crisis I’ve ever been in, you can say whether it’s true for you or not, has been because I have this identification with something that I thought was making me whole. Because I desired it and felt when I got everything would be great and then I did.

Orion, in my life, I can’t tell you, I was good friends and hung out with names that people don’t know anymore, but nevertheless, the most successful people in the world. I believe somehow that my happiness depended upon keeping those relationships in place. So that then I would compromise myself for the sake of holding in place what was fulfilling.

I just want you to say it again because this is so important for each and every one of us to know or remember.

It is. If I have an attachment to an image, then when the condition in life changes and God knows it’s always changing. What more evidence do we need now than what’s happened. To a person sitting there thinking to himself, I’m not saying don’t have goals, I’m not saying don’t save money. I’m saying that if our identity is connected to the image, then when the condition that supports the image changes, which it has to, then all of my identity is suddenly going to feel like it’s threatened and I’m going to start trying to control or change or make you or someone do what I demand because I’m afraid. 

Where did the fear come from? It didn’t come from the condition, it came from my identification with the image that I believed made me whole. The crisis is always a crisis of consciousness first. That’s the main theme because then we know where our attention needs to be moment to moment. Not that we don’t, as you said, have a desire.

Years ago, Orion, my greatest desire was to be in unity with God. Before that desire, it was the desire to make the most beautiful music in the world. Before that, it was to have someone to love and to be with. I had someone to be with and love. I have a wife of 40 years. I had made beautiful music, I received accolades. But at some point, that no longer fulfills my heart. In some ways, it became the source of my sorrow. Because the more successful I became, the more demands there were for me to continue to perform at that level. That’s how a person begins to hate what they do because now they’re a slave of their circumstance instead of being liberated like they believe they would be.

Bit by bit, all of these things which have their time and place proved to not be the path to being complete. So that eventually, a person realizes that being complete has nothing to do with the time to come at all and that desire continues to produce the idea of a time to come until it last when it’s just with the desire, just with that wish to be whole. Wherein they finally discover as far as I’m concerned, the great truth, which is that desire is already being completed, moment to moment. 

Stop thinking in terms of beginnings and endings, successes and failures, and begin to treat everything in your life as a learning experience. Click To Tweet

God doesn’t put into a man or a woman’s heart the idea or image of something without providing a path to realize that that thing that they wish for is already within them. Their task is to fulfill as best they are able. Whatever physical path they have to walk and run through to finally see that what all they’re asked is to just be who and what they are, awake and aware in the moment, watching things appear and disappear.

That’s lofty and I know it is. But we have given ourselves ample knowledge today to realize that that’s the aim now. We must go through the knowledge and act it out so that we can become increasingly complete human beings.

Beautifully said. Guy, what makes you happy?

Doing this with you.

Anything else?

This is so important to understand, why wouldn’t everything be the source of my contentment? Why is my contentment divided up into things that I hope will happen and against things that I hope won’t? Because that means that my life is just flip-flopping back and forth and then I’m always trying to protect happiness by keeping away things that make me unhappy. What if real happiness is understanding that nothing bad can happen to who and what you actually are? Because for me that’s what happiness is. It is being in a ceaseless revelation with every moment that reveals that who I was coming into the moment is no longer necessary for me to protect or keep with me because I’m given a new me, a new understanding, moment to moment. Then happiness isn’t a quality or some possession that has to be chased after or protected. 

Happiness is my relationship with the divine, right now, and always right now. Then fear disappears. Show me how someone who understands that they cannot be diminished could ever fear any moment that formerly produced the idea of making them less than they hoped to be. You can’t. That’s what we’re talking about.

Can you give us your three top tips for living a stellar life?

Yes. Tip number one, follow what you love. It doesn’t mean that you can do it right away, but it means that every day, even if you have to work 16 hours a day, you still can give a little bit of time to what you love. The fact that we love anything is the rarest thing in the universe. No other creature is capable of loving something. We have something in us that has given us something we love. It’s individual. If you will honor what put that love in you, then that love that put it in you will ensure your success at some point. Follow what you love.

Number two, the three most important words in the English language, you can write this down, I can learn. Why? Because it means that there will never be a moment where I feel as though I’m not enough, I can’t do it, I’m inadequate, where I will believe those thoughts and feelings telling me that’s the truth. Because they are never the truth. The truth is I can learn something about that nature. When I discover the truth about anything that would denigrate me, that’s the end of my relationship with that level of myself. I can learn.

Lastly, the limit of your present view is not the limit of your possibilities. Fear never says to you, “Here is a possibility. Doubt me.” Fear never says to you, “Don’t accept me as your guide because I’m going to see to your safety.” Why? Because fear requires that we identify with it so that it can continue to be a false God, a false guide because that’s where all negative states are. 

To consciously change your outlook in life, you must learn to do what is in your power and refuse to do what is not. Click To Tweet

The limit of your possibilities has nothing whatsoever to do with any thought or feeling telling me you’re not going to get through this. Do you want to get through that moment? Start questioning. Wanting to learn the truth of yourself and that truth will not just bring you freedom, but it will show you that you were always free, you just had to learn to listen to what was authentically right within you. That’s it.

Thank you so much, Guy! Where can people find you? Go to your website, attend your events, buy your books?

Thank you for offering that, Orion. If you go guyfinley.org, right on my home page there’s actually a free book that’s offered to anyone. You have to give up your email address because we have to send you the free version of the book. But my website, you can spend years browsing without paying a penny.

You have something like 700 hours of content or something like that. My God.

More than that. I’ve written more than 50 books, there are 7000 hours of recorded material. Everyone, act on this knowledge, guyfinley.org. I have an Online Wisdom School that is less than a cup of coffee a month. If you can’t afford it, we have all kinds of ways to help you get through it. I’m on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I post personally on Twitter four or five times a day. 

If you’re interested, if anything in you has felt the truth of what we spoke, just take the next step, listen to your heart. Your heart will never mislead you. Ask it for guidance and then instead of talking to yourself, listen. You can’t talk to yourself and listen at the same time. That’s a big one. That’s it.

Thank you so much, Guy.

I’m so glad to spend this time with you.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, listeners, remember to follow what you love, know that you can learn, and remember that the limits of your present view is not the limit of your possibilities.

Yes.

This is Orion, until next time!

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓} Let go of attachments and things that don’t add value to your life. If something doesn’t spark joy, it shouldn’t take up a lot of space in your life.
{✓} Evaluate your relationships. Pay special attention to the people who love and support you as well as the ones who weigh you down. The key people in your life should be those who care about your feelings and wellbeing.
{✓} Be mindful of your thoughts and actions. Develop a deep understanding that everyone is dealing with their own struggles. We are all collectively afflicted in this global pandemic and a little kindness goes a long way.
{✓} Don’t be anxious about tomorrow, and rob yourself of today over something that doesn’t exist yet. Worrying is just praying for something you don’t want to happen.
{✓} Focus only on what you can control. Especially, if you feel like everything around you is out of control. When you focus on what you can fix, you won’t have to think about things you shouldn’t worry about in the first place. 
{✓} Train your mind and understand that working on yourself needs constant practice. Negative thinking can be stopped if you use the right tools and information to help you conquer your mind.
{✓} Pay it forward. Share your light with others so they can share their light with more people. 
{✓} Take this quarantine as a time to reflect deeply on your life. Which stuff do you need to change moving forward so you can build a better future for the next generation?
{✓} Develop a deep understanding of how acceptance and happiness resonate with each other. If you don’t turn your desires into your identity and accept whatever life presents to you – good or bad – is when you can only be truly happy. 
{✓} Visit Guy Finley’s website, Life of Learning, to learn more about your spiritual discovery.

Links and Resources

About Guy Finley

Guy Finley is an internationally renowned spiritual teacher and self-help author. He is the founding director of the Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for inner development located in southern Oregon. He also hosts the Wisdom School an on-line self-discovery program for seekers. Guy is the best-selling author of “The Secret of Letting Go,” and more than 50 other popular works. His newest book is “Relationship Magic: Waking Up Together.”

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