Guy Finley Reveals Secrets of Letting Go
Guy Finley Explains Why Letting Go Is Easy When You Realize That Holding On Hurts
By Dr. Ellen Dickstein
Best-selling “Letting Go” author Guy Finley is passionate about the inner journey – the process of self-discovery that transforms a person’s life. He has shared his findings and his enthusiasm in over 40 books and audio albums, and thousands of unique talks that he’s given over the past 30 years. In 1993 he founded the nonprofit Life of Learning Foundation in Merlin, Oregon where he teaches and directs the group’s outreach programs.
As the result of a few unusual childhood spiritual experiences, Guy began his interior journey at a very young age. Into this early start of self-inquiry – of seeking to understand his unique experiences – add the fact that his father was Larry Finley, a Hall of Fame pioneer of late-night television back in the fifties. This meant that Guy grew up best friends with the children of successful show business families, like Desi Arnaz Jr. and the sons of crooner and rat-pack member Dean Martin. So it was at a very early time in his life that Guy realized not only were there at least two worlds unfolding around and within him, but that they seemed to have irreconcilable differences.
But seeking fame was the only path Guy knew. He became a star musician/composer by age 20 with partner Tony Martin Jr., and in 1971 they became the first white soft-rock artists ever to sign with Motown Records. Those were exciting times, hanging around with Diana Ross, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, and other great artists. Even so, he still felt that something was missing from his life, something that couldn’t be answered by the continuous stimulation of being in the public eye. “The idea of happiness and contentment eluded me until I realized these are not the outcome of any achievement in the outer world, but are based on an inner sense of unshakable wholeness.”
In the late 1970s, following several profound spiritual experiences, coupled with an ever clearer realization that worldly success alone would not fill the void in his heart, Guy quit the music business and started looking for someone – a guru, an awakened person of some sort – to give him the answers he needed. He travelled through India, but that proved to be just another dead end. However, he returned home realizing that even though he hadn’t found the answers in others, he’d found an important answer after all. “I realized no one was going to awaken me by tapping me on the head with a peacock feather. I had to do the work myself.”
Shortly after returning to the United States, he found an enlightened man, the American author and teacher Vernon Howard. Vernon did foster that kind of self-work and independence in his students, and Guy worked and studied with him for close to 15 years. Vernon encouraged Guy to write and speak as a way of furthering his own development. After Vernon’s death in 1992, it was a natural progression for Guy to start his own school. Today he gives people the tools and maps they need so they can make their own discoveries and undergo the self-transformation that leads to genuine fulfillment and happiness.
Guy’s message is straightforward: “Life is not what it appears to be. Presently our energies are directed toward achieving and then hanging on to things that all prove to be temporary. We identify with these things, and then experience pain as the temporary passes – which it must. But those who are willing to use these experiences properly can discover a life that’s rooted in a completely different order of reality — whose basis is timeless. From this higher vantage point you can watch things come and go, like clouds passing through the sky, while knowing the strength and wholeness of being connected to the changeless sky itself.”
Guy’s best-known book is The Secret of Letting Go, which has been translated into 20 languages and has been read by people around the world. Most would agree that in today’s society, where we all seem to be wound up so tight, letting go would be a great relief. Guy graciously shared with us some of his insights into the essence of letting go, and even provided a special practice readers can work with right away.
Interview with Guy Finley
What does it mean to let go?
Guy Finley: Real letting go is the natural release that follows when you realize you’ve been clinging to something that compromises your happiness and peace of mind. Truth be known, no conscious human being will ever sabotage himself – it’s impossible; higher consciousness cannot contradict itself. If I’m aware that what I’m doing is harmful to me, I can’t continue that behavior in the same form and with the same unconscious force.
For example, perhaps I’ve been tormenting myself for months – or even years – over a lost relationship, reliving in memory all the betrayals and the final shock of knowing it was over. Then one day I realize I’ve been secretly enjoying the inner drama, and that no one is forcing me to relive these painful images. I’ve been doing it to myself. My own thoughts have been punishing me and preventing me from moving on. Yes, the other person may have struck the first blow, but I’ve been beating myself up over it ever since. I’ve blamed the other person for how I suffer, but now I see it’s been a choice I’ve been making unconsciously. To see this is the beginning of the beautiful process of letting go. My awareness of how I’m harming myself makes letting go as natural as it is to let go of the handle of a hot skillet.
When you put it that way, it sounds as though letting go should be easy. But it isn’t. So why is letting go so hard to do?
Guy Finley: It isn’t letting go that’s hard. What’s hard is the necessary awakening one must have in order to realize there’s something living in us, a certain nature we’re not aware of, that clings to everything in order to feel as though it’s alive. We all know what it’s like to be dragged down by self-compromising actions, in spite of our wish to release ourselves from them. Abusive relationships, over indulgence in drugs and alcohol, constant self-sabotage, fear of new challenges that keeps us as captives running through old patterns; these and other forms of unconscious behavior are the limiting by-products of living from what I call the “false self.” So the “how to” aspect is not about acquiring new powers by which to achieve more, but rather about discovering where we have unknowingly agreed to be powerless. The unattended mind is the breeding ground of self-defeat, and once we become aware of this truth the daily round of dark unwanted events is slowly replaced by a string of bright moments.
We may understand in our minds that it is wrong to hold on to things that are hurting us, but how do we translate this knowledge in our heads into actually doing it? How does it get from our head to our heart?
Guy Finley: I love that. How do we go from head to heart? When I was a boy, I had a pair of tennis shoes that I loved. My tennis shoes were the end of the world to me. They had died about a year before, but I still kept them. My mother couldn’t stand these tennis shoes, and one day when I came home, they were gone…
The point is, when you’re a child, you’re attached to childish things. But as adults we’re meant to outgrow childish things. The problem is that we don’t recognize yet what it means to outgrow childish things. For instance, it’s childish to be concerned about what anybody thinks about you. It’s childish to be unhappy that you don’t live in the kind of home that you think you’re supposed to. It’s not necessarily childish to want to live in a nice home, but it is childish to believe that the measure of who you are is determined by how you live and what people see you with. That’s childish. It’s childish to hold a grudge. I don’t care what anybody on the earth ever did to you, it’s childish to hate a human being. It’s childish to fear.
“It’s childish” means that we’re intended to outgrow ourselves, all the time. What a nice thought it is. Every day it’s possible that a person can see that what he or she formerly valued is no longer valuable to them. It’s a great purification process that this Intelligence that we live in has set up for us, because if we’re awake and aware of ourselves, what we can’t help but see is that to the degree that we’re identified and attached to something is the degree to which we’re punished by it.
This implies that if we let go of the small life that we have created with our thoughts, there is a larger life that we enter.
Guy Finley: Exactly. Going back to our example of the broken relationship, let’s say the other person hurt me badly and I feel resentment. As long as I hold that resentment and believe that the answer to the pain has to do with getting someone else to do something, what I’m really living in is the world of that little thought, that negative state. When I live inside of a negative state, that negative state tells me who I am, what I can do, what my choices are, how to handle things.
Little by little, we recognize that we’re not intended to be a captive of any condition. No one sets out to be a captive of a relationship, but we wind up that way. No one sets out to be a captive of his or her best ambitions, but we wind up that way too. Why?
Because I become dependent on those things for my sense of myself. As I come to see that, I will want nothing to do with it. I’m willing to let go of that, and I’m willing to suffer the sense of loss of myself that comes with that. Then things change.
As spiritual aspirants who want to have a different life, a life centered in God, in Truth, we have to be willing to risk everything for the purpose of discovering what is true and what is not. You find a person who will not risk things for the purpose of discovering what is true, and you find a person who will be ringed in for the rest of their life by the falsehoods that are connected with the idea they have to have certain things to be who they are.
It sounds as though letting go is important work. Can you give us one action any of us can take today to begin to let go?
Guy Finley: Right this moment, and in all moments from now on – whenever we can remember to do so – let us break into the chain of our own thoughts in order to see what we have been identified with without our knowing it. This one act of deliberately dropping being identified with the thought-self – in favor of seeing it in action – delivers us into a place where the stressful problems of the moment before no longer have the power to drag us into their weary world. And if we will dare to let go like this, even when our own thoughts try to frighten us for choosing to do so, we will soon see within us the birth of a whole new sense of self – one that cannot be shaken by any trial or trouble because its secret nature is the Ground of Reality itself.
To put it even more simply, this very moment, learn to watch, be as awake as you can. When you see things as they really are, you will find that letting go comes naturally.
Guy, do you have any special projects you’re working on right now?
Guy Finley: I have several books in the works and I present new talks every week at Life of Learning Foundation. But something I’m especially interested in right now is what we’re calling the OneJourney Project. It’s an attempt to show the universal connections between people across time and space. It’s too much to go into here, but your readers are invited to visit www.onejourney.net to watch a 3-minute video we put together that uses stunning images and beautiful music to express this important message that, if fully understood, could change the world. Our aim is to share this message far and wide.
Thank you Guy for talking with us today and sharing your wisdom and encouragement.
Guy Finley: It was a pleasure.
Guy Finley is offering a free Starter Kit to OMTimes readers. Please click on http://www.guyfinley.org/kit where you will receive 5 free downloads. These include an hour long MP3 talk by Guy, free access to our Wisdom Library, an encouraging, weekly Guy Finley newsletter, a free e-book 30 Keys to Change Your Destiny, and an MP3 selection of beautiful, sacred music.
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About Guy Finley
Guy Finley is the best-selling author of The Secret of Letting Go; The Seeker, The Search, The Sacred;, and 40 other works that have sold over a million copies in 20 languages worldwide. He has been featured on hundreds of radio and TV networks and he blogs on the Huffington Post. For over 30 years Guy has shown individuals the authentic path to a higher life filled with happiness, success, and true love. Finley lives and teaches in Merlin, Oregon where he is Director of non-profit Life of Learning Foundation, www.guyfinley.org.
About Dr. Ellen Dickstein
Dr. Ellen Dickstein earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from the Johns Hopkins University and was a tenured professor at Southern Methodist University. A long-time associate of Guy Finley, she co-authored with him The Intimate Enemy. She frequently speaks and writes about how to find greater satisfaction and fulfillment in life.
