
Get Released From Any Negative Reaction GF Live 6-22-24
by Guy Finley
Imagine trying to see the whole of an ocean through a ship's porthole, and we have a pretty good idea why (our) life can so often feel small and confined; as if we have no choice but to be swept out to sea on a single wave of some fearful thought or feeling.
Transcript
If someone came up to you and said,
Hello,
Bill,
Barbara,
Tony,
Max,
Sam,
Whatever your name is and said,
You know what?
I have great news for you.
You've been given an amazing gift,
Something that you've always wanted more than anything else.
And then they said,
Can you guess what it is?
And then depending on your circumstances at the moment,
Uh,
You might say to yourself,
Well,
I,
You know,
I could use some money.
Uh,
I could use my health.
Uh,
I,
I'd like to get someone who hurt me to see that they did it.
You might come up with any one of a thousand things that you could imagine that given time and circumstance,
That what we think is amazing and a great gift to have changes.
Uh,
For instance,
This morning and a great gift in quotes might've been that I didn't have an internet problem,
But the point being is that you would say whatever you have to say.
And then that person would say to whatever you've mentioned,
They would say,
No,
No,
No,
It's much bigger than that.
Bigger than that,
Much bigger than that.
And then you try again,
You come up with a few more things.
And every time you do,
This person looks and he says,
No,
It's much bigger than that.
And then you realize,
Well,
Maybe I'm thinking too small.
So you might get outrageous.
And no matter what you said,
This person would say,
No,
It's bigger than that.
What could be bigger than what I want?
And then it gradually begins to Dawn on you by the help of this person who said they have something for you bigger than anything than you can imagine.
It begins to Dawn on you that maybe we're talking about a different order of gift.
And we are,
What are the things that we want that we imagine are bigger than what we have?
That we imagine can bring us contentment,
Peace,
And security other than those things that we imagine in the moment of a problem,
A pain,
A worry,
As being the solution to whatever it is that's causing us to suffer.
By and large,
That's what we want.
What we want is always an answer to a moment prior to that,
That we didn't want.
This is an important idea.
I hope I don't have to spend too much time on it.
So what would be the greatest gift of all an amazing gift bigger than anything that I can imagine other than the gift of being liberated from,
And I'll start with one word,
The gift of being liberated from whatever I'm identified with,
Because the gift of being released from whatever it is that we're identified with is the same as the gift of being released from whatever we resist in the moment.
See it with me.
What is it that I resist?
For instance,
Let's just say,
And I'm happy to say that it's not the case that here you are and you've got something important to do.
Maybe something you've been planning and working on for some period of time.
And then suddenly life says,
Nope,
Not going to go that way.
What happens inside of you?
Life seems to be threatening.
Whatever it is that you were identified with that you thought was crucial in order to complete whatever it was that you imagined would be completed through your efforts or activities.
So the point here is a simple one,
That whatever I'm identified with by the fact that I'm identified with it in that identification is resistance.
I spoke of this at length last night.
You're welcome to go listen to that talk.
It's been recorded and you can do it for free,
But for now,
Let's just go on with it.
Why is this the greatest gift in the world to be liberated from identification,
Freedom from identification?
Because it's the same as being liberated from negative reactions.
Isn't that what we imagine when we come up with a new plan,
Some path we're going to take is that I feel,
I feel this negativity inside of myself.
I've been disturbed by a moment I don't want.
And then the only thing that my mind knows to do in those moments is to begin thinking about what it needs to offset whatever it is that has taken it off what it wants.
And in that moment,
That resistance to any condition that threatens what we're attached to,
Identification is resistance because I am automatically attached to some condition I believe has to be met the way I imagine it.
And then I'm going to fight with life.
What greater gift could there be for a human being than to no longer fight with what they think life is doing to them or taking from them?
There is no sudden negative reaction without wanting or not wanting.
You cannot have a negative reaction that I'm going to get into in a moment here.
The whole reason I'm setting up this talk without something in us that we are identified with that I believe I must have or that I must avoid so that you cannot separate negative reactions from the resistance that brings them up.
And you can't separate that resistance from whatever it may be that we're identified with.
Now let's put that on hold for a second.
Here's where we're going.
And you have to see this for yourself.
I can't make you see these things.
How did it happen?
And then you can fill in the blank that anger has become my authority.
That fear or regret or for that matter,
Any negative state at all,
Like anxiety.
How did anxiety become the authority of my life?
And it is when I'm angry,
Anxious,
Afraid,
Nervous.
Who's telling me what to do?
Who's describing to me everything that's at stake.
What is it that's pushing me and moving me and saying,
You have to do this.
You,
This can't go like this.
You must make some change.
Get going.
Go,
Go,
Go.
Anxious.
Rush.
In that moment,
Am I not seized under a kind of dictatorship,
The authority of something that by the nature of that reaction,
That negative reaction that by the authority of that reaction is telling me who I am,
What I can and cannot do and whatever the choices are in that moment,
According to what that reaction is telling me has happened and that I must do.
I want to go very slow here because it's so intimately connected with everything that we're discussing over these,
The weekend of these talks.
This is standalone by itself,
But isn't it?
Have you never marveled at the fact that someone can cut you off on the freeway?
Someone can cut into you what you're saying about yourself or some and,
And,
And can you do that?
Can someone cut into what you're saying about yourself or some and,
And cut you off from what you're saying?
Life can suddenly drop the internet on the morning of a talk that you're supposed to give.
And in the very second that whatever it is that you were in the,
In the momentum of caught up in the expectation of the,
The,
The fulfillment of whatever it was that had to go the way you want it to go in the moment that all of that gets cut off and it always does immediate conflict.
What do I do?
And in the moment when we're asking ourselves,
What do I do now?
How do I handle this?
What do I say to this person in the very instant that that transpires?
The only reason it takes place is because our mind,
Our heart has been seized by an unseen movement of resistance,
Resistance to the condition that seems to challenge what it is that I believe you had to be or do,
Or that must occur.
And in the moment of that resistance,
All of this negativity comes up and it starts describing who we are,
What we can do.
And in that moment is my authority,
Anything other than a negative reaction.
And if it's true that you can see this,
Your mind visits the past.
Some thought takes you into a regret that in the very moment that you are visiting these things that should not have been,
Or that took place and you wish they hadn't in that moment,
Are you not captured?
And I don't mean just captured by the negativity.
I mean captured by the limitations inherent in those negative states,
Because what are the choices that I have?
Where do my choices come from when I'm anxious?
What are my choices when I'm afraid?
What are the choices that I can make when my sense of self is a derivative of doing everything it can to avoid the moment that's unavoidable?
A moment that exists as it exists for me in that moment,
Not because of the way the moment actually is,
But because of the way my mind perceives that moment as being something that is threatening who and what I think I am.
And this happens all the time.
And we live under this authority.
That's what's mind blowing.
Is it a man or a woman can reach whatever age it is that we've reached and never suspect that you're laying in bed in the morning and you've got things to do and something in you says,
Well,
I don't want to do that.
Or you get up and something says,
Let's go do everything other than what we need to do.
We never questioned the authority of our own reactions because we don't know who we are outside of the way those reactions not only define the moment for us and tell us what's happening,
But then confine us to the choices that those reactions offer.
And if you know anything at all about negative reactions,
You know there's no choice in any negative reaction other than a binary fight or flight.
That's all that's there.
The authority of depression,
Depression,
The authority of a constant anxiety that something may happen that I don't want to happen.
How about the,
The,
The,
The unquestioned authority that I have to appear in a certain way in order to achieve whatever it is that I've imagined in order to achieve whatever I'm identified with.
Okay.
It is impossible for us to begin questioning the authority of these negative states until we get a glimpse of what it is that is causing this unseen captivity where our life gets smaller and smaller and smaller as we know it does.
The deeper that we dive into the spectrum of these negative states,
Never even suspecting that the authority that we're under in that moment has no right to rule our life outside of the authority we give to that moment.
Why?
Because that moment has challenged who and what I think I am.
That moment seems to challenge what I believe has to happen or doesn't happen.
We should be so tired of allowing any state,
Any thought,
Any feeling,
Any reaction to define us.
But that's our conundrum is that our present level of consciousness doesn't know itself outside of the reactions that tell us who we are and what we can do.
We never recognize how these small parts of us that are biggest reactions are the negative by-product of the smallest parts of us.
We never suspect that the biggest negative reactions are because of the smallest parts of ourselves that don't know how to meet the moment other than look to it to see,
Does this moment confirm what I want or is it taking from me what I believe I have to have?
There's no genius inherent in this.
You don't have to be a genius to know what I believe I have to have.
There's no genius inherent in this.
You don't have to be a scientist.
You don't need a education.
You don't need a philosophy.
You don't even need in quotes religion because for most of us are philosophical and religious ideas are all psychological band-aids that when the moment comes and we don't know what to do with our own reaction,
We turn the authority that we're given as a human being to be in relationship with something that is bigger than those reactions,
Bigger than that perspective that's so painful.
But in that moment,
The very reaction and our identification with it cuts us off.
Doesn't it?
Can you see what I'm speaking about?
I don't when we're,
We were cut off by a negative reaction,
Cut off from life,
Cut off from our husbands,
Our wives,
Our friends,
Our family cut off from any other possibility than that,
Which that negative reaction suggests is needed in order to restore whatever sense of self was threatened by that moment.
Isabella asks,
What about the fear of losing yourself in your partner?
Isabella,
Everybody.
How can we have reached this point in our life where we believe that the strangulation of any resistance inherent in a moment that we have what imagined?
So that this fear is the negative by-product of an unconscious imagined state where the more I imagined the thing I might lose,
The more fearful I become,
Not of losing that relationship,
But of losing the sense of myself that is so dependent upon what it imagined.
And I'm not talking about the fear of losing yourself in a moment where I lost the sense of self that is so dependent upon what it imagines makes it whole.
If I have a whole relationship with another human being,
That means that I am whole to begin with.
And if I'm not whole to begin with,
Then hoping some other human being is going to make me whole,
You're dead in the water.
You will always live in fear of losing what you believe makes you whole.
You are whole.
Negative reactions prove to you that something has taken your wholeness,
Fear takes from you these things.
Negative reactions like fear reduce,
If not totally eliminate other possibilities that are in that same moment.
And identification is resistance.
Resistance is negative reaction.
Why is resistance negative reaction?
Because the very fact that I'm identified with something means that I fear anything that challenges that identity.
So identification is the essence of desire because desire is want and not want.
And that's what defines me and how I respond to the world.
What else is there?
Imagine for a moment,
If you can,
That you,
Uh,
You,
You've,
You've,
I don't know,
Maybe you're at your office.
It's the sun is setting and there you are.
And you've been in the grip all day long of something that someone said,
Or you're concerned how things might work out.
And in essence,
In a,
A stew of trying to resolve something that seems to threaten what you believe you have to have in order to be who you need to be in your own mind's eye.
And you're,
You're,
You're,
You're in this little tiny,
Tiny world.
And in that tiny,
Tiny world,
You're struggling.
You're fine.
Imagine push.
Imagine when you push against what you believe is pushing against you in this world.
You are not pushing against what you imagine has pushed against you.
That person,
That problem,
That place,
What you are pushing against is the walls of your own negative reactions.
That's the only thing you can push on is what you have imagined has happened.
And then what you don't want.
And I push against what I don't want.
See it.
Cause if you can,
You can see my God,
It's always the same feeling.
The feeling of not wanting and the captivity of that reaction is always the same feeling,
Even though it is applied to a hundred thousand different relationships.
So I have without knowing it literally a constructed identity that was amalgamated through an unconscious unleashed imagination looking for anyone and anyone,
Anyone and everyone in the world to be a part of this world and to be part of anything according to my experience and development at that time,
That if I can get it and got it,
I'll be good.
We're conditioned to believe this.
We are literally conditioned to identify because that's all we ever saw anyone else do.
Imagine if you can put this together.
I don't know if I'm being clear enough.
Okay.
We are conditioned to identify with the images,
Ideas,
And beliefs that if we could acquire those images,
Ideas,
And beliefs and make them our own,
We would achieve being complete.
We'd be free when everything I'm describing to you is that in the very act of identifying with images,
Ideas,
Beliefs,
I am that that structure is creating the very resistance it will then experience as a result of being reliant on those images so that we're conditioned to identify and the identification is always to escape the conflict.
The captivity of what happens when what we're identified with is challenged.
This is the dark loop.
This is the misunderstanding and this is what we're always fighting with.
So let me reiterate what I've been saying to you.
I think he did this.
I think she said that I think this person is like that and let's be clear.
Maybe they are,
Maybe they aren't.
What difference does it make how any other human being on this planet is if for my unconscious dependency on them being or not being as I imagine they must,
So I'm not disturbed.
I live in a constant state of disturbance every time they rock the boat and then and then the feeling that I have that this pain I'm in is because of what they have produced is strengthened by the extent of this negative reaction I have failing to see that what is really pushing on me is my own consciousness pushing against the image or idea that challenges it.
Okay.
I'm imagine I'm fighting with my own negative reaction,
Failing to see that the negative reaction is the condition.
That's the reality of my life in that moment,
Regardless whatever it is that has created it.
Cause then I spend my life dealing with effects,
Not dealing with cause and if I ever want to be a free human being,
I have to understand the cause of this negativity,
The cause of these negative reactions instead of the useless struggle and suffering of forever trying to change the circumstances I'm in.
I begin to recognize the only circumstance that I'm ever really in is my own consciousness and if that circumstance is ever going to look different to me,
It's not going to be because I manipulate or massage the circumstance and the people in it in order to better match how I hope life should be.
The change is going to have to occur from the inside out and no change can occur as long as I am a captive of a negative reaction.
If I think from a negative reaction,
I will create the next event that will be negative because it'll be challenged.
I must understand.
And now to the point of this talk,
I said four words to escape any negative reaction to release you from any negative reaction.
What would those four words be?
Let's examine this together and God willing,
Put all of this together as best we're able to do.
So I said,
Imagine you're at work and these problems have happened and you're negative.
Something you wanted has been threatened,
Something you believe in,
Somebody challenged your position in life was somehow or other put up to question and you know what that's like.
Things aren't going the way they're supposed to go.
And the only answer that we have when things don't go the way they're supposed to go is to suffer.
That's our answer.
Suffer.
But we believe that what we're suffering is the inconsideration,
The idiocy,
The foolishness,
The negativity.
We believe we're suffering because of other people.
We're not suffering because of other people.
We're suffering because of the way this consciousness only has one way to react to anything that disturbs it.
That's what we're suffering.
And it is the revelation of that that begins to change the dynamic.
So here I am back to the story.
He gets up,
He walks out,
She gets out of her office,
Goes outside and caught up as they are.
And then all of a sudden they look up and maybe there's that,
That new moon sitting in that sky that hasn't darkened yet.
Patience,
Nelly.
Maybe there's that late afternoon sun that I so much love myself,
The magic hour.
And in a heartbeat that man,
That woman is transported because in that same moment they realize they're in a world where there's beauty.
They're in a world where there's so much more to see,
Meaning that in that moment,
They see that they have been blinded by captured by their own negative reaction and that that negative reaction made everything else non-existent.
The only thing that exists for a consciousness captured by a negative reaction is the choices that reaction offers.
That's the sum of it.
Failing to see,
I might add that the more choices that nature makes,
The more it depends upon those choices to release it from the sense of being a captive.
And the more dependent it is on those choices,
The more likely it is to become yet a deeper,
Darker captive of conditions that don't align with those demands.
So here's the four words we'll take this woman.
And she's thinking about what's wrong with other people and how,
Why,
Why don't they see and understand what I do?
Why can't everyone be as perfect as I am in essence?
Why do they have to be like that?
Why did this have to happen like this?
There I am.
Yes or no.
Captured in an anxious state,
A fearful state,
An angry state captured by a regret in my past that has come up inside of me.
And I'm once again,
Relegated to live in that tiny little world of what if and how come and what about this,
If only they hadn't,
Or if I could have all of that thought,
All of those feelings,
A tiny,
Tiny little dark world,
Little dark world that is the encapsulation of our possibilities by identifying with a negative reaction.
So there she is.
And all of a sudden she looks up and a thought comes to her.
And you know what the thought is?
Life's bigger than that.
Life's bigger than that.
It's bigger than this reaction.
There's more to it than the limitation of this lashing that I'm experiencing,
Hoping to escape the lash by creating yet another stadium to go perform in.
Write these words down.
Life is bigger than what you don't want.
Life is bigger than what you don't want.
Can you see it at all?
I do something.
I make a stupid mistake.
I fail to perform the way I'm expected to,
Or that I believe I ought to be able to do.
My husband,
My wife doesn't bring to me the same things that I do.
My husband,
My wife doesn't bring to me in the moment when I need it,
What I needed instead brings me something I don't want.
And I'm filled with resistance to the very person I say I love.
What am I a captive of in that moment?
I blame the condition,
But the condition doesn't exist apart from the demand on it.
So all I see in that moment is what I don't want.
And the eyes that don't want the moment only see the reason why that moment is to be unwanted and denied.
And then those same eyes captured by that negative reaction turned to the authority of that reaction to determine,
Decide for it.
What do I have to do in order to escape this pain?
What do I have to do to escape this fear?
You don't have to do anything to escape a negative reaction other than see how it is that you have consented to let it capture you.
How though you say,
I can't stand this feeling.
All your attention is on the feeling that you say you can't stand.
That's all you have to do.
Because if you see the contradiction in your own consciousness,
That saying,
I don't want this,
I don't want this,
And all I'm giving my attention to is what I don't want.
I don't want the moment to be like this.
And the only thing I see is the moment that ought not be that way.
All I have to do is see something like that.
And I realized,
Wait a minute,
This very awareness proves that life is bigger than what I don't want.
Because all I know when I don't want is what I don't want or what conversely I need to free myself and the whole thing's a lie.
There's no possibilities in a negative reaction other than what the content of that reaction has produced as a solution.
And if you see that there is an instantaneous,
At least to some degree,
Exiting from that sense of self,
Because you've freed yourself from that.
You've freed yourself from that.
You've freed yourself from that.
You've freed yourself from that.
From that sense of self,
Because you've added if you want to use those words to the possibilities of that moment,
A new perception about what's limiting it.
I'll say it again.
Your awareness of the actuality of your consciousness has brought into that moment,
A possibility that didn't exist before,
Because all you were aware of before was the content of that reaction and what it was telling you you had to do.
Write it down.
Life's bigger than what you don't want.
That person cut me off.
All I can think about is a way to make them see how rude and crude they are.
That person is so insensitive.
All I can think about is what I have to do to get them to be sensitive,
According to my definition of it.
So then I'm in a little tiny world where the authority over my life as unbelievable as it is.
And I hope I'm conveying it.
The authority,
The negative authority in my life is my own identification.
What I want and don't want is my authority.
What I want and don't want doesn't exist without the self that wants it.
I'm beating myself up.
I'm punishing myself.
Believing somehow,
If I can just push back,
I'll push that authority,
The pain of it out of my life.
Do you understand that since time has begun on this planet and human beings in their fallen state,
The only thing that human beings know to do is to push back against what they don't want,
Failing to see that what they don't want doesn't exist without something that is identified with a corresponding desire.
Shake it off.
Shake it off.
Here's this negativity.
I can feel the anxiety growing.
And I mentioned this morning about what happened.
You know,
I'm not going to get online.
I have these material,
These ideas I want to share as part of this continuing series of talks,
And I can't get online.
Sure.
You can't not feel the resistance to some reality that is running counter to what you had imagined needed to be done.
But when you realize that your fight with the condition is this imagined self trying to make real what it can't,
And that the more it struggles with what it can't change,
The more real it feels and that the more threatened it is,
You start to realize what a game,
What a sham,
What a lie life is bigger than what you don't want.
I'll say it to you with a few other words,
Instead of being against the moment,
Meaning against what that person said,
What they did,
How they are instead of being against that.
And I'm praying that at this point,
You can understand that this resistance doesn't exist without being identified with all that you believe they should,
Or could,
Could be that if,
If I have even a glimpse of that,
Instead of being against the moment,
Meaning instead of resisting the moment,
What if I realize,
You know what,
That gets me nowhere.
Maybe I could be for something different and not for the opposite.
Well,
I'm for you seeing how wrong you are,
But maybe instead of being against the way you are,
I can be for discovering what is it is in me that demands you are what I need you to be.
I can be for a wish.
I have to see with greater clarity,
The nature of this captivity,
Instead of being against the situation over which I have no control,
I can be for realizing there's something in me that believes this negativity has the power to change what it doesn't want.
So I can be for seeing the bigger picture.
I can be for understanding the most critical moment in my life is every moment of my life.
When instead of setting myself against and pushing to get rid of the problem in my life,
My new wish and what I'm for is to enter into a new relationship with my own consciousness.
How about this?
I'm for realizing the limitation of identification.
I'm for realizing how painful it is to believe that I'm always right and everyone else is wrong.
What is this nature that sets itself out,
Separates itself from everyone and everything that it sees.
I'm,
I'm,
I'm for,
Instead of being against what I've judged as being wrong,
I'm for understanding the nature of the judge.
Do you see the difference?
Because in that moment life is much bigger than what I don't want because my eyes have been open to the possibility of recognizing the nature that can't do anything other than be under the authority of a negative reaction.
One day,
If you do your work,
I give,
I rarely do this.
I,
I give you,
I give you the word of truth itself.
You work,
You understand and want in these moments instead of being against to understand life is bigger than that.
And let me begin to enter into this bigger understanding.
You will one day come to the realization that you and everyone else that you know in this world,
Because that's the way it is.
I've spent my entire life under the authority of a series of reactions that can't change anything other than what they're reacting to.
And by God,
I do not want to live as a captive of an unconscious nature that only has one thing to do.
I don't want it.
I want that.
I want this,
But I don't want that that comes with it.
That's all this consciousness knows how to do.
And it begins with seeing the depth and breadth of how we have been conditioned to identify with whatever it may be and derive a sense of self from what we've imagined.
Something threatens what we've imagined.
We are threatened.
We're threatened all we know to do is to reimagine the condition and how we can change it.
And that goes on and on until it lasts by the grace of God.
And it is by the grace of God,
The man,
The woman begins to awaken to the relationship they've had with this life,
With seeing that identification is resistance and resistance is negativity and negativity has only a binary possibility in any moment of pain.
So that I've been,
I've been constrained to live in a constant strain with life.
Anytime something happens that I don't want,
I have one reaction.
I don't want that.
And I believe that what I don't want is the event.
No,
What I don't want is to be the captive of these negative reactions.
That's where we have to work.
That's where we have to see.
And if you do,
You'll,
You'll begin to open up inside of yourself.
Something something we started with is there's a gift for you that is bigger than anything you can imagine.
And in one respect,
The gift that's bigger than anything you can imagine is freedom from identifying with what you've imagined.
Cause you start to see how,
How,
How locked in that is.
What a,
What a trick.
What a,
What a,
What a,
What a lie.
Ah,
There's something bigger than that.
Those are your words.
There is something bigger than that.
Life is bigger than that.
Life is bigger than what you don't want.
Even if you can just remember the feeling you have,
Having heard these ideas that God willing correspond with certain things that you've seen and understood and experienced just that little bit of that one thought that comes into that usual negative reaction and it's constriction.
It'll open it up just a bit because you won't be fully immersed in that identification.
You won't be fully identified with that reaction because some part of you is looking at it and going,
You know what?
I know there's something bigger than this.
Now I'm going to be for discovering what that is instead of living this tiny life full of tiny thoughts and feelings,
Fighting tiny other human beings,
All of us struggling for the same thing that doesn't exist apart from a world we've imagined.
Let's find out.
I'm going to be for finding out the truth of myself instead of living under the authority of something that tells me it knows what's true and in order to prove it knows what's true to beat me over the head.
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Isadora
March 4, 2025
πLIFE IS BIGGER THAN WHAT WE DONβT WANTπ β a great mantra to follow. This is the kind of talk thatβs meant to be revisited over and over, with note taking, until it finally seeps into our consciousness and creates the truest change of all . ITβS AN INSIDE JOB . Thank you for the brilliance of your pearls of wisdomπ«π«π«π«π«
Dianne
June 27, 2024
Wonderful talk. Just what I needed to hear. Thank you.β¨ππΌπππππΌβ¨
