Guy Finley

Guy Finley (born February 22, 1949) is an American self-help writer, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and former professional songwriter and musician.

Designing Your Own Destiny

 * Saying "yes" for fear of saying "no" is a recipe for resentment.


 * Whatever forms your resentments may take, they wreck only you, not the one you resent.

Freedom From the Ties that Bind

 * Nothing in the universe can hold down that rare individual who clearly realizes that he or she dosen't know what's in the way of his or her happiness, but who is willing to find out.


 * The way you answer life's events, and what you experience as your life, are really one.

Let Go and Live in the Now

 * Let's look at ten small places in our lives where we are trying to do the impossible and where, as a result of our misunderstanding, we are still sowing and reaping the harvest of frustration and headache:

1. It is impossible to make others see where they have made a mistake.

2. It is impossible to be carried to a secure and peaceful harbor on a ship crafted by anxiety or fueled by fearful feelings.

3. It is impossible to gain real happiness at the expense of someone else's pain.

4. It is impossible to genuinely elevate yourself by pushing another person lower.

5. It is impossible to take advantage of others without living in secret fear of them.

6. It is impossible to realize the fulfillment of the Divine as long as we remain filled with ourselves.

7. It is impossible to rise above any fear or worry whose root we have not found, uncovered, and removed from our own present misunderstanding.

8. It is impossible to receive forgiveness in life without having learned what it means to freely forgive.

9. It is impossible to wish another person any kind of ill, for any reason, and not be made sick ourselves.

10. It is impossible to resist or hate any condition in life and learn from it at the same time.

Seeker's Guide to Self-Freedom

 * Our Real Self is a ceaseless, ever-changing, and vital expression of eternal energies, even though this timeless nature remains veiled from us because of our present level of consciousness.


 * We are the subject of all that we have yet to realize, and the object of all that we have realized.

The Intimate Enemy

 * What we find in life is based on where we put our attention. When we focus on the small worlds our thoughts create, we miss out on the beauty and possibilities we are meant to enjoy.

The Lost Secrets of Prayer

 * An unattended mind is the breeding ground of self defeat.


 * Consciously giving up the last word is a secret prayer because the you that wants the last word isn't really you at all...it's that dark spirit of one-upmanship, that dark spirit of combativeness.

The Secret of Letting Go

 * No man is powerful as long as power is his need.


 * Why do you want the approval of others who don't even approve of themselves?

The Secret Way of Wonder

 * It's impossible to discover who you really are if you limit what you are willing to find out about yourself to only what you want to know.


 * Real compassion lies within our ability to remember that an angry, vengeful or hateful person is usually just someone who can no longer bear the weary weight of his or her own carefully concealed despair.

The Illusion of Limitation

 * There is no natural place inside of a human being for negative states. None. So if you're negative, frightened, worried, anxious, fearful, it's because you have bought into the work of the image, who shows you what it needs to show you so that you can be the person who now has to hate your condition.

Secrets of Being Unstoppable

 * We are not here to learn to play, we are here to play to learn.


 * ...and for human beings on this planet it isn't wisdom that guides, it's wants.


 * A prisoner mentality is anything that blames anything outside of you for the pain you have.


 * You are going to have to struggle with something that you have never struggled with before. I am talking to you about it now. I am talking to you about the fact that your whole life to date has been in an effort to control what you see as being finite. The whole of life for human beings, predicated on the idea that one must acquire power in order to overpower conditions that will not give them what they say they need in order to have a fixed sense of security and well-being.


 * Do you know what a good life is? A good life is a life in which you never have to think about yourself again. You know why? Because you can't think about yourself without producing fear.


 * Every wall that I run in to is what I have yet to understand about myself and this life, and there is no other wall, none.