An Interview with Guy Finley – The Art of Letting Go
The following article by Anne-Christine was written in the Spring of 2000 for the French magazine “Illuminations” in anticipation of the publication of Guy Finley’s new book for French-speaking readers: To Tell the Truth: Inner Life Lessons on Love, Lies, and Pitfalls Along the Path.
Beyond The Wolf and the Lamb: The Art of Letting Go
“The only mistake that we can make as human beings is to be asleep, unaware of ourselves,” states American author Guy Finley.” Given that our lack of awareness is at the root of all our problems, our only solution lies in an increasingly sharpened perception of what we are.” In his latest book, entitled To Tell the Truth: Inner Life Lessons on Love, Lies and Pitfalls Along the Path, Guy Finley explores the pathways leading to internal freedom.
Read about Guy Finley’s Secrets to Being Unstoppable
I met Guy Finley via telephone on the first day of spring. Flocks of snow geese and Canada geese had just congregated in the fields around the house, and I could hear the piercing cries coming from thousands of feathered throats – a pleasant moment that I shared with Guy before beginning the interview. Our conversation would be colored by these voices heralding the season to come.
Speaking of voices, Guy Finley’s is warm, vibrant, passionate. My impression is that I have a young man on the other end of the line. His books, of which several have become best-sellers (The Secret of Letting Go, Freedom from the Ties that Bind, and The Secret Way of Wonder), are a testimony however to great experience in life. In fact, from a very young age, Guy Finley was confronted with certain troubling contradictions in American society. Born to wealthy, famous parents, his friends were the kids of stars often having serious problems with alcohol and drugs – Dean Martin, Lucille Ball and Liza Minelli – among others. The young Guy learned very quickly that money and fame do not necessarily accompany happiness. “My father (Larry Finley) was the pioneer of the talk shows we know today, before Johnny Carson. Time Magazine named him ‘Man of the Decade’ during the fifties. I remember watching a Christmas parade when I was five years old, seated on Jayne Mansfield’s lap. She was a gorgeous and famous woman, yet her breath reeked of alcohol! I had everything that society taught me to be the source of happiness, yet I was unhappy.”
Guy Finley’s career quickly turned to music. Star musician/composer at twenty years old, he signed contracts as a rock singer, composed music for films and television, and worked with Neil Diamond for several years. Above all, he asked himself questions: How is it that at the moment where we arrive at the peak, an event takes place — a death or a failure — that turns us upside down and lands us at the bottom of the heap, having to begin all over again?
So he set out to find answers elsewhere. He traveled extensively in India and other parts of the Far East and then worked for many years with author and Christian mystic, Vernon Howard (The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power, The Power of the Supermind), who would have a profound influence on him. It was Vernon Howard who, just before his death, encouraged Guy to write his first book. “Writing is a natural extension of my work as a composer. I wrote music and lyrics. It was nothing but a tiny step to take from composing a song to creating a book,” explains the pleasing, serious voice.
But such books! The sales of The Secret of Letting Go (L?cher Prise? in French) surpassed 60,000 copies in Quebec alone. This book, as well as all the others, was translated into several languages. The work of Guy Finley on letting go indeed seems to have answered a real need for inner transformation. Is it then so difficult to let go that one needs a set of instructions? “It’s not that it’s difficult to let go. If your house is on fire, you don’t ask yourself if you should get out of it immediately, do you? My books discuss the way in which a person awakens to his internal experience so that he can discover the nature of experience and the nature of the being that is experiencing it.” According to Guy Finley, each human being possesses the ability to grow, to become better, more loving, and more wise. It is the relationships that we engage in with others that give us the opportunity to discover these places within ourselves where we have accepted limitations. So letting go also means dropping our sense of limitation.
Is the human being really limitless? Or is it more just an ego trip born out of the abuse of illicit substances? There is nothing limitless about waiting for a paycheck in order to pay past-due rent, nor about waiting in line at the supermarket! “If you put one of these magnificent geese in a cage, it would still be a goose — of course — but it would no longer be a real goose, right? It would not be obeying its true nature, which is to fly high and far and migrate with the seasons. It’s the same thing for us. We are eagles that have been conditioned to think that we are cuckoo birds. The proof of that is that we would never feel this feeling of dissatisfaction that we experience by being caged if our deeper nature were not to fly and be free.” Seated in the pinkish light of the waning day, telephone in hand, I watch a bird of prey serenely gliding above a hillside. Pictures of disheveled birds and noisy clocks (cuckoo! cuckoo!) superimpose themselves on one another. I think I am beginning to understand”
Well and good, but is he letting go? “Real letting go requires being aware, being totally present to what we are,” explains the American author. “No truly conscious human being sabotages himself – it’s impossible, because it’s contrary to Nature. If I’m aware that what I’m doing is harmful to me, I change my behavior immediately.” Guy gives the example of servitude. “Most normal human beings dislike those who bow and scrape before them. We abhor that because the person doing it is showing weakness. On the other hand, when we are slavish, we don’t perceive ourselves as showing weakness. We think that we are acting in a wise and even strong way! This proves that we are asleep to ourselves when we act in this manner, because we would not act this way if we knew it was harmful to us.” Therefore, it is profound awareness that should be our guide.
And you, Mr. Finley, what do you do when you feel a powerful emotion? “The rule is never to repress a negative emotion and never to express it. When I feel a negative emotion, I don’t push it away and I don’t give it life. I bring it under the light of awareness, and this allows me to see that that state is my state, that it hurts me and that it proves its origin is within me, even though this feeling wants to make me believe that someone else made me feel it.” He goes on to assert that to hold another person responsible for what we feel is equivalent to blaming our shoes for being laced too tightly. According to him, the cause of our greatest sufferings is identification with something outside of us that is therefore necessarily transitory — be it a relationship, a house, or a financial investment. “If I am identified with my relationship, with my house, or with my money, I am doomed to suffer.”
The sun is setting behind the darkened trunks of trees. The geese begin to bury their beaks into their feathers. The sky tips into gold, then into shadow as Guy explains that we are our experience. Each successive event of our life is there to remind us that we have invited it into our lives. “When we realize that – that my experience begins in me – we then have solid ground from which we can do the work which transforms us. Given that we are no longer blaming whatever or whomever, we no longer feel ourselves to be the victims of situations; we work with our most intimate self, where the problem and the solution co-exist.”
Suddenly I hear a laugh at the other end of the phone line; “One of the most important rules for me is: Don’t ever defend myself. If we could put this one principle into practice, how much more simple life would be!” Don’t ever defend yourself? “Yes, because that which is true needs no defense and that which is false cannot be defended. If I defend myself, it’s because something in me was provoked. In other words, if the irascible attitude of my boss makes me angry, that anger already existed within me. So the only way for me to become aware of this anger seated in me is to not identify myself with it.
If I give it my voice, I then become the very thing that I condemn in my boss! To be unaware is to condemn oneself to being a barometer that rises and falls according to the outside temperature.” This is really the first time in my life that I see myself as a barometer” I imagine myself treating my boss according to a barometer! Amusing idea that contains an explosive cocktail of anger, rebellion, fear, and helplessness. This cocktail I should neither drink nor hurl in his face, but be aware of it. It will dissipate on its own, because it’s the awareness of my state that gives rise to the ending of my alignment with that state. If I repress it by believing to know it, I am only lying to myself and I learn nothing from the situation, as opposed to being a conscious person that integrates each learning experience.
According to Guy Finley, the fundamental question that all human beings should ask themselves is: “What do I want to do, in this moment, in relationship to myself?” This question pushes him to continue writing (he is currently working on five books at once), because awareness is always enlarging, and writing makes him more aware of himself. It is yet the fruit of his own experience that he shares in his latest work. To Tell the Truth: Love, Lies and Pitfalls Along the Path contains fourteen chapters, each one addressing a certain aspect of human life: “Breaking Out of Self-Punishing Patterns,” “The Nature of Success,” “Lessons in Love,” etc. It is a practical work aimed once more at self-discovery, self-understanding, and self-knowledge.
Finally, the works of Guy Finley teach that the “know thyself” of Socrates is the royal path towards a happy life. “The human being is the fruit of the marriage between shadow and light,” he declares. “We are the wolf as well as the lamb.” Awareness of these two opposites — without pushing anything away — is therefore the key, because awareness of the wolf and the lamb expands beyond the states of the wolf and the lamb; because this awareness holds within it the seed of the unchangeable, which is our true nature.” “Light doesn’t change,” concludes Guy Finley. “Everything passes through light.” Outside night has fallen. The moon begins its ascent in the clear sky. Some geese are still squawking. It is almost quiet.
Check Out Guy’s new Program – The Secrets to Being Unstoppable
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So, over and over again we plan our great escape. And over and over again we find ourselves either having gone nowhere, or back where we started from, both results being the same. For all of our efforts, nothing really changes. New loves, new jobs, even new homes change only the walls that surround us — not our feelings of being imprisoned. We sense that all we have done is changed cells!
This conscious action on your part “works” by gradually breaking down the painful circle-of-self that is repeatedly formed by asking the problem for the solution. Barriers begin to crumble and disappear, because you have stopped creating them. In the truest meaning of the words, you are getting out of your own way!
