Written by Guy Finley

In any moment you find yourself stressed, angry,  worried, or depressed. Whenever you find yourself in a negative state, thinking about what you wish wasn’t happening only serves to add mass to your misery. 

Don’t think about what you must do to break free.  Instead work to come back to yourself, see that you are in the wrong place and just don’t go there.

At any moment you wish you may become aware of yourself enough to know where you are inwardly. When you find yourself living a resentment or a regret over and over again, see that you’re surrounded by thoughts and feelings that were produced by your resistance to a remembered event. Then don’t try to fix your pain. 

Don’t think about what you must do to break free.  Instead come back to yourself, see that you are in the wrong place and don’t go there.

Who made you remember what you wish hadn’t happened to you?  Who made the picture of the person you resent?  Who brought up the failure of your past?  Who did that in any moment you're sitting by yourself, driving your car or taking a walk? Who is talking to you?

The answer is something inside of you that is always trying to drag you into a place where it assumes power over you.  That’s who!  And it’s not a who, it’s a what. It’s not a you. 

Don’t judge yourself! Don’t condemn yourself for these parts that belong to an aspect of a still unconscious nature.  Your aim is to make it conscious.  To bring this light into yourself so thoroughly that what now acts upon you will be unable to produce the punishment it does because it gets you into the world where nothing good can happen because you have gone into the wrong place.

Just don’t go there.

The problem is when we get into pain, our pain immediately gives us the reasons why we are there. The reasons for being in pain are the wrong place to be. Thinking about our reasons for why we’re unhappy is the wrong place to be.  It’s part of our unhappiness; not the solution to it. 

We have the capacity to stop making ourselves powerless by waking up to having put ourselves where our powers are stolen from us.  We each have ample opportunities every day to come wide-awake, realize we’re being dragged down and say, “Hold on a minute.  This isn’t a good place for me to be.”

Then we can step out of that world of time which is what thought is.  We can step out of that world of tribulation into the now, because the presence moment is the essence of all that makes a human being whole, healthy and happy.  It is where love exists, and where fear cannot dwell. 

Guy Finley is the best-selling author of more than 40 books and audio albums on self-realization, showing men and women everywhere how to find a life of freedom, enduring fulfillment, and true purpose.  Guy is the founder and director of the non-profit Life of Learning Foundation Center for Spiritual Development in Merlin, Oregon, where he offers free, twice weekly live-streamed classes.