Guy Finley - Let Go and Live in the Now: Awaken the Peace, Power, and Happiness in Your Heart

First published in 2004 by

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

York Beach, ME

With offices at:

368 Congress Street

Boston, MA 02210

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2004 Guy Finley
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Finley, Guy.

Let go and live in the now: awaken the peace, power, and happiness in your heart / Guy Finley.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-59003-070-2

1. Self-actualization (Psychology) I. Title.

BF637.S4.F555 2004

158.1--dc22

2004011360

Typeset in Novarese Book by Garrett Brown

Printed in Canada

TCP

11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Patricia, my wife, my heart, my friend, my life's editor-at-large, my confidant, and my love. Thanks to you for always being there to help me see where there was further yet to go. This book is better because of you.

INTRODUCTION:
Making Friends with the Mystery of Ourselves

CHAPTER ONE:
To Heal the Hidden Heart of You

CHAPTER TWO:
Uncover the Secret Treasure of Your True Self

CHAPTER THREE:
Spiritual Secrets With the Power to Help Set You Free

CHAPTER FOUR:
Let Go and Know the Peace of Now

CHAPTER FIVE:
The Higher Self-Understanding That Heals All Hurts

CHAPTER SIX:
The Power to Dismiss Discontentment From Your Life

CHAPTER SEVEN:
Use Eternal Principles to Empower Yourself in the Now

CHAPTER EIGHT:
Advanced Lessons in Letting Go

CHAPTER NINE:
Awaken the Will and Wisdom to Enlighten Your World

J ust as bridges must be built between cultures and countries, so too must bridges be built to span the distance between the great wisdom teachings of centuries past and our own times. Let Go and Live in the Now is such a bridge. Its gentle but sometimes shocking revelations reach right into the mind of the seeker of the higher life, filling it with a palpable new light that helps bridge the distance between who we are at present and what we may yet become.

Each chapter is filled with timeless principles presented in a current context. These principles are made practical and are empowered by the numerous ways in which the author suggests their application to modern-day life. Much more than just a set of how to instructions, this is a book whose thought-provoking stories and penetrating insights work directly upon the heart of the reader, to help start the internal process of self-healing.

Let Go and Live in the Now is a living example of the timeless wholeness to which it leads its reader. It is gentle and striking, urgent and restive, serious and light-hearted. This book is for any person who longs not just to discover the truth of themselves, but who wishes to become a conscious participant in the great transformation of our Living Universe.

H ere is a simple truth that deserves our special attention: A life without mystery in it isn't a real life at all. In fact, this seldom-considered truth about what enriches our lives and makes them worthwhile is itself a mystery that deserves our thought. To get started, we need only return to the days of our youth.

Can we remember when, in those more tender yearsbefore our sense of wonder was either crushed, or brushed away by a world rushing byhow alive we were with a bare longing to know life by itself? How life's mysteries held no fear for us, but rather filled us with expectations so much so that some nights it was hard to fall asleep; or we'd spend the night actively dreaming of all of the possibilities life seemed to offer? Can we look back on ourselves when we were like this and recall when our hearts and minds were still wide open; how intrigued we were by the world unfolding around us, even as we were awakening to an exploding universe of feelings welling up within us?

Remember that deep fascination we felt toward our dearest friends, male and female alike; how we were so drawn to some that we couldn't spend enough time together? We expressed our affections to those closest to us with no regard for how we might be perceived. And then, of course, there were the others in our livesthose people for whom we felt close to nothing at all, and about whom we silently wondered what possible purpose was being served by their existence on earth!

And who can forget that strange fascination with the surging sensation of inconsolable crying when someone broke our hearts for the first time? Or that pain (or pleasure) of wanting someone, or some thing, so much that it felt like we couldn't breathe? Everything was vital: one moment driven by a new desire, the next moment all but dead to it. On and on it went, and that was all right. Growing up was tied together by a string of enigmas like these. Our days were like a string of pearls of different colors and sizes, where our new answers to life only introduced us to still newer questions! But back then our urgency to resolve these uncertainties was nothing like it seems today. Somehow we knew, in spite of our youth, that the true nature of mysteries is for one to replace another and so letting go came naturally.

Even so, as we would all come to realize in the fullness of time, these early life mysteries of ours were only a herald of things to come. Each, it would turn out, was but a small piece of a much older, far greater puzzleone whose presence went with us everywhere but whose grand and invisible character, like the sky that surrounds us, was just too big for us to see. But we were children then, with childish understanding. Now we must understand anew.

It turns out this grand or central mystery around whose corners we danced as kids remains the spice of life, lending a special savor to all of our questions about life. Without the continuing presence of this grand mystery in our lives all of the lesser mysteries that come our way would be as meaningless as characters in a story without a central figure that defines their reason for being.

So then what is this central mystery, this secret sun in the system of ourselves, around which all our relationships revolve and which shines light on their very purpose for being? Here is the answer: It is the mystery of Self.

Self that imperceptible but ever-present center within us from which we watch life dance around us, bringing us what it will and from where it wills, an intimate place in each of us from whereeach time the music suddenly stops and the stage goes emptywe stand there, silently wondering to ourselves: Who am I and what was that all about?

To one degree or another, regardless of causes past or present, all of us are familiar with these silent promptings to search out the truth of ourselves, to uncover the hidden reason for our being who and what we are. But within these silent urgings there dwells an unseen mystery. After all, why should life stir any of us, as it does, to ponder the hidden nature of our own self? What profit is there in troubling ourselves over something so unseen and unproven as thatparticularly when it seems a given that all we need to be happy