{"id":44,"date":"2010-08-19T06:46:28","date_gmt":"2010-08-19T06:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lettinggo\/2010\/08\/the-season-of-growth-and-sacrifice.html"},"modified":"2010-08-19T06:46:28","modified_gmt":"2010-08-19T06:46:28","slug":"the-season-of-growth-and-sacrifice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2010\/08\/the-season-of-growth-and-sacrifice.html","title":{"rendered":"The Season of Growth and Sacrifice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Summer is the time of natural abundance. These are the days of a great conversion: the whole of life flourishes, fulfills, <i>and<\/i> feeds itself at once. We see before us the immeasurable power of <i>plentitude<\/i>. But what do we stand to gain for realizing the strength of this season? <\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div>When we know that nothing can be added to something to make it greater than it is &#8212; when the present moment of life is as full as life permits &#8212; then we should also be able to see the following truth:&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Anything that appears within us &#8212; that would try and tempt us into searching for our contentment in some brighter &#8220;tomorrow&#8221; to come &#8212; <i>must itself live outside the fullness of the now<\/i>. And whatever lives outside the true power that beats the heart of the present moment has to be powerless to do anything &#8212; let alone deliver us into a state of being whole. In the bright light of summer we are empowered to detect and drop the only thing that ever defeats us: being identified with the false self that wants us to feel discontent with what life gives to us.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>With these last few thoughts in mind, summer is a good time for letting go of any fearful concern we may have over uncertain days that lie ahead of us. Any part of our false self that wants to feel troubled over its own darkly imagined tomorrow should be tossed high into the air &#8212; winnowed like summer wheat so the chaff of fear blows away &#8212; leaving behind only the precious kernel of contentment with what we are being given in the here and now.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>This season of growth is also the perfect time to detect and dismiss any parts of us that tell us we can&#8217;t outgrow what may have compromised us in days past. It is the time to discover that this higher ground we seek more than just awaits us; it is actually reaching out to meet us half way, if we will only take the necessary steps in our journey of letting go. &nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Lastly, summer is also a secret time of sacrifice; it marks nature&#8217;s perpetual passage from one form into another. Again, the evidence is everywhere: flowers shed their petals to reveal the baby fruits hidden in their buds, even as other maturing fruits ripen to reach maximum sweetness, only to fall to the ground as food for those who find these seasonal gifts.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Letting go takes place naturally as we grow to see that whatever we will release of ourselves is returned to us, only transformed into something greater than what we thought we gave away.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Whenever we will actively surrender ourselves to God, to the Life Divine, then we aren&#8217;t just relieved of nagging worries, fears, and doubts; these lower estates of consciousness are replaced with higher ones. For our sacrifice we are given a whole new Self that lives in a world of light where dark states cannot dwell.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summer is the time of natural abundance. These are the days of a great conversion: the whole of life flourishes, fulfills, and feeds itself at once. We see before us the immeasurable power of plentitude. But what do we stand to gain for realizing the strength of this season?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2,7],"tags":[105,37,44,134,24,92],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fear-fearlessness","category-letting-go","category-self-remembering-awareness","tag-being-present","tag-fear","tag-letting-go-2","tag-sacrifice","tag-self-compromise","tag-surrender"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Season of Growth and Sacrifice - Letting Go with Guy Finley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Season of Growth and Sacrifice - Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Summer is the time of natural abundance. These are the days of a great conversion: the whole of life flourishes, fulfills, and feeds itself at once. We see before us the immeasurable power of plentitude. 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His ideas cut straight to the heart of our most important personal and social issues - relationships, success, addiction, stress, peace, happiness, freedom - and lead the way to a higher life. Finley is the Founder and Director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit Center for Spiritual Discovery. He is the acclaimed author of \"The Secret of Letting Go\" and more than 45 other books and audio programs that have sold over two million copies in 26 languages worldwide. His work is widely endorsed by doctors, business professionals, celebrities, and religious leaders of all denominations. Through Life of Learning Foundation, Guy has presented over 5,000 unique self-realization seminars to thousands of grateful students throughout North America and Europe over the past 20 years and has been a guest on over 700 television and radio shows, including national appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and NPR. The Foundation's popular Key Lesson e-mails featuring inspirational quotes by Guy are read each week by a hundred thousand subscribers in 142 countries. Guy speaks four times each week on inner-life principles at Life of Learning Foundation's home in Merlin, Oregon. These meetings are ongoing and open to the public. For more information about Life of Learning Foundation, Guy Finley, and their life-changing messages, visit guyfinley.org. \"Guy Finley is...one of the leading experts at the forefront of human potential.\" -Nightingale Conant \"Guy Finley has helped millions live fuller, more peaceable lives.\" -Barnes and Noble","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.guyfinley.org","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/","https:\/\/x.com\/guy_finley"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/author\/gfinley"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/232"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}