{"id":6312,"date":"2019-08-22T05:00:33","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T09:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/?p=6312"},"modified":"2019-08-21T12:26:40","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T16:26:40","slug":"liberate-yourself-from-the-fear-of-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2019\/08\/liberate-yourself-from-the-fear-of-yourself.html","title":{"rendered":"Liberate Yourself from the Fear of Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Human beings walk around in a kind of self-made suffering that is the expression of something in them that is so afraid\u2026 not that someone else will know what they are really like, but that they would have to see for themselves what they are like &#8212; what their nature is, and what it is capable of doing &#8212; because to see that would be to confess it.<\/p>\n<p>So it is that humanity became enamored with the idea of a private place to go confess their sins to someone because it was thought that the person to whom you confessed your sins &#8212; what you know is in your nature that is set against yourself and others &#8212; would keep your sin as secret as you have kept it. And so began the great myth and misery of believing that somehow or other, keeping that sin (a weakness, a characteristic, a conflict in ourselves) secret was the same as escaping it. The belief was that somehow you established a relationship between you and God because you confessed it to some other human being.<\/p>\n<p>The fact of the matter is that our lives should be a ceaseless confession, a ceaseless realization of where it is that our nature misses the mark but pretends to hit it, and in doing so, not only protects the very nature that misses the mark, but prohibits any possibility of us transcending the foolish notion that there is something in ourselves to be afraid of.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/?attachment_id=6313\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6313\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-6313\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/92\/2019\/08\/qp-fear-protects-itself-JC-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"anxious woman and her reflection\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Human beings walk around in a kind of self-made suffering that is the expression of something in them that is so afraid\u2026 not that someone else will know what they are really like, but that they would have to see for themselves what they are like &#8212; what their nature is, and what it is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[11,3271,1493,179,1541,3272,316,2755,1528,296],"class_list":["post-6312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fear-fearlessness","category-guilt-regret","tag-awareness","tag-confess-your-sins","tag-confession","tag-forgiveness","tag-hiding-weakness","tag-realization","tag-secrets","tag-self-condemnation","tag-sins","tag-suffering"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Liberate Yourself from the Fear of Yourself - Letting Go with Guy Finley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2019\/08\/liberate-yourself-from-the-fear-of-yourself.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Liberate Yourself from the Fear of Yourself - Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Human beings walk around in a kind of self-made suffering that is the expression of something in them that is so afraid\u2026 not that someone else will know what they are really like, but that they would have to see for themselves what they are like &#8212; what their nature is, and what it is&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2019\/08\/liberate-yourself-from-the-fear-of-yourself.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-08-22T09:00:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-08-21T16:26:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/files\/2019\/08\/qp-fear-protects-itself-JC-300x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@guy_finley\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Liberate Yourself from the Fear of Yourself - Letting Go with Guy Finley","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2019\/08\/liberate-yourself-from-the-fear-of-yourself.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Liberate Yourself from the Fear of Yourself - Letting Go with Guy Finley","og_description":"Human beings walk around in a kind of self-made suffering that is the expression of something in them that is so afraid\u2026 not that someone else will know what they are really like, but that they would have to see for themselves what they are like &#8212; 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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\/6312","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=6312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6314,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6312\/revisions\/6314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}