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Breaking Dependency

Learning to Let Go and Be Free From the Inside Out

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Guy Finley, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 9781929320783

To Contact the Author

Guy Finley is the bestselling author of more than 40 books and audio albums that have been translated into 20 languages. He lives and teaches in southern Oregon, and is the founder of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit center for higher self-study. He speaks at the Foundation four times each week. Everyone is welcome.

If you would like to write to the author about his books, receive information about his ongoing talks, online study groups, or request a catalogue of his works (along with a free helpful study guide), send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to:

Guy Finley

Life of Learning Foundation

P.O. Box 10-BD

Merlin, OR 97532

Or call (541) 476-1200

Also, please visit www.guyfinley.org to learn more about Guy Finley’s higher teachings and receive special free gifts.

Other Books by Guy Finley

The Courage to Be Free

The Essential Laws of Fearless Living

Let Go and Live in the Now

The Seeker, The Search, The Sacred

The Secret of Letting Go

Freedom From the Ties That Bind

The Lost Secrets of Prayer

Design Your Destiny

Seeker’s Guide to Self-Freedom

Apprentice of the Heart

365 Days to Let Go

Audio Albums

Seven Steps to Oneness

The Genesis of Love

The Meditative Life

Secrets of Being Unstoppable

Being Fearless and Free

Liberate Your Self

The Meaning of Life

For The Love of Life

DVD Albums

Wisdom’s Path to the Happiness Within

Table of Contents

Foreword by Mrs. Desi Arnaz Jr.

Introduction by Dr. Ellen Dickstein

Three New Friends to Help You Break Free From Whatever Binds You

Part 1: How Truth Triumphs Over All Temptation

The Secret Source of Every Addiction

Start Seeing Through the Illusion of Being Incomplete

Meet Desire’s Terrible Twin

Real Independence Begins With This One Life-Changing Insight

Part 2: From Codependent To Independent: Awaken the Will to Be Free

Freedom Is Your Destiny

Coming to the End of Codependency

The Merchant Marine Who Woke Up and Found His Way Home

Remember Your True Identity and Realize Self-Liberation

Use the Sword of Higher Self-Knowledge to Slay the Dragon of Desire

An Inner Exercise to End All Forms of Codependency

40 Stepping Stones to Self-Freedom

A Few Words About the Dark Night of the Soul

Foreword

By Amy Arnaz

(Mrs. Desi Arnaz Jr.)

Right now, at 6 in the morning, all is well because all is well in Eternity. A huge statement. I know. But God doesn’t think about time the way we do. If we let Him rock us to sleep at night, then we can wake up knowing that every event we meet during our day will be handled in the right way—even the 2 a.m. phone calls for “help!” from the addicts in our lives who’ve gotten into trouble.

I’m writing this introduction for my friend Guy Finley for two reasons: First, thirty-five years ago I never dreamed my life would be affected by addiction—but it has been, and second, Guy knows an A+ codependent when he sees one! My addiction is to addicts; I depend on people depending upon me. I clean up their messes and make everything nice. The 2 a.m. calls supply enough material for good little codependents like me to stay very busy. But if I make the mistake of labeling myself a martyr as a result of the misbehaving addicts in my world, then I’ve positioned myself on the level of “doing,” not “being.” Instead, I ask Heaven what to be, not what to do. And inside that request to Heaven is the answer to all problems.

Twice I’ve sat knee-to-knee with relatives (addicts) in rehab, where I honestly poured out my feelings and set boundaries with them. This happened in the middle of a circle formed by ten other family groups who were also in recovery. When we cried or laughed, so did the group. Uncomfortable? Yes. Healing? Absolutely. I watched each family go through the knee-to-knee process.

Each family was my family with the addict/codependent relationship in place. The whole family has to recover—and that takes a commitment to letting something Higher guide our lives. I’m not parroting something I learned in rehab. I knew this before rehab because of working on my inner life, praying, and making honest efforts to live the kind of life Guy talks about in all of his books.

The 2 a.m. wave still knocks me down, but my connection to something Higher keeps me above water. I know the wave will pass because it belongs to time.

Pursue a Higher Life. Lend a hand where needed, but know the difference between practical help and enabling. The more we recover from being codependent the more we’ll know the abiding freedom of Love.

This book will help you to do just as the title suggests: start breaking dependency; it will guide you, gently, into and through the revelations required to make those “impossible” changes in your life that you know you need to make, but that you weren’t sure you could; best of all it will get you started doing this good work by helping you to remember that to do anything less with your life than to find real freedom is to have (perhaps) missed the very reason for life itself.

Introduction

By Dr. Ellen Dickstein

One of the enduring themes of literature and film involves tales of men and women who struggle to achieve their heart’s desire, and then, finally winning it, find themselves trapped by the very thing they believed would bring their life to perfection. If the story is a tragedy, the individual is destroyed as a result of attaining that which was supposed to bring completion. If it is a romance or comedy, the individual learns a valuable if painful lesson, reorganizes his or her priorities on the basis of newfound wisdom, and ultimately finds happiness after all.

As readers or members of the audience, we always find such stories to be satisfying because they represent something that we already sense to be true. This deeply felt, if not fully understood fact of life can be summed up in the common warning so popular today: Beware what you wish for. You may not be happy with it—or with yourself—once you get it!

But why must we beware of what we wish for? Why is the getting of it so often a disappointment, or worse, the very thing that wrecks our life even further? No one ever explains the “why” to us. Or rather, I should say that no one has explained it to us until now. For in the pages of this revolutionary little book, Guy Finley finally reveals why it is that the attainment of wishes is so often the beginning of greater difficulties than those we hoped to resolve. In doing so he explains the underlying cause of every addiction and every codependent relationship. Whether it’s an addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling, an abusive relationship, money, obsessing over heartaches or ambitions, or a codependent relationship with someone who has such an addiction, all of these problems have the same root. And that root lies within the divided psyche of the spiritually sleeping individual.

This is invaluable information for those who suffer from any of these problems—and in one way or another, all of us do. When we are willing to admit to ourselves that all of our efforts to free ourselves only lead us into deeper entanglements and less freedom, something within us feels the urgency to understand this paradox. Some mechanism within us must be twisting the outcome of all our carefully thought out plans. We obediently seek whatever it is that our brain and driving emotions promise us will lead to freedom, and find that they lead only to inner slavery. It must be that the will we’re acting from is not the will to be free after all. It must be a will that represents something dark whose existence depends on keeping us captive. This is where the information Guy presents becomes such a powerful, life-transforming force. The secrets revealed here inform our higher thoughts and emotions, and ultimately awaken the will to be free. The actions we take based on the workings of that will inevitably lead us up and out!

The insights and practical methods offered in Breaking Dependency can be easily understood and put to work by individuals who are trying to help themselves, as well as by counselors and other professionals who are trying to help others. The principles are compatible with many of the addiction and counseling traditions, although they take the reader beyond anything he or she is likely to have ever seen before. These are deep and healing truths that the heart immediately recognizes as having always been known—but sadly forgotten. Once recognized, however, thanks to their introduction in this book, their curative powers can begin their transforming work.

Guy Finley has a unique ability to capture great truths, shining like stars at the very outposts of the spiritual galaxy, and direct their light on the problems people face every day. In doing so he both helps in the healing of that problem, and points to the existence of a Higher life in which no such problems exist. This book works on every level. Readers can use these principles for their practical assistance. But then, if they choose, they can follow their celestial invitation to seek a different kind of life altogether. Once the will to be free has been awakened, the sky’s the limit!

Three Friends You’ll Need to Help You Succeed With Breaking Free