Guy Finley, spiritual teacher and author of The Secret of Letting Go, argues America strayed from its "divine" constitutional roots, trapped in cycles of anger and fear—internal forces he calls the "intimate enemy"—while Art Bell counters with rational responses like revenge or competitive justice. Finley insists true freedom comes from transcending reactive emotions, comparing them to illusions like sharks in water, but callers debate practicality, citing law enforcement’s split-second decisions or channeling frustration into action. Finley’s philosophy clashes with worldly problem-solving, yet his Quickening (a New York Times bestseller) signing in Encinitas on October 25th highlights enduring demand for his ideas. Meanwhile, Ramona Bell offers travel tips for a 12-day cruise through Greece, Egypt, Israel, and Italy, warning of customs rules, cultural norms, and security risks like underwater pyramids near Okinawa’s Kadena Air Base. [Automatically generated summary]
From the high, wet, soggy, hurricane-plague desert.
That's right, we're having a hurricane or the remnants of a hurricane tropical storm here in the high desert, actually extending out in all directions, from the eastern and Hawaiian islands, for example, eastward in the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands, south into South America, north all the way to the Pole and worldwide on the internet.
She is dumping, dumping, dumping on us here in the southwest.
And during the day, of course, came slamming into Yuma, Arizona.
And Nora is headed north and making much mischief as she goes.
We just can't take that kind of rain here in the desert.
And that's what we're getting.
And I suspect throughout the night tonight, we will continue to get it.
And it could be heavy at times.
So if you're in the desert southwest, a word to the wise, those out here know, we are subject to flash floods.
Now, what that means is that all of a sudden you can be in a wash area, and when you least expect it, a wall of water will come along and wash your body away, and you'll be nothing but a little lump in the desert under some sand somewhere.
So stay out of those kinds of areas.
It really is weird.
It is, of course, El Niño, and it well may not be the end of it.
In other words, the western Mexican coast may continue in the Pacific to generate hurricanes.
We'll have to see.
Usually they get up and head toward the west or the northwest out across the Pacific where they cross the date line and become not hurricanes any longer.
They become typhoons and they get very violent indeed crossing the warm waters of the Pacific.
The problem is that because of El Niño, the waters going north are warm.
And with Nora, as long as she stayed over the central peninsula of Baja, she had access to warm water.
And so all of a sudden, things are different.
And instead of reporting on hurricanes in Florida or the eastern coast, we're now reporting on hurricanes out here where we have cactus and desert.
It's really, really weird.
All right, I've got a guest coming up for you tonight, and we'll see where we go.
His name is Guy Finley.
And by the way, if you want to know more about Guy Finley, we've got a link to his website up, of course, within moments of the show.
So you can go up there to my website at www.artbell.com and read about Guy Finley as you listen to him.
In addition, I want to hit again the rogue market.
Oh, we're doing very well.
We are in the process of making people rogue dollar rich.
Wait till you see the numbers.
Go take a look for yourself.
Now, when you go to my website, just on the left-hand side of the website, you will see the rogue market.
And then you will have an opportunity to fill out a couple of forms.
And you get $15,000 rogue dollars.
You can then invest those rogue dollars in any one of, I don't know, 1,000, 2,000 personalities, public people.
And they have one particular section, if you hit listings, that is Talk Radio.
There you will find all of the major talk personalities syndicated across the country, of which I am one.
And you can buy stock in Art Bell.
Now, I really have to carefully explain here that you don't really collect dollars.
You're not spending dollars, investing dollars, risking dollars.
And so you don't collect dollars, except in rogue money, kind of like monopoly money.
But the rogue market is a blast.
It is really fun.
And if you buy a stock, my stock now, Art Bell's stock, you're going to, by the end of the week, be rich in rogue dollars.
Now you can win prizes, you know, t-shirts, coffee mugs, that kind of thing, when you have accumulated enough wealth.
Now, obviously, the sooner you get up there and buy Art Bell stock, or any stock that is showing a meteor-like rise, the sooner you are going to become rich.
Now, said, you might go up to the website and take a look.
All right.
Now, I want to also promote the fact that later in the program this morning, as you know, I'm going to Egypt and Israel and Rome and just all over the place, the Greek islands, and all of that begins next week.
And there are about 500 of you out there that are coming with me.
However, what's coming up will be of use not only to those people, of course specifically it will be to those people, but anybody who travels overseas.
Now, we have done so very much of it that my wife has learned how to pack, what to take, or maybe even more importantly, what not to take.
Most people tend to overpack, and she's going to come on the air.
It is a fairly rare occurrence when Ramona comes on the air, and she's going to give you some tips if you're coming along with us, or for that matter, if you happen to be traveling overseas at All, any of you.
So you might look forward to that a little bit later in the program.
Guy Finley.
Well, the best-selling author of more than five books on self-development, including the spiritual classic, The Secret of Letting Go.
His works are published around the world in seven languages.
He works for the largest producer of motivational audio tapes, who calls him the world's renowned expert at the forefront of human potential.
Guy's writings are embraced and endorsed by doctors, professionals, religious leaders, celebrities all over the world.
His nonprofit Life of Learning Foundation has its headquarters in southern Oregon where he lives and teaches.
Well, interestingly enough, Art, I was raised in a show business family.
My father, his name is Larry Finley, was really considered by many to be the pioneer of late-night television talk show.
Before Johnny Carson and Jack Parr here on the West Coast, he had a show called the Larry Finley Show, Strictly Informal, Music is My Beat, and it was the prototype for these television variety talk shows.
My childhood friends were Desi Arnaz Jr. and Dino Martin.
And I ran with the Fast Track as a child.
My parents, you know, I would ride in the Hollywood Christmas Parade and got hugs from Jane Mansfield, you know, the whole bit.
But I was always confused from the time I was like six or seven years old with what I was being presented as the best life a person could have and the fact that virtually everyone that I saw within it, all of the adults, were very unhappy.
Ted Turner, who has Jane and CNN and baseball teams, I saw him once, oh, I don't know, 2020 or one of those, and he said, you know, success is kind of an empty bank.
In other words, when you get everything you want in a material sense, you're left with kind of an emptiness.
If your drive was to achieve owning baseball teams and news networks and all the rest of it, and you get all that, then what's left?
And that's what I saw that so clearly, and yet, when I examined it as best I could as a young man, it became clear to me that simply pursuing possessions and power and the things that the world seems to urge us to do itself leads to nowhere.
And so I began, really very young, a study of different kinds of thought systems of how a man could live and pursue something that wasn't tied to whether or not everybody else agreed you were something, you know.
And that's what really started me.
I think that I just did not understand life taken at what it appeared to be and what everybody said you should be doing.
And this is a, I think, one of the pressing issues in most of the books that I write is how did this come about?
Because, you know, really our founding fathers, the Constitution, and I don't want to get into it too deeply because I'm not a scholar of these things, but we were not intended to be a democracy, but a republic.
And, you know, it was all of this business based on the principles of God.
And lots of people thought it was divine providence that even got us over here.
So everything kind of went screwy in the last couple hundred years.
And yet, and if you'll examine this with me, Art, I think we'll come up with something fascinating.
You know, when you put Lab animals into a certain condition where they can't escape their confines and they are overcrowded, and certain events go on inside of those cages where they become stressed out, they become overly aggressive, all kinds of behavior begin to exhibit themselves because of the fact that they're captive.
Well, I think that we can take those same behaviors that we see in these lab animals and look at human beings today, and even though we have these freedoms to be able to say things and act out certain behaviors and follow our dream, as it were, in a physical sense, we're still exhibiting all of these signs of captivity.
The hostility, the stress, the pressure, the breakdowns, all of the abnormalities that are surfacing are, to me, signs of a kind of spiritual or psychic captivity, if you will.
And that's really what, you know, that's what the intimate enemy, my new book, is about.
Well, in this instance, what we're describing, and I beg of you, when I go too far afield, you jerk on my collar here.
Nothing that we'll talk about or that I'm going to say isn't self-evident.
And we can't really talk about an enemy without describing something that that enemy is against.
And what this intimate enemy represents is something within us that is keeping us from fulfilling what our real purpose on this planet is.
In other words, we are intended to develop spiritually, to become men and women of a different order of being.
And there is something that is definitely standing in the way, something that is clearly obscuring not only the goal, but the way to achieve it.
And that's what the intimate enemy is.
And then, of course, for lack of a better way of saying it, it's our present nature.
It is this thought life.
It is who we believe ourselves to be based on our past experiences.
And this whole package that is all wrapped up with our past experiences literally thrusts itself between us and this unfolding moment, the present moment, and it keeps us from seeing not only what is new and uncaptive,
but also holds us in a kind of recurring, I call it the circle of self, where we keep repeating ourselves and repeating ourselves and making the same mistakes with different people in different situations, but basically going through the same pains, the same crises.
I would imagine it is, because if I get calls, first of all, I shouldn't get any calls, but I have a special button on my phone that prohibits that from occurring.
I'm saying that we have within us our own worst enemy.
I'm saying that we have two natures in a sense, Art.
That we have a nature that goes around and it thinks about what to do.
In other words, you had to call me at a certain time and I had to be prepared.
I had to think through certain elements.
And that practical aspect of our life that thought handles is very important.
I need to know how much time I need to make it from here to Washington.
But when it comes to having relationships with other human beings, when it comes to the creative skills, when it comes to the diving deeper into our spiritual life, this thought nature not only is impotent, but it actually stands in the way of us experiencing ourselves and this life the way we're intended to.
And there is that kind of quality to our life that keeps us going after more and more things to give us the feeling that everything is all right, that our life is complete.
But what I'm saying is that the nature itself that's pursuing this sense of completeness, art, this nature itself is incomplete.
It can never find what it is looking for.
All it does with all of its seeking and pursuing and obsessing and the things that we find ourselves doing trying to make life work, just keep it alive at the expense of what could be our real life, or, if you will, us living from our authentic spiritual nature, our timeless nature, our light nature, Christ nature, whatever words one wants to use.
The issue is that there are very distinct lines Between this part of ourself that is always trying to get its hands on something in order to feel real and complete.
And of course, I think that everyone listening can recognize what it's like and how that feels.
Simple examples of being at war with ourselves are something as simple as wanting to order fried chicken and then in comes a voice and it says, yeah, but that's not good for your heart.
Or something as dramatic as thinking that someone has hurt us and that the only recourse we have is to attack them back.
And then another part of us comes in and says, yeah, but we shouldn't do it.
I'm, in a lot of ways, I'm a great libertarian, and I feel that people have a right to do exactly what they want to do, and that's what this country, in my opinion, stands for.
However, when they come and get their fist in my nose, I put my fist back in their face, guy.
I think that part of what we're talking about here is all of us, to one degree or another, want to have that kind of control in our lives where people don't come up and do those things to us, and if they do, where we don't feel threatened or we feel able to respond in such a way that puts us back on top of the situation.
No, I'm saying that I think that it's possible for a man to see that when he is in the grip of anger or any state like that, that it feels to him at the moment as though he's in control, but a little self-examination would show that it is the negative state that has the command at the moment.
And so he's not really in charge of his life either.
I understand exactly what you're saying, and I agree.
Those are all very distasteful characteristics in human beings.
But when we respond, Art, with an angry or hostile state ourselves towards people that have done that, number one, we think that we're going to teach them a lesson, which we don't.
We don't teach people lessons.
All that happens, look, Art, there is something in us that convinces us when we're angry or frightened or anxious that if we will do what it tells us to do, that we will be free of that feeling that we have of having been wronged.
Can I tell you a quick story?
Sure.
This is true.
I had a friend who went on one of those small, they're not like ocean liners, but they're kind of like for 30, 40 couples.
He was seeing everybody in shades of green on the ship.
So his perception was actually giving him his experience on the boat.
And what I'm saying is that there's something in us that perceives life one way when we can learn to realize that this part of ourselves that looks out and sees anything, such as an attacker or anybody trying to hurt us, I'm not talking about physically attacking us, but that someone says something cool about us, we can realize that my perception of that event is what's punishing me, not what the person did.
And once I start to understand that it's my perception, and my perception is all based on my past ideas about myself, who I am, how I think I should be treated, bad experiences, good ones, all of that.
All of that filters through and I look at my present experience through these filters and then I fight with life to make it conform to what I think it should look like.
And when I went on vacation, I talked to one of my neighbors and asked him to take care of my dog.
And he said, yes, of course, I'd be glad to.
I said, there's just a couple of things.
One, no matter what, she doesn't go out.
Right.
In other words, she's not street-wise.
We don't let her roam in the street.
And if she gets in the street, she's going to get hit by a car or something.
And, you know, I don't want that to happen.
Oh, I promise.
I absolutely promise you, this dog will not see outdoors except on a leash.
So this person ended up taking my dog on a trip out into the middle of the desert in a camper and released, let my dog out to go run free out in the middle of the desert in an area my dog had never been before on the highway and got hit and killed by a car.
Now, when I came home, guy, this person was extremely defensive and unwilling to apologize, unwilling to give any words of any kind of comfort or anything else.
And I went after that person, guy, and I got him.
In every way I could manage to go after that person.
That was my intimate enemy.
And that's revenge.
And I won't go into the details, but I assure you, I got revenge.
And that's probably a fault and the kind of thing you're working against, but that's me.
I am saying, Art, yes, turn the other cheek, but I'm saying don't turn the other cheek because of this picture of being someone who turns the other cheek.
Learn to awaken the part of yourself that is awake enough, intelligent enough with a capital I to never hurt you.
It hurts guy when he is on fire with anger towards someone.
It hurts me, let alone the other person.
It hurts me when I'm anxious.
Let's say I was anxious about being on the show tonight, you know, because you are, this is a huge program.
If I allowed the anxiety to tell me how to behave or what to say, I would not only wind up racing through things that didn't mean anything, but in an effort to win, I would defeat myself.
But the worst part of the defeat would be letting that anxious state live inside of me and tell me who I am.
And that's all I'm saying.
I'm saying that there is a part of our nature, our true nature, our God-given nature, that never would consciously hurt itself.
And when we are in a negative state, we are hurting ourselves whether we see it or not.
And it is possible to awaken inwardly enough to become conscious of these moments so that this other part of ourself begins.
Now listen, because this is the big part.
See, my book, The Intimate Enemy, is really interactive.
It has these new pieces of knowledge in it that say, listen, it's time for us to get rid of all of this ridiculous talk.
You know, everybody talks about creating their own reality and all of this new age business that has a basis of truth in it, art, but that when push comes to shove and someone does something to me or the news gives me, for instance, everybody realizes that the world is going through some major changes and it's going to go through them over the next dozen years or so.
There's no question about it.
Well, fear over that situation makes me impotent towards being awake towards any kind of influence that might want to give me some new information about the upcoming decade.
So all I'm trying to say is that we can live from something that won't hurt itself and have the experience of that new nature taking us away from these states and self that we've been living from.
What I'm saying now is that when you reach out to step on their toe, before you can step on their toe, you have to have stepped on your own.
And if you could wake up at the moment that you're doing That and see that a great deal of the pain you're experiencing has to do with an internal battle that's going on within you.
And see it, Art.
I'm talking about not thinking about this.
I'm not talking about reconciling.
I'm not talking about forgiving based on an image of being someone who's kind and compassionate.
I'm saying be awake to the fact that these negative states possess us and that when they possess us, part of that possession promises the relief from the pain that possession is putting on us if we'll do what it tells us to do.
And we wind up spending our whole lives serving these negative states in an effort to free ourselves from what we don't have to have if we would simply see their presence for what it is, which is an intrusion, an imposition in our moment-to-moment life.
um I I think that I know a lot of people, Guy, that are angry people.
They just have anger.
They generate it themselves.
If there's not a reason for being angry, they get angry.
That is very destructive and, in my opinion, and very self-defeating because when you get very angry, you tend to be it's like you have blinders on or green glasses.
I would say, is it not possible, and will you not think this through with me, Art, for the benefit of ourselves and everyone that's listening, could it be that there is something higher that a man can do at a given moment beyond that which is that flood of thoughts and feelings that come up in him?
And I'm going to say to you again, Art, I empathize.
I know what that would feel like.
I've had similar situations happen.
People do the stupidest things.
It's almost unbelievable that they could do that.
But does it make any sense for me to then hurt myself because they did something wrong?
Now, I'm saying that when we are angry, regardless of what has caused it, that there is something in us that is calling the shots, that we say is us, that says, I am art.
I am going to get even with this guy because of what he did.
But the only way we would ever know that, whether that's true or not.
Because we have so many pictures and ideas about ourselves, Art.
I would like to say to you, well, you know what?
I have a feeling that I would just go absolutely ballistic.
You know, that anybody that hurt my wife, my poor sweet wife, may God help them from my wrath.
Yet, even as I say that, I know in my heart of hearts that turning towards any other human being with an intention to hurt them is the wrong thing to do.
I just know that at my present level of understanding, what I have come to see, that there is no separate self, really.
And that anything that I do towards another human being, I do it to myself before I do that.
And I'm not saying, God, I wish you could see me so you at least understand the emotional expression of my face.
I am not saying that we are to condone the psychotic society and the evil and the sickness that's going around.
By God, no.
But I'm simply saying that there are higher ways for us to deal with these things, which instead of, and here, look, will you agree with me on this?
That men and women have been answering those kind of injustices throughout all of these centuries, and we have not changed the kind of human beings we Are even in the slightest way.
The same problems exist, which proves that the solutions that we have towards those problems aren't real solutions, but somehow are secretly continuing the problem itself.
And if we can begin to even think that that's a possibility, I think it's incumbent on us to wonder, well, maybe what I know to be true in this situation isn't the right answer.
Maybe this isn't the best approach.
And that's not to say that we're not going to fall down because, you know, we can decide for ourselves, as I urge people who read my books, listen, I'm going to try to live not only by not expressing this negative state, but I'm not going to repress it or deny it either.
Instead, I'm going to be awake to it within myself and experience what that negative energy is doing in me in the moment.
Let me try and pin this down a little bit when we're talking about anger.
I contend there is a rational anger and there is an irrational anger.
I delineate between the two.
And the way I do that is that I rarely, I almost never just get angry for the sake of getting angry.
Unless I have been wronged by somebody else in some way, I don't get angry, and I realize that whatever is going on is inside of myself, and I am able to deal with that.
But then there is a rational anger, and that's where I think we differ, Guy.
When somebody truly wrongs me, I go back on them.
I get them back.
I don't just let it stand.
I don't somehow deal with it in some touchy-feely way within myself and try to get rid of the anger.
I go back and I get them, guy.
So I'm trying to figure out what we're talking about here, rational versus irrational anger.
Yes, I'm trying to look at this in a way that I want to take it out of the context of this particular event that we're describing.
Because when we talk about events like the one that happened, it seems all too logical for us to return in kind what was done to us.
Instead, what I'm working here very hard to say is that what I think we really want, Art, and you may say, no, that's not what I want if it's not what you want, I think what we really want is to be free of this nature that can be.
And what I'm trying to say is that we have another kind of nature, art, that is free independent of events, not that is set on fire and that because of that pain.
And it is, and will you agree with me that when there's anger, there's pain there?
What I'm trying to say is that that pain that is in there and all the pressure that it's bringing, it always will have something or someone that it will say has made it feel that way.
And I'm not saying the person didn't do the stupid thing.
I'm just saying that we don't get free of that pain.
All we have is a momentary escape from it until another condition pops up that then takes us over in one fashion or another again.
But you must be able to say with all honesty that you see what I'm saying at this moment.
Every moment of our life, in fact, right now, while you're speaking with me and I'm speaking with you, my experience of this moment as your experience of the moment is made up of what I am in relationship with in this given moment.
Do you follow me?
I'm in these certain thoughts and feelings that are going through me.
It's about 70 degrees outside here in Oregon right now.
The lights are on in my office.
All of these things I am in relationship with in this given moment.
And my experience of my life is itself connected to what I'm in relationship with in any given moment.
I'm saying that my experience of myself, of guy right now, in fact the listeners can join in and do this too.
If we kind of wake up for a little minute here and we take a little inventory of ourselves, what kind of thoughts and what kind of feelings we're having, we can see that the overall experience we're having is born out of the relationship that we have with the kind of thoughts and feelings that are going through us.
Now, I'm saying that at any given moment of our life, that's what our experience is.
What we are in relationship with, the kind of thoughts, the kind of feelings, and more specifically, the kind of energy that those thoughts and feelings are coming out of.
Let's say you keep talking in such generalities that I have a hard time relating to it, Guy.
Let's say that you are not an author and that you're working in an office and you go into work in the morning and your boss, because there has been a personality conflict, says, guy, you're fired.
You're out of here.
Here's your pink slip.
Today you're gone.
Now, if you have been doing a good job and there is no reason for your being canned other than the fact that he doesn't like the way you're, the cut of your nose or something.
What I'm saying about being in relationship, now watch, here are two completely different scenarios.
Scenario one, and I have a feeling, Art, that this would, we're describing maybe what Art would do.
I would get, my nose would get crooked.
I'd start to fume.
I would feel that an injustice had been done to me.
I would go and I would tell other people what an idiot this guy is, what he just did.
In short, I would do what I have always done in situations where I feel an injustice has been done to me, which is to lash out in one form or another towards what I think is causing me this pain.
That's one way.
At that moment that I'm doing those things, look at what I'm in relationship with.
Look at what my experience is.
I am not only poisoning and punishing myself with these energies that I am accepting as mine and embracing, but anyone that runs into me, anybody that I talk to, I am throwing all this out at them in an effort to get rid of the pain.
Now, the single point I want to make about that approach to life is that that keeps happening and happening and happening because the nature that meets those moments like that can't do anything different than that.
The second way would be at the moment that the man does that, to come wide awake, to come to myself completely, and to first of all catch that feeling as it comes up inside of me that starts to say, you know what, I've got to go tell that guy off.
And that's what I'm saying is that when we can be awake to this what I call intimate enemy, these green glasses, this life that looks out at the present moment and meets it from who I was the moment before, when I can be awake to that, I don't have to take the choices that that nature gives me.
I can have better choices, more informed ones, superior actions.
I know people, Guy, who, and it doesn't matter what business they're in, if something bad happens to them, if a competitor clavers them, if their luck turns bad and the IRS audits them and their life is miserable and things keep falling on them, their reaction to that is, well, it's kind of a cosmic thing and I'm not going to let it worry me.
It's just the way life is right now.
And they let it happen to them.
To me, these people are victims.
It might as well have victim tattooed right on their forehead.
I don't know these people, and that may be the case.
Here's, again, let me try this slightly different tack now.
I'm saying that we, as we presently are living, are all the time made in one way or another.
Now, whether it's proactive or reactive to an event like someone canning me because he's the idiot, I am still letting that event determine my sense of self.
And I'm saying now that we have a nature within us that absolutely does not have to look to Events or people or circumstances, pro or con, to define us.
And that as long as we're living from something within ourselves that is upset or set off or redirected by those kind of events in order to re-establish a sense of self that's been somehow injured, we are victims because that sense of self can never be established outside of what it's trying to do because every change that occurs, and you and I know there are big changes coming, talk about a change in sense of self.
Everything is going to affect that.
So what I'm trying to say here is that I am trying to educate myself and anyone else that is interested in a way to see through this nature whose sense of self is tied into everything that happens in the world and to find that self, capital S, that is absolutely confident and supremely so in spite of events.
Now that doesn't mean that we don't respond.
Look, I'm all for succeeding.
I can't tell you how encouraging I can be when it comes to sending men and women out into the world in order to find themselves through the mirror that this life operates through.
But my God, to continually let every single person that looks the other way at us cause me to have a new direction in my life, that means that I'm their victim, Art, and that's all I'm saying.
And I think we've touched on something significant here.
If you were out in the middle of the ocean and you fell off of the boat and you saw this huge fin arcing through the water towards you, and then you somehow heard that massive shark saying, good afternoon, Art.
Can I give you a ride to shore?
Would you, A, get on that shark's back, or B, would you be the first radio personality to walk on water?
Even though it was telling you, no, let me help you.
So what I'm saying now, that these states that we're talking about, these moments like when that man comes and he's the idiot and he's fired me, and something wells up inside of me that tells me to exact a pound for a pound on him, that that's a shark thought.
But there is a rational and there is an irrational reaction to that guy to being canned for no reason when you've been doing a good job.
A rational reaction is, I think, the one that I gave you, and that would be I'd go across the street, find the guy's competitor, go to work for him, or start my own business.
Well, so then if some enemy, whatever that enemy would be, would attack us, you would not have hesitation in entering into a war, in going to war with them.
One, the first state that you're talking about, where the man comes in and does that, you are struggling to reestablish your sense of self, of having self-worth, of being who you think you are in your mind.
And I'm saying that as long as we live from that kind of mind, that kind of nature art, that can be turned over by someone's act, by someone's unkind or ridiculous comment, then that person or that event is going to be determining my sense of self and the actions that that self takes.
But again, what I'm trying to do here, and I don't know if I'm succeeding, is bringing this to a very personal level because you see there's a man somewhere in Georgia and a woman somewhere in Florida, and that happened to them today.
Their boss came in or someone said something that was cruel.
And all of our lives, we have responded instantaneously from something inside of ourself that when it felt threatened by what someone else did, the only thing it knew to do to restore itself was to cause another kind of pain.
I'm saying that in this instance, that this whole idea of what we'll call rational anger is a way in which we have finally come to the point where because we can no longer explain to ourselves what to do with these problems, we have found ways to accept these things.
I'm not saying art, that someone who commits a heinous crime, I mean this from the bottom of my heart.
I think that part of the problem with all of us today is that we don't understand all of the various levels of life that are inhabiting this planet at the same time.
There are beings walking around in human bodies that aren't human beings at all.
And I'd be the first one to pull the switch, the first one.
So this has nothing to do with being weak-nade and giving those idiots rights.
They should have no rights.
If they commit a crime, they should not have those kind of rights.
But we're not discussing that.
What I'm saying is, and I've figured out a way to get this across, I think.
We cannot discuss these states like anger and fear and anxiety, these negative states, unless we put it in a context.
I'm saying unequivocally that anger is a useless emotion if we understand what it is that we're trying to do with our life.
Now, this is, everybody has different goals.
We are all sewn under this planet with different things that we're attempting to do.
But if a person's, if his or her intention is to develop a relationship with something eternal, to find this timeless nature that I believe is sewn into us and that we're meant to know while we're alive here, then these negative states are useless to that individual.
They are useful to someone whose interests don't go along those lines.
You know, you told me you're going on a trip.
You're taking 500 people, right?
Yes.
And you said that you're going to talk about what's useful and what's useless to take on these trips.
I'm saying that on this trip to heaven, on this trip to Paradise, on this trip to our real life, on this trip to the Christ, whatever words we want, that these emotions, these painful, punishing, negative states, they are not useful.
And if you'll let me have one more minute, then I'll let you jump in here.
More important than that, I think that the biggest problem today, Art, is that we're coming up with all these explanations for why these negative behaviors are okay because we just don't know what else to do with them.
In my book, I outline what a man or a woman can do with these negative states that is not attending to them at the level that the state is telling them to attend.
We cannot, if, and again, gets back to this, and I'm glad that I thought about that during the break, because useful and useless all depends on where we're going and where we want to go.
And so if we want to reach something higher, in this instance, higher meaning to live from a sense of ourself that isn't tied to what other people do to us, that doesn't mean that we're incapable of responding.
It just means that we don't let ourselves be defined by these energy states, then those things are useless.
And you know, Art, I don't know, I don't want to kick it into another gear here, but one of the things that I talk about is that anger and fear and all of these other kind of negative states, they're mechanical forces.
They have no life of their own outside of what they can get us to invest in them.
And they feed off of us.
And that it's possible, instead of being someone who tries to dominate these states out of existence or do what these states tell us to do in order to be free of the pain they're causing, it is possible for us to take an internal stance.
And he went back into that town, and it appeared that no one in the town was going to help him.
But when they saw him go out against the impossible odds, his very action elicited those people to take his side, and they beat those idiots that were so cruel in that town.
The guy Finley you talked to last hour and the guy Finley of this hour is the same guy Finley.
All I'm saying now is that I'm trying to show you that we can call on something within ourself that doesn't defeat the enemy the way we're used to thinking in terms of trouncing them.
It defeats the enemy by revealing to us something within ourselves that doesn't know itself at that level, that doesn't look for itself in what other people do or don't do to us.
This is what it means, art, to awaken in this life, to become a whole human being.
That's all I'm talking about.
And so I say that these negative states are useless and that popular psychology today has found all kinds of ways to rationalize the existence of them because we don't know that the only authority they have over us is our fear of them or our wish to help them.
A negative state is any emotional or mental condition that gets you to do things that are against yourself.
That's what a negative state is.
I'll say it to you in yet one other way.
And I don't see, this I don't think is general.
A negative state, art, is something that is useless.
Something that when we do it, it really doesn't do anything except get us over the momentary hump, leaving us still in the hands of that self that will go through that exact same state again.
See, that's not freeing ourselves.
That's not succeeding.
That's in a way kind of buying an unfortunate piece of time that's doomed to repeat itself.
I understand what Mr. Finley is attempting to teach.
However, in doing so, he is presuming that our human nature is inferior to his unattainable ideal.
While I do not believe that we should let our id be our guide at every turn, I simply cannot fathom accepting others hurting me or the ones I love without exacting some sort of tangible revenge.
Yeah, well, I certainly don't think I'm amongst the latter.
What I am saying is that we are presently meeting this life from a very physically oriented sense of ourself that has spiritual overtones when it's comfortable or appropriate to talk about these things.
And I'm simply saying that our life is spiritually based and that the physical is the overtone and that the inner is what determines the outer.
And until we change the inner, nothing about our outer is going to change.
So if you can give me a specific example, as I have given you a couple, of what I mean that will illustrate what you mean, it would be very beneficial to this discussion.
You could be afraid to question the person who might, you know, can you, for example, if we're talking about a work situation, if you say, no, I don't agree, here's what I think.
Or if you say, I don't understand, you're going to have to explain this in some other way, as I'm doing with you this morning.
Yes.
Then to me, that's rational.
I don't sit there ever with anybody and just say, yes, I understand when I don't.
Is that if there's something in us that's sitting at a table and says, yes, I understand when I don't, that what is telling me my behavior at that moment is a fearful state.
And that that fearful state is protecting itself, not my best interests.
This is what I'm saying.
That there are parts of us whose interest has nothing to do with what is truly useful for us, which is to grow, to develop.
And that as long as we live from those parts, which we do as long as we are unconscious to their presence in our psychic system, then we are going to be victimized not by the person who then fires me when later I don't understand, but by that nature who said, yes, I do understand when I don't.
I chain myself to a mistake-making machine whenever I agree that I understand something that I don't.
And the machine is the problem, not the situation that brought it into existence.
I would go out, and I would, indeed, as I said earlier, start a business or join the guy's competitor and competitively beat his brains in and love every minute of it.
And you're telling me that love, that enjoyment of beating him, is wrong.
I'm saying that it is a mistaken perception art of the situation.
Look, I'll say it again.
Competition, working to succeed, achievements, these are all wonderful things in our lives.
I'm simply saying that if I live from a sense of myself that can be shaken to the core by any particular turn that the world makes, then it doesn't matter what I build for myself again when the world has taken a right turn, because when the world turns left, I'm going to have to go through the pain of that again.
I'm only saying, not that you don't start over, maybe you have to start over.
Persistence is one of my favorite words.
But I'm saying let's persist at what's useful.
Let's persist at what pays off.
And what pays off is discovering our authentic nature, our true nature, that is not dependent upon what people think, that is not dependent upon the kind of house I live in, not dependent upon whether the world accepts me for my ideas or not, but that is successful because it already is successful.
Art, that's what this God-nature is inside of us.
It doesn't need anything to tell it it's true and right.
It doesn't need anything to confirm its greatness.
It is greatness itself.
And until we can find that and live from that as best we can, we're going to be human beings who are going to try to cut our own greatness in this world, carve out our own empires.
And I'm simply saying that when we try to carve out empires and greatness according to our image of those things, because that image itself is in time and the world that we're carving it out in is in time, we are going to go through those nightmares over and over again.
So we're not really at arm's length art.
We're saying similar things.
I'm just saying that there's always something higher than we can be doing that has to do with exposing more of this essential problem where we're identified with every thought and feeling about ourselves instead of recognizing that there is something beneath this particular life and nature that we have that's very, very strong, very calm, very confident, and that doesn't have to let itself be taken over by anything.
Seems like both you gentlemen are on the same track, except one's talking about extreme situations.
The other one is talking about not so extreme.
I've got over 20 years in law enforcement.
I've been in the martial arts for approximately that, plus a little bit more.
And I can see all kinds of daily situations in extreme as well as not so extreme.
So you can use all these philosophies depending on what the situation is.
So obviously in a real extreme case where you have to pull your gun on somebody, you could choose either to shoot or not to shoot in situations that would be very emotional and very stressful.
In other situations, you could control it by doing something different.
And I think that if you look at the type of situations that they are, that would determine how you're going to react, how much control that you have.
I think that if you looked at a few of those situations, you could easily look at it and say, well, obviously if you have more control over yourself, you're going to be able to protect yourself, but you shouldn't let people walk all over you either, because that in itself is against the law of nature.
In other words, an irrational lashing out anger, you're always going to nearly make a mistake or hurt yourself or hurt others or do something really wrong.
And so I am saying that we are presently living from a nature that only throws up, excuse that expression, that only gives us a certain limited number of responses to the circumstance.
And that we can wake up and become conscious of those limited alternatives.
And in the very awakening to the limitations that nature is giving us, by that alone we have one more alternative, and that would be not to pay any attention to what we're telling ourselves to do.
I'm saying again, and I hope the point's getting across, that remove ourselves from this extreme situation where we act to preserve our lives and those we're invested to protect and simply see that at any given moment, my nature is giving me the answers that it gives me, but there are always higher answers.
And that one of those choices happens to first mandate that I'm aware of what I am being given as the only choices.
Because sometimes, like let's say you go on a scene, officer, and something's happening and you start to have a negative reaction to it because it reminds you of something that happened to you when you were a kid.
But you can wake up and catch that reaction and realize that what it's telling you to do is not the appropriate action and there is a higher choice.
That waking up in the moment to what our nature is telling us to do is the first order of business because it allows us to taste, to be aware of what we're being given as alternatives.
And there are always higher alternatives.
Except, of course, when someone's got a gun on it.
Most of us at any given point in our life can feel despair and despondent and frightened or anxious about our future.
And at that moment, the same principle holds true.
Because if I can realize that my despondency about my life is all coming to me from something that is measuring me against who I think I should be, then I can wake up and realize, hey, wait a minute.
Why am I punishing myself?
What I want to do is be free of this.
And we can wake up and wake up and wake up and begin to change our lives from the inside out.
However, it is my view, Guy, that if somebody is sitting out there in a terminal condition, racked with pain, absolutely is going to die a very agonizing and painful death, I'm a libertarian.
As far as I'm concerned, if they make and they can make a rational decision to take their own life, that is their business, not mine, and not the government's.
And I guess what I'm saying is that at a certain point, Art, I think that we can start recognizing that anything that is hurting us, burning us, that is a painful state like that, that it is in fact useless because, and again, I restate this, because it's misdirecting me.
See, I'm angry because of...
unidentified
That's where I wanted to come in.
Sometimes I'll get stuck, I'll get in those situations, and instead of maybe dealing with what I should have done, although it might get me in trouble, I'll think of something to say to a rebuttal, to something that would have made me mad at the time, hours later, and maybe punch my pillow, you know, and never deal with it and never bring it up.
And that's, I was thinking that maybe your book is probably for someone more like me than compared to someone like Art who was not afraid of that knock on the door if he was, you know, to be a salesman and not afraid of the answer, no, where I'm that type.
They all wallowed in jealousies and worries about each other.
They were growing older and weaker and in a very competitive situation.
Now, my reaction in a competitive situation like that, if somebody wronged me, would be to go out and sell the hell out of things until I won the car or I won the prize or I got whatever I got.
That would be my rational reaction to being wronged.
That's what I call a rational reaction to being wronged.
And you turn it into something constructive.
You channel it.
There is certainly a bad channel for anger that takes you nowhere.
And like, as you said, Color, you go home and end up punching the pillow.
That doesn't do any good.
But if you channel that anger toward winning, that's what I'm saying, Guy.
Yeah, and I think to slightly change the metaphor, what I'm saying is that there is one kind of life that all of us are very familiar with, which is channeling these negative states into trying to be more productive and winning the race.
And then there is the kind of life that I'm describing that is indeed not only possible, but I believe what we're here for, where we realize that trying to win those kind of races just spends our life on a track created by something that really has no essential value to us.
What good is it to run a race and cross the finish line and get ready to get your trophy and bang, the starting gun goes again, and you have to go run the race again.
He said, life is not a race To win, it's a school for our higher education.
And I echo that by saying that this life is not a proving experience, it's a learning one.
And that when we can meet the events that we do with a wish to learn something from them instead of try to extract a sense of self from them, then what we eventually learn is that who we are doesn't have to extract a sense of self from events.
We already have a whole complete sense of self that God gave us.
I'm saying that, Art, if what you do when faced with a challenging situation is to turn yourself over to something that has an intention of making someone else wrong so that you can feel right, that that is destructive because that has made you a victim.
And I will deal with it, hopefully, in the same kind of constructive way.
Now, I firmly understand the difference between constructive and destructive anger, Guy.
But I suggest to you that you're missing the point that there is constructive reaction to anger.
And that it's not all necessarily within.
you're suggesting that it can all be settled within and perhaps for some people it can yes i'm saying but Look, Art, I'm saying here that when a man tries to win the war, based on his idea of what the victory is, he's lost.
Well, then you don't go to war.
Then you don't try to win the race.
Guy, we're at a breakpoint here, so hold on.
We'll be right back, and there'll be more with Guy Finley.
I'm Mark Bell.
Guy, you're back on the air, and here comes the audience.
All right.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Guy Finley.
All right, if the person is not consumed with the anger or revenge, but turns their anger or revenge towards constructive actions, and it doesn't eat them up inside, is that bad?
The piece of paper that I asked the gentleman, and he's still with us, all I'm saying is that we are able, we are created to be beings which are not dominated by any negative state.
Whether it turns into what we call constructive or not behavior art isn't the issue.
And that's what's happened to us, is that you want me to look at the side of it as saying, look, I got angry and it motivated me and I turned that anger into something positive.
And I'm saying to you that that can occur, but that there's something higher than that.
I'm not saying that we're supposed to be saints and not get angry.
I'm simply saying that we can start to wake up to the fact that if I can't let go of something, or more accurately, if something has a hold of me, then in that moment, I am dominated.
I do not Possess myself.
Something possesses me.
And as long as it possesses me, it's going to do with me as it wants with those ideas that it has.
And I'm going to be its victim.
And I'm just saying that part of what's wrong with all of us today, and I'm pleased you may say, not you if you want, but part of what's with all of us is that we are, one bit by bit, finding our life in a condition where a certain mental or emotional state comes, and it has a hold of us so thoroughly that it will not let us go until we do what it tells us to do, i.e., grab the paper, throw it away, i.e., make someone sorry for what they did.
And I'm saying that that doesn't resolve the issue.
It just temporarily gets rid of that state.
And that it's possible for us to go through those things where we have to go through that.
Our life is meant to be that kind of experience.
But to begin to use those kind of experiences to free ourselves from the nature that that happens to.
That's what I'm saying.
Caller?
unidentified
All right.
All right.
What you're saying.
What I'm saying is you want to think before you react.
And what you're implying is you are just reacting.
I'm saying, sir, that thinking is a form of reacting.
And that we have a part of ourself called awareness that is higher than thinking because it doesn't have self-interest.
It's able to see what is good and what is bad without a past doing that kind of measuring.
So that when we can come aware of ourselves at any given moment, it's the same as inviting into what may be good.
You know, sometimes we have good thoughts, sometimes we do the right thing, sometimes we do the wrong thing.
But regardless of the particular action, we have a part of our nature that is sound asleep, that we're not using, that's able to see in a much broader, healthier, holistic way what we're doing to ourselves at the moment.
And in that awareness, find something that will not hurt itself once it becomes aware of what it's doing.
That's all I'm saying.
unidentified
Like a knee-jerk reaction with the police officers that was on the line.
Yes, or that may be, but before you could let up and be aware of the fact that you might get a ticket, you had to wake up to the fact that you were breaking the law.
Well, he doesn't like these extreme examples, so I'm trying to stay away from them.
But since you brought it up, you're absolutely right.
Now, if somebody raped my wife, I assure you, under the right circumstances, if I happened to write in the middle of this, I'd put a bullet in their head.
And yes, there would be consequences for that, and I'm quite aware of them.
unidentified
there would be consequences also for not acting To me, those can be worked out.
Okay, well, that circumvents a little bit the discussion we were having.
And what I said was, my reaction to a situation of that sort would be to go across the street and go to work for a competitor and competitively beat that guy's brains in.
that's according to Guy a wrong reaction in other words a a negative
But to go across the street for the purpose of that makes you the dupe of the man that you're trying to dupe.
Because your actions, what you are trying to do, has been given to you to do by the situation.
I want to try and again bring us into this different understanding, and we touched on it just before the break, that what we're trying to do, at least as far as I'm concerned, if we're going to make this life a successful one,
isn't to try to win these moments in our lives as the sole foundation of our sense of self, but rather to use this life and all of the various things that happen,
almost like what this man was saying, to begin to teach us things about ourselves so that we're less and less the victim of those kind of moments where the world suddenly goes right when we want to just go left.
It's always going to change.
What we can do is begin to find something inside of ourself that rather than being punished by the condition or trying to punish someone for the condition, finds a whole different order of life that is quite content.
Now listen, not letting people walk over us, but rather elevating ourselves to the point where other people's actions don't hurt us anymore.
See the difference?
One is this idea that I'm going to let people walk over me.
No, no, no.
I'm going to find that there is a part of our life, of our nature.
It's God-given.
It's the Spirit that naturally will elevate itself and elevate itself as we learn about who we are and who we're not.
And part of who we are not is this self that is going to prove itself by hurting others or so-called winning the next race.
I'll say it to you this way: what is unwanted by us at any given moment in our life is intimately connected to what is going on unseen within us.
So that the relationship between having a completely wanted life is connected to seeing all of these parts of ourselves that are selling us down the river for the wrong reasons.
No, I mean, I just, if he was to feel like this program went over as like a balloon, then how would he deal with it?
How would he deal with it on the personal level to justify or I'm trying to find an example that's happening right now since he doesn't really want to deal with any hypothetical example?
What I'm talking about, these principles that I write about, are about learning to use every split moment of our life.
Every split second.
So, sir, if I'm sitting here and I'm thinking or I have a feeling go through me that this program isn't going well and I feel pain because of that thought or feeling, that's the proof that I am wrongly identified with myself as being a teacher or a philosopher or someone who should be recognized as anything.
That is not my position.
And when I catch those things, I realize that I'm on the wrong side.
See, this is what we can't somehow seem to convey.
Look, if you, sir, if you picked up a skillet with your hand and it was hot, do you need to tell yourself to put the skillet down?
Right, because there is an instinctual intelligence that knows not to hurt itself.
Art, there is an intelligence that dwells in every man and woman that, when it is present and awake, knows not to hold on to, look to, or embrace certain thoughts and feelings because there is pain in them and the pain is connected to a wrong sense of self.
And that's what we're working to help men and women start to draw on instead of this present self that is always recreating itself and going through these self-defeating circles.
If your goal is to sell books and you have to reevaluate your goal, your goal was to sell books, so you went to another bookstore and you're selling your book.
Well, the example I gave was that your book is in one store, let's say.
And the store owner says, this is a bunch of psychological crap.
Get it out of here and throws your book out.
Okay?
And so then you go across the street to the other bookstore and the guy starts selling your book and it sells like crazy.
Do you experience a moment of joy in seeing that that guy was wrong and that you were right and that your book will sell and is selling?
Is that wrong to experience that?
I suppose, look, I suppose that Jesus would not have reacted that way.
But I am not Jesus.
Nor am I. So I would experience some joy, I don't mind telling you, and I will tell you, I'm being honest With you in showing the guy across the street that he was full of it.
unidentified
I think my joy would come in knowing that my book was good and that it would sell, not that he was wrong.
Otherwise, I'm sure it wouldn't hurt my feelings that he was wrong, obviously.
But I think in situations where things are so important, like life and death situations and things like that, it is very important not to be overcome with fear or any other emotion.
I think basically I interpreted it as a turn-the-other cheek policy.
unidentified
I didn't.
I took it as if you're doing it out of revenge or if you're doing it out of fear or anything you do out of an emotion is wrong, which I would have to say.
But if your anger or if your resentment in some way, you know, that you were wronged drives you in a positive direction, then I consider that a good thing.
I will give you yet another example of a destructive reaction.
Let's say you get canned.
I mean, I've been canned before, believe me.
In radio, anybody who hasn't been canned hasn't worked in radio.
And there are various reactions you can have to it.
You can get all sullen and sulky and self-defeating and go home and just sort of wallow, let your beard grow, become a bum for a while, go through a real crisis in life.
Or you can walk across the street, get a job with a competitor, and bury that SOB who canned you.
My reaction is the latter, not the former.
But I've seen a lot of people who have the former.
The one thing that Guy Finley said that was correct is that if you react in a negative way and it turns up, it ends up eating you alive, then indeed you have lost and your enemy is the victor.
He's correct about that, but there is a reaction that Ms. Finley did not seem to consider, and that is getting even, whatever getting even entails, and allowing that to be your satisfaction and allowing yourself to be done with it and go on to whatever is next.
That's why I'm, you know, I'm so glad you're asking these questions because it's like me being able to talk to somebody like that myself.
And, you know, and the question makes me think is like when he talked about it's like when you really have faith, as I mean, this way it is, if you really have faith and you know the justice will be done on the karmic level, then it's like you almost don't react with that revenge thing because you know it's going to be taken care of anyway.
And in fact, I'm going to draw a parallel to something the doctor said about the ant and what Mr. Findlay said tonight.
But you have allowed people with no backup, no substantiation, no pile of books to their credit to say all sorts of things, and you were not the least argumentative.
You let them spin their tail.
You said, golly gee, and so forth.
Now, yesterday, when the doctor said an ant caught on a crumpled piece of paper thinks that he's being pulled and pushed and buffeted about, because the ant can only see in two dimensions.
We in three dimensions can say, ant, don't you realize that you are being trapped in a dimensionality, or you think you're being trapped in a dimensionality that doesn't even exist.
We are able to see that.
Finley was saying that perhaps, and there's an expression that says, if you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll always get what you get now.
And what Finley was trying to say is, if we look above, we are more than our bodies, we are more than our emotions, we are more than what we think we are, and we have to pull back a little and we'll see that the conflicts and the difficulties that we have are only because we see ourselves as being limited.
No, I believe that there are two, this is where I differed with Guy Finley, that there are two possible reactions to anger or a stressful situation, as in being fired or whatever other situation we want to use to talk about.
One being very destructive to you and the other being constructive.
unidentified
Okay, let me come.
At the very beginning of the conversation that you had with Guy Finley, you used the very same political campaign tactics that George Bush used against the man in the tank.
The reason I asked a second time is because when I hear an interruption of the audio, that generally indicates that the party on the other end has call waiting.
If I had somebody of the caliber of Professor Courtney Brown who provided his word, photographic evidence, and a graduate physics student, all of which were standing by their story, I would go on the air with that story again today.
Yes, on the subject of your guest tonight, I would like to tell you that my husband had a little placard above his desk because he knew he had a very bad temper.
And this little placard said, anger is the wind that blows out the lamp of the mind.
If it's a mindless, undirected anger, it does indeed do that.
unidentified
Yeah, well, I believe that patience is required to make your cake turn out.
You have to have the ingredient of patience with any of your emotions.
But my philosophy is you're alone in the company of others and you will experience your life from birth to death alone,
Individually and responsible only for your own actions, and that it is not what happens to you in life that is paramount, it's what you do or what you choose to do with and to learn from what happens to you as you struggle to reach the highest road.
And that my belief is that payback is the ultimate surrender of your control of your life.
Yes, if you allow it to eat you alive, then indeed it will negatively affect you forever.
unidentified
And just on a lighter note, I read something, no, I heard something.
And on the Tom Snyder show back in February of 96, he was talking about, I believe it was a book possibly called Sweet Revenge, How to Get Even Nicely.
And the story that he was just cracked up over was this.
A first wife sewed popcorn shrimp into the hem of the drapes before she left.
He and wife number two, you know, a little babe, redid the carpet, the septic tank, and finally moved.
In other words, I tracked and I tracked and I tracked until I found out what happened.
Then I took steps and went and got my delivery.
I became proactive.
I didn't just steam.
I steamed, but then I did.
I reacted.
I did a positive thing that ended up in a positive resolution for me.
unidentified
Okay.
I'll try to put it in another context, okay?
Okay.
What he was saying, what I think Mr. Finlay was saying, is that we're all concerned about what's happening.
We know, like your book addresses that, there's an unknown quantity, like the world is going at the pace it's going is self-destructing.
We know that.
What he's saying is that if you get yourself involved emotively, emotionally, and if you're overwhelmed by it, there's no way that you can see the outcome or the explanation for it.
And I appreciate your call, but I adhere to the adage that one should think globally and act locally.
In other words, I understood and was frustrated by the UPS strike on the one hand.
But on the other hand, I acted locally.
I got on the telephone.
I began to do traces.
I began to find out where my box was.
And when I did, I took steps to see to it that I got It.
Strike or no strike.
And so for me, the resolution was a positive one.
I took that frustration, and I think this is a very good example.
I'm glad you brought it up.
And I channeled it into a positive action that had a positive result for me.
On the other hand, I could have said, damn, there's nothing I can do about this, and just been frustrated and allowed it to get the best of me and been angry until who knows what, you know, that was lost or there was another shipment or some other resolution or canceled my credit card order or there were a lot of options, but I chose not to take those.
Instead, I took my frustration and channeled it into positive action.
But if you apply that, for example, to a relationship, then you will miss a lot.
In other words, if in a relationship you cannot open up to love because you are afraid that if you do, you'll be wounded, then you will miss the intimate relationship that otherwise would have occurred.
Now, I perfectly well understand that.
So you've got to let it hang out sometimes, folks, or you're going to miss life.
But on the other hand, you don't have to, when wrong is perpetrated upon you, you don't have to hang your head and just say, that's my cosmic fate, and sort of hang your head and walk away.
That is not the way I react to difficulties and bumps in life as I go along.
But that's me.
I'm Type A. First time caller line, you're on the air.
But there are gaps between many people, and that doesn't mean we can't have discussions.
That's what makes an interesting discussion.
unidentified
Yeah, and I was kind of positioning myself with each one of you.
I think the art, you know, I think my starting point is where you start from.
You know, that when I was, I must have been really young when I made the decision that I was never going to be hurt.
And so the best defense is a good offense.
And I think, you know, you really come strong from that point of view.
But, you know, then I think about Danion, and I think about my own near-death experience, and I think, man, there have been so many times when I've had to face the results of my own actions in the form of somebody else's experience of it.
We're going to reach an impasse again because you see it as an interaction, a thing happening between you and somebody else.
When in fact, you know, let's put it this way.
If it wasn't somebody coming in and raping your wife, but some terrible thing happened that you could not perceive as being at the hand of another human being.
In other words, ma'am, if life kicks you in the butt and it's not at the hand of another individual, then any exercise of frustration or vengeance is totally useless.
Only when you have been wronged at the hand of another is vengeance to even be considered.
You can't have vengeance on the ups and downs of life.
You've got to roll with those.
unidentified
I like that.
But you see God as just a sort of cosmic force, is that right?
And you can accept God's acts, but you can't accept the acts of the people around you.
And that is that if somebody wrongs me, really wrongs me or mine, my family, whatever, then I will not simply sit back and say God will get them.
I'll get them.
In other words, my view is that God helps those who help themselves.
And I don't just rely on the possibility of some sort of cosmic justice to right things.
On the other hand, I want to be very clear, as I just thought I was with you, that if life comes along and just gives you a kick in the butt, well then there's no point in having anger or feelings of vengefulness against anybody because it just happened.
And so you pick yourself up and keep going and learn and grow.
In a moment, I'm going to talk to this lady I've got on hold here in a moment.
And then I'm going to do my commercial break.
Then I'm going to bring Ramona on because we are headed off on a very extensive trip.
She'll tell you about it.
But really what she's going to tell you applies to any of you who get up and go to the other side of the world.
There are a lot of hints and kinks and things you can do that will help.
And so I think you'll enjoy that.
She'll spend a few moments with those of you who are coming along on this massive trip.
And you can either take or reject some of the ideas, but we've done it so many times now that she knows what she is doing.
West of the Rockies, you're back on the air again.
Thank you for holding.
unidentified
Oh, no problem.
Yeah, what bothered me about the guest was his sweeping generalities about that we all do this.
Whenever any of us are feeling anger, that the anger's in control and that's negative.
And I know a lot of people that are more emotionally mature than that.
Like, for instance, if one of their children is in danger and they're angry, that's a signal to them to do something constructive about it and help other people that are unfortunate.
Yes, they've got hearings going with IRS horror stories, of which there are many.
And there is not going to be a resolution to it because the IRS is a power base that allows the government to socially manipulate our behavior.
It's the name of that game.
And I suppose when I do a commercial, I'm trying to socially manipulate you as well.
unidentified
Bell.
And this is Ramona Bell back on the air, giving you some travel tips, especially for our very large group who is going to be going with us to Athens, Egypt.
We're going to Israel, several of the Greek islands, making a stop in Naples, Italy, and we are also going to be ending our cruise in Rome.
For all of those who are going with us but are not going to Athens to spend a couple of days there, you will be arriving in Athens on October the 2nd at the Port of Athens, and we will be departing at 5 p.m. in the evening.
Just so you know, when you're doing international travel, you must be at the airport at least two hours before your flight takes off.
It's extremely important that you do this.
It's for baggage checks.
It is to make sure that you are going to be with your baggage.
And this is very important because if you're not there, but your bags are, they're going to be left behind.
So be sure to check your tickets and your itineraries to check connecting flights.
Just make sure that all of the material that you have, you read in advance of this trip.
Now, beginning in Greece, once we depart, we will spend one day at sea, which is the day that we are going to be doing our picture taking.
And for those who are traveling with us, we are going to do it in one day.
That means everyone will have to take their pictures with us on the day of the third while we're at sea.
And it will be from 1 until 3 in the afternoon at a place that will be announced on board the ship.
Our first stop is going to be in Alexandria, Egypt.
And for those who are not prepared for Alexandria, let me inform you of the temperatures there.
The temperatures in Alexandria currently at this time of year are going to be between the high 90s, you know, high 90s with maybe one day of rain during the year, though.
The last moment that I had checked the weather in Egypt, it was raining.
So be prepared for extremely warm weather.
And with that, I'm going to go ahead and give you a quick idea of what to take with you on a cruise.
We are going for 12 days.
This does not mean you need to pack 12 outfits or 12 dresses or anything of this nature.
We are packing as simply as possible.
And what we're taking with us will be the following.
Take comfortable clothing for casual wear.
This means jeans, long pants, preferably made out of cotton, short-sleeved shirts, very, very sturdy walking shoes for those great excursions that we'll be taking.
And believe me, your feet will appreciate good walking shoes.
We are also going to be in some formal affairs, some semi-formal affairs, and some casual affairs on board the ship.
The best bet is everyone understands that you are limited in the amount of clothing that you can take.
All luggage that's going to be checked must be in two reasonably sized bags that go up to a weight of 75 pounds each.
You are allowed one carry-on bag and that cannot exceed 50 pounds.
So, along with jeans, pants, short-sleeve shirts, be sure to pack a hat because it is extremely hot in Egypt and in Israel and you want to be able to protect yourself from that sun and that heat.
You want to also carry one dress, one or two evening gowns, nothing real serious, but you know, something fairly dressy.
One or two suits so you can interchange for evening wear.
And one or two casual outfits for evening wear on board ship.
And this is enough.
Believe me, you can interchange your outfits and not have a problem with, you know, everyone understands that you're going to be limited on your packing.
We try to stay with the basic colors.
We stay with blacks and whites, and that's enough for us.
Be sure to take a light jacket or a shawl and try the, you know, the layered look, which is, you know, wear clothing in layers so that you can put on or take off as you need.
And especially this travel tip, when you're entering into Greece, before you leave the United States, pick up some drachmas, Greek drachmas, from the currency exchange in the United States so that you can rent a cart because they do not have change at that airport when you need to get a cart.
In other words, the cart is on the side before you reach or get through customs and to a cash exchange.
So if you don't want to haul your bags, be sure to get some change before you enter the country of Greece.
Now, it is very important that you understand that when you're also taking your hand carry luggage, that you want to pack all your prescription medication in it.
Take enough for the 12 to 13 days that you're going to be gone.
Take everything that you know you're going to need that you know you're not going to find, like your particular bread of aspirin or Tylenol, skin creams, alga-celipser, very important.
Take some peptobismol or lotramen for those unfortunate times where you might otherwise not feel too correct.
We also have a little system where we take a heat coil.
We will take a voltage transformer because all European countries run on 220.
And when you're staying in the hotels, you want to be able to have access to your computers and radios, things of that nature.
And if you plug your radio or your electrical equipment into a 220 voltage, it'll burn it up.
So take a voltage transformer with you.
Take a multi-plug with you.
That's the three ways that you can find in the store.
And that'll increase your plug-in amounts.
We also take with us, because we have a tendency to be very sensitive in the beginning of cruises and trips, we've learned to take our own instant coffee, teas, instant soups, bouillon cubes, and a variety of little light snacks like fruits or dried fruits, nuts, cookies, things of that nature.
The reason being is that not all countries have the kind of foods that will be agreeable to you.
Now try.
Give it a try.
Don't be shy, but if you have a tendency towards a very sensitive stomach, it is wise to start bringing these things with you.
Bring a small calculator, a disposable one, one of those $5, $10 jobs, for currency conversion.
And I will give you the currency amounts as we go along.
Extra camera film.
It is a real pain to try to find camera film in a foreign country.
So take extra camera film with you, more than you think you're going to need.
Film for your video cameras.
Important, take a leg wallet, a money belt, or a neck pouch with you, as American passports are extremely valued in these countries.
If yours is stolen, believe me, it is difficult enough to try to get another one.
And while we're on the subject of passports, photocopy your passport and leave that copy with a trusted friend and take an additional copy with you.
That way it'll make it a lot easier if you have to go to the U.S. Consul to be issued a new one.
And guard these passports like gold.
You have to have them to enter any country that we're going to on this cruise.
In your hand-carry luggage, also include cameras, binoculars, radios, anything you do not want tossed around by the baggage handlers on major airlines.
Things that are very sensitive to being thrown around.
Carry your jewelry, money, your plane tickets.
All have to be in your hand carry luggage.
Toiletries, any change of undergarments and extra socks, just in case you and your bags are separated for a short amount of time.
Purchase international phone cards.
It's much cheaper to make a call from a pay phone on shore than it is to make a ship-to-shore call because it is $15 a minute.
It's much cheaper to do it this way, and we have learned through the process of elimination to make our calls off the ship rather than on.
Along with photocopying your passports and carrying the copy with you, also keep a copy of your credit cards because if they get lost or stolen, you do want to report them missing and you also want to be able to get them replaced as quickly as possible and stop anyone from using them.
For everyone's edification, it is not the type of trip that accepts the truly liberated woman.
In Egypt, there are a number of do's and don'ts that you want to be very, very careful of.
You are to dress coolly, but not scantily.
This means long pants, not jeans.
Long skirts, and at least short-sleeved shirts if you want to be respected among the Egyptians.
Single women do not travel outside the main tourist areas.
Do carry some bottled water with you.
Do take your shoes off when entering a mosque.
Avoid displays of public affection between the sexes, even married couples.
It's not appreciated having kisses passed in public, so you know, save it for when we get back to the ship.
Be sure to ask someone before taking their picture as they can demand a payment or gratuity for having that picture taken.
And while we're on the subject of photographs, do not photograph bridges, canals, or anything remotely related to the military or government.
Another custom in Egypt that you have to respect is do not pass food with your left hand.
It doesn't say why, but I respect that.
So be the same.
Be sensitive about what you say regarding Egyptian politics, economics, and the law, as they are all based on Islamic principles, and to criticize them will be, you know, is to criticize the religion.
And Islam is the state religion.
For Egypt and Israel, write down the serial numbers of your cameras and video equipment before bringing them into the countries as they must be declared to customs before entering.
And this is so you can get them back out.
If you fail to Do this, you will find your equipment confiscated.
There are some changes that are going to be made on our itinerary coming into the port of Alexandria.
We will be there from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. rather than 8 p.m.
We will also, on October the 5th, we will be in Ashdod, Israel from 10.30 in the morning to 11 p.m.
The next port of call will be Haifa, and we will be there from 6 in the morning until 11 o'clock in the evening.
Then we're out at sea for the 7th of October.
Then we approach the island of Patmos, Greece.
We will be there from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.
On the 9th, we will be in Rhodes.
And then on the 10th, we will be approaching the island of Crete.
The following day, we will be in another island, another Greek island, Navilion.
We're at sea on the 11th.
On the 12th, we will be in Naples, Italy, and then our cruise will end on the 13th, or excuse me, the 15th in Rome.
Now, for all of those who, for continuing tips on our itinerary for the cruise, we will be back after the break to let you know a little more about our cruising tips and our travel tips.
I'm Ramona Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
Coast AM
Camels of bed shadows faking our face, faithful.
The romance in my head headed holding a head.
Shadow drinks, let's live off to a bed, breathe through, kick up the little bell, to Fax Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye, dial area code 702-727-8499.
And if all the clouds and the rain weren't there, I suspect we'd have a nice clear desert night.
And it would be sand, not mud.
But that's not the case as a tropical storm spreads itself out.
All right.
Ramona wanted to add that any of you with additional questions, and I can understand you might have some, you should address them to Cruise Masters now through the weekend and or whenever you leave.
And you can reach Cruise Masters at 1-800-848-7120.
That's 1-800-848-7120.
We're preparing to embark on a fairly serious journey here.
Well, they're off the Ryukyu Islands, John, by a little bit.
I can't tell you exactly what direction.
Linda Malton Howe is going to cover it this week on Dreamland, but yes, they found pyramids and construction below the sea off the islands you're on now, the island chain you're on now.
You can view what occurred as a coincidence that the satellite just happened to lose Earth lock, which is what GE Americom said the moment that caller got to a critical point, and it was a great, incredible coincidence, or you could take the point of view that somebody knocked us off the air.
I don't know which is true.
What do you think?
unidentified
Well, I think that somebody did knock you off the air.
I seriously think that.
I mean, I seriously think that who knows if this story is true or not.
And that is what Jesus preached, and that is to turn the other cheek and all the rest of it.
However, I guess I would offer up the fact that he also seemed to go after the money changers with some diligence.
unidentified
I see.
What I thought perhaps on your part, Mr. Bell, and a few other callers is they reacted very negatively to his tone of voice and really couldn't get the value of his message because his oral presentation was just...
Yes, and that's how I found that was the biggest, the weakest link in his chain, so to speak.
It is merely a forum in which people are allowed to say what they wish to say.
Wildcard line, you're on the air.
Hello.
unidentified
Hi, this is Stan.
I'm calling from Mount Vernon, Washington, just about 60 miles north of Seattle.
Okay.
Really, a whole series of incidents have happened since January to me, to include meeting and talking with Nick Bunick, who he had on the line at one time.
Since then, I've had other surgeries, and I'm cancer-free at this moment in time.
And this whole subject of religious fever dealing with God and his direct wine and what Nick Brunick had to say about the angels interceding and giving him messages that were important for us to pay attention to, have really hit home with me.
It is entirely possible that what he says is exactly true, or perhaps it's not.
I don't know, but he did affect a very, very good interview.
There was no question about it.
And I think a lot of people were prepared to object strenuously to what he was going to say and found it difficult to do because of the manner of his delivery, which reflects back to the previous scholar.
So, I mean, I was just going to, I was going to faxion.
I thought, no, I'll just try to get through tonight before you go off the air.
I mean, I don't know if there was any way you could possibly do a voice analysis or just you yourself compare the phone call to his voice.
But as soon as I heard him, I just immediately thought, that sounds to me like the guy.
And I don't know if any of your other listeners thought the same thing.
But he just really, it caught my ear immediately.
I mean, I perked up and I said, wait a second, that's the guy.
And especially when you had David John Oates on and he was doing the reverse speech on him, and of course he played it several times, being able to hear it those several times really brought it back clearly.
Well, if I'm really able to determine that is the guy, and voices can be somewhat deceiving.
Right.
We're trying to, I told him to supply me with proof in the way of, you know, phone records, that kind of thing.
Right.
If he can do that and we can match it Up and really prove it's him, then we'll have him on the air and we'll get the whole story.
unidentified
Right.
Well, is he now is he claiming that he really did work for Area 51, or is he claiming that he did that as a prank just to prove that he could do it and is the whole thing a hoax?
You can get the quick inning, which is on the New York Times bestseller list now, at any bookstore.
And if they don't have it, they can get it.
However, I will do one, one book signing, one only.
So mark it on your calendar.
It's going to be at Barnes and Noble, which is located at, let me see, 1040 North El Camino Real in, it is Encinitas, isn't it?
Yes, Encinitas, California.
And will begin about 10 o'clock in the morning on October 25th.
And it will only be one book signing, I guarantee, only one.
So you might mark it on your calendar if you're in an area where you can, you know, it'll be a Saturday, October 25th.
So if you can drive, we're kind of trying to position ourselves in North County so that L.A. will have an opportunity to come in, as Will San Diego and perhaps points east toward Arizona.
And if you can take the time on a Saturday, we'd love to have you come out.
And I will endeavor to get everybody's book signed.
I will certainly stay there and try as hard as I can.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
unidentified
All right.
It was funny that last guy that called said that when he looks up in the sky, he said it really quickly, though, but when he said he looked up in the sky, he sees Art Bell.
It's like I think that there's about 30 or 40 million of us that think the same thing, that you're somebody on the air that's willing to accept that there's something out there.