Without your knowledge, invisible psychological characters inhabit your inner being and make choices for you - choices that work against your real life interests. Applying this book's Higher Principles to your life helps you to expose and dismiss these self-compromising characters and reveals the Truth about who you really are. The freedom you've longed for follows. You'll learn to align yourself with Life's secret direction, which invites the greatest power in the Universe to take your side.
Welcome to the most extraordinary adventure of your life. You are about to meet and defeat the intimate enemy. Victory is guaranteed!
Finley and Dickstein explain that "we each have, and operate from, a false nature that is a jumble of our memories, conditioning, and some tempermental qualities." That false self responds to everything that happens to us, and its response is usually negative or defensive. We then find "ourselves caught up in the same kinds of situations again and again, and nothing ever seems to be resolved in a new way."
They call the false self an intimate enemy and say that we are our own worst enemies when it comes to finding true happiness.
Their book devoted to learning how to recognize the intimate enemy and "discover how to rise above our own present psychology."
Our false selves blame events outside ourselves for our unhappiness or see neutral events as threats, with the result that we are contantly battling to control external circumstances. Only when we become aware of the "True Self" within do we learn we are a part of a world of truth and light where all battles are non-existent.
The authors use short stories and examples to show how people misunderstand the world around them. They explain how to become aware of the fallacies the false self continually attempts to foist off as truth, and how to determine what is real and what is deceit. They say that "understanding that we are a multiplicity of selves is critical to recognizing, and ultimately defeating, the intimate enemy."
They emphasize self-study as the primary way of overcoming the false self. Self-study involves rousing ourselves from "psychic slumber" and becoming aware of our thoughts and internal actions. They offer specific tips for achieving greater self-awareness.
The Intimate Enemy is for anyone who wants more from life than a daily battle against unseen enemies.
