Believing is Seeing

To doubt serves a spiritual purpose, scientifically to question every teaching, religious and otherwise, that one is taught, accepting nothing on blind faith. The critical analytic intelligence is applied to the philosophizing of Spirit for the primary purpose of rejecting dogmas and superstitions of religious gurus that do not ring true personally, from the heart. Beyond this necessity for negating what is false, one has to have confidence and faith, be self-affirmative and able to get beyond the limited doubting mentality.

Needing physical or outwardly apparent evidence is the way of the materialist, whether it be the atheist who needs scientific proof for the existence of God or the orthodox religious theologian brainwashed into believing the Divine is "outside of him" personally and that all that is human must be transcended or eliminated.

The dualistic view is in believing that the external world, which includes priests and organized religions, is Divine and holy while the individual human being and inner person is profane, imperfect. It is also based on the notion of an external world existing separate and apart from our personal creating of it mentally. Whether the world be the creation of an external God or of a reality that we have no personal control over. The fear of the sinner who fears punishment by God and going to Hell or that of the skeptical nihilist who believes only in matter and the material objective and empirical 'realities'.

There is a fatalistic and powerless feeling that goes with believing I am nothing more than this physical body, which will die inside of 80 or so years; and more globally, the reactionary view to all the war, death, crime and poverty we read about in the news. If one does not have Faith, seeing a big picture, a reason for everything we cannot always fathom, then gloomy pessimism and despair is the only option left. Amidst the general uncertainty and precarious nature of existence, there has to be trust and belief in a benevolent and supportive Universe or God.

It is more empowering to believe the Universe is perfect, does not make mistakes, and I came into this world as an eternal unlimited being with a reason and purpose here. That everything I experience, the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, are all of my own creation, and within my power to resolve, transform and regenerate. It really does come down to my most ingrained beliefs about life, death and the nature of reality. A valid belief system is based on what is true for you personally, and not upon any socialized religious precept or sophisticated group mind concepts of any kind. Most importantly, this core believing is independent of self-limiting beliefs adopted from outside authorities and the social environment. The Higher Self is composed of our truest core values, independent of all fears, limitation and doubt that go with the human psyche bound to physical reality.

The only solution as I see it is to do as Gandhi said and "Be the change you want to see in the world"... this requires looking within, beyond the doubting and fears that lead nowhere, to the very essence of what you believe and how you individually choose to take responsible ethically guided actions in your world. The answer is not in outward, or political activism of any kind... but change from the inside out, beginning with the individual, coming from a place of peace, love, faith and universal goodwill.

In Faith

Joel

Dying to Little Things

Have you ever tried dying to a pleasure voluntarily, not forcibly? Ordinarily when you die you don't want to; death comes and takes you away; it is not a voluntary act, except in suicide. But have you ever tried dying voluntarily, easily, felt that sense of the abandonment of pleasure? Obviously not! At present your ideals, your pleasures, your ambitions are the things which give so-called significance to them. Life is living, abundance, fullness, abandonment, not a sense of the 'I' having significance. That is mere intellection. If you experiment with dying to little things, that is good enough. Just to die to little pleasures with ease, with comfort, with a smile is enough, for then you will see that your mind is capable of dying to many things, dying to all memories. Machines are taking over the functions of memory-the computers- but the human mind is something more than a merely mechanical habit of association and memory. But it cannot be that something else if it does not die to everything it knows.Now to see the truth of all this, a young mind is essential, a mind that is not merely functioning in the field of time. The young mind dies to everything. Can you see the truth of that immediately, feel the truth of it instantly? You may not see the whole extraordinary significance of it, the immense subtlety, the beauty of that dying, the richness of it, but even to listen to it sows the seed, and the significance of these words takes root, not only at the superficial, conscious level, but right through all the unconscious. - J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life