Faith has nothing to do with belief

It is a common occurrence—something goes wrong in life, or something that you really need hasn’t come yet. You get anxious and start to wonder if you will have what you asked for, hoped for, or even simply ordered on a website. Things don’t seem to be going to plan and you want to know “What’s the status?” The action-oriented wish to figure out what has happened and intervene, to “push it through”, so to speak, “to expedite” and so on.

But then there’s the religious people, or the so-called spiritual, who have a different point of view. They don’t like to push, or intervene. Instead, their answer is always the same, “things will work out”. Or “have faith”.

One of the most misunderstood concepts of our time, faith, unfortunately, has nothing to do with believing in a higher power, or hoping that something you want will happen. On the contrary, faith means that you wait for understanding, however long it takes. Faith means that no matter what is going on, you want to keep moving forward and see what is in store. Faith means that you are looking forward to whatever life is about to bring, and that you are willing to keep your eyes and ears open no matter what kind of experience is being given to you.

“Faith simply means that if you wait, understanding will be given to you. It has nothing to do with belief or hope.”

Expectation creates anxiety

In today’s world, anxiety has become a new normal. Very few people in the world now expect to live without any anxiety at all. The air is so full of negativity that it is hard to overcome. Even if you yourself are not anxious, the anxiety of others is felt, sometimes palpably so. But in a world where there are so many conveniences, why is there anxiety at all? After all, we can go buy whatever we need almost anywhere and at any time, and have it delivered to us in a matter of hours or days. Just about every pleasure and assurance of safety is given to us constantly—roving police cars, insurance firms, cell phones, food everywhere. We are not lacking for anything, are we?

The root of anxiety is fear, specifically, the fear of death. You may think I am being extreme, but if you spend some time reflecting on how anxiety works, you will understand that fundamentally, the fear we used to have for our lives when we were living in the jungle along with all the dangerous animals and weather is still very much with most of us. This is a question of memory, memory which has been passed down over the ages through physical means, i.e. reproduction as well as child rearing. In other words, both nature and nurture have combined to preserve the fear of death that we used to have.

The point of spiritual work is to undo these memories that have been within you for so long that you believe they are a normal part of being human. However, spirituality isn’t about just being an animal that has evolved. It is about going beyond the animal tendencies, getting rid of them and become free from all influences, past and present. The point of spirituality isn’t about finding God, Jesus or even discovering something new about the universe. All these things may or may not happen to you, but the one thing that is necessary is that you become a human being without fear.

“The goal of spirituality isn’t to find God, but to be free of all influences, including fear.”

It doesn’t matter whether you are expecting a package, waiting to be called for an interview, or simply thinking about tomorrow—the fundamental issue is the same, you believe that something doesn’t happen in the way you want, you will die. There is no “fear of pain”, “fear of failure”, “fear of this or that”. There is only one kind of fear, and that is the fear of death. At the deepest level, you are afraid to die so you create all sorts of narratives that justify your fear. Obviously, these narratives are false.

Why does faith remove fear?

If faith had anything to do with a certain thing happening or not happening, you would be far more anxious on the spiritual path than you would be otherwise. Now, unfortunately, certain entities have figured out a way to twist the meaning of faith to mean that you must have belief in a certain kind of entity or idea that will save you. I am not just talking about certain churches, but also insurance companies, investment agencies, employment firms, even social media. In almost every industry you will find narratives designed to make you feel that unless you put your blind trust or “faith” in them, that you will fail. It triggers that part of you that is still afraid of being eaten by an animal and anxiety is the result. Companies, organizations, institutions and individuals are all capable of, and very much engaged in creating and perpetuating narratives of fear, because selling immortality has always been a profitable endeavor.

But once you accept that you will, in fact, die one day and that there’s really no problem with that, you can spend your time relaxing in peace, trying to understand your life instead of being afraid of it or being afraid to lose it. And this is really what happens on the spiritual path: you came face to face with the unalterable, inescapable experience of death.

“On the spiritual path, you accept death—not by knowledge, but by actually experiencing it.”

Lots of people intellectually accept that they will die, even laughing about it. But to actually experience death is a whole another thing. But wait, how is it possible to actually experience death? Does the body have to physically die, and somehow magically be resurrected, as the story of Jesus says, for example?

What it means to die, really

No, we are not going to put anyone through a physical death and resurrection experience. But you must understand what it means to die. You see, what you call death, isn’t just a question of losing consciousness. It is about losing individuality. At the end of the day, the only thing that is causing you to “feel alive”, is that you sense a boundary between you and something else. Underneath the sense of individuality, there is nothing but a bundle of energies, loosely connected by emotion, memory, structure, etc. As you may have seen in accidents and such, this structure is easily destroyed. Stop breathing for a bit, or just drink too much water even and you could lose your life! So it isn’t the body that’s the problem. In fact, after you do die on the spiritual path, you will see that your body has no fear of dying. It is another layer on top of the body, called the “ego” by yogis until now that creates this idea that you are a separate entity from the whole universe. And it is this layer that is afraid to die.

I don’t like to use the term “ego”. Too much confusion surrounds all these well-accepted terms and most of you have too many ideas (or have read too much), meaning that you think you know something when you really don’t. So I’ll call it what it is—your psychological layer. This psyche, if you will, is the one thing that absorbs garbage like a sponge, eating up everything it encounters. But it’s so thin—barely perceivable in an energy sense. Then why does it have so much impact on people?

Because you empower it by constantly paying attention to it. People have trouble letting go of their feelings, whatever they may be, so they constantly fret over them. They want to know what they’re feeling and why. They want to know what it means that they feel a certain way, and whether those feelings are a call to action of some kind. Well, I am here to tell you that your feelings are absolute garbage—most of them aren’t even yours! As you walk around the world, the ideas, opinions and feelings of others are hanging out, in the atmosphere, because they are physical in nature and made up of energy. When you absorb them, you start to believe those feelings are yours. Your corrupted energy system then starts to generate all kinds of narratives to justify those feelings, which is how you come to associate feelings with actual occurrences. Your understanding is compromised, and you end up taking the wrong action.

To die, really, means that your psychological layer is totally destroyed. This will happen on the spiritual path automatically, once I’ve cleansed you, that is. One fine day, every single thing you used to believe will be shown to be false and it will destroy you, i.e. your sense of yourself. Your very idea that you exist as an individual will be killed, and the experience is so real, that you will feel you are actually dying. It is a hell of an experience. Having taken on the burdens (i.e. ego) of many others, I’ve died many times in one life and I can tell you it sucks every time. Some people have a serious reaction, like throwing up, being unable to breathe and so on, but it is all a sham created by your psyche. Just be with it (you won’t have a choice anyway), and it will end, leaving you free of all sense of “me” and “mine”.

Be willing to die

If you want to succeed on the spiritual path, you must be willing to die. No, not secretly hoping you won’t have to, or thinking that you’ll be spared because it’s just the ego, etc. You will have to actually be willing to die, because only total acceptance of death will take you to a point where your ego will simply give up. It’s like the Abrahamic test I was talking about in a prior blog post—you must be willing to walk into the fire if asked to do so. Only if you are actually moving towards the fire in full awareness will your ego panic and shut down. This is how every yogi, guru, holy person, etc. has done it. We have embraced our own death willingly and destroyed our egos. And this is why enlightened beings have no violence or sense of survival in them—we’ve already died, so what is there to preserve!

But don’t think that just because you have faith today, that you will have it tomorrow. Faith is a gift, like everything else and if it can be given, it can be taken away.

“Don’t be so arrogant as to think you can hold onto faith. It is a gift that can be given and taken away.”

The point of every gift is for you to enjoy it while it lasts. Instead of fretting over whether you’ll have faith tomorrow or not, just enjoy the fact that you have faith, if you have it. This is true of everything. Enjoy whatever is given to you, without worrying about whether or not it will last, because anyway it wasn’t yours in the first place. You, as an individual, aren’t being given anything. Life is simply doing what it needs to do and sometimes you have this, and sometimes you have that. In other words, you must learn not to hold onto anything in life, no matter how strong the narratives of ownership and possession are around you. While the business world continues to roll around its own filth by creating ever more narratives about personal freedom, triumph, effort, success and so on, you must be steadfast in your understanding that in fact, all of it is a sham—just a bunch of beliefs supported by a thin layer of the body. If you are living in such a world, you are really living on the very surface of life instead of diving deep.

If you’ve read enough or heard enough about faith and really want to give yourself to the process, come to me, let me get you started and then be with you as you progress. It’s a lot easier going on the journey knowing you have someone with you that has finished. You won’t need much guidance, as you will be guided from within, but you will need reminders once in a while so that you feel better. I am here for you, for life, if you need me. I hope you take full advantage of it.