Lou Gold wrote:
Faith and Belief
Lou Gold (October 1998)There is much confusion caused by using the words “belief” and “faith” as equivalents. The learning and realization process has different phases or arenas of development. Belief is a quite common early stage. So it’s good to be pragmatic and skeptical about beliefs. On the other hand, faith is the firming up or deepening of urges that only begin to manifest in the form of belief. And sometimes faith will arrive by Grace quite independent of prior belief structures.
Belief is largely a mental construct or predisposition toward a story or myth. Belief will open the door to certain existential events or experiences. It can cause one to take a risk and enter the experiment personally and experientially. But there is nothing truly firm about belief. Negative or contrary results will often cause one to drop the belief, which is usually outcome-dependent as in an experimental hypothesis. The best one can do is “fake it until you make it” or change your mind and try something else.
Faith is much more. It is the deepest trust that can come from an inner or intuitive knowing. It is usually firmed up by going through a particularly difficult experience and learning that the way out is through a learning that occurs in the face of enormous doubt. Faith arrives through a co-creative process involving BOTH surrender of the concerns of the personality and the Grace of God. Surrender is the opening or “crack in the cosmic egg” through which Grace may flow.
Faith is likened to a rock because it is totally transformational. The person who has faith will be able to keep going in the face of incredibly poor odds and in the face of very contradictory evidence. It’s the power of an inner vision that has firmed into a complete and unconditional integrity. Through the eyes of an observer it appears as an unfathomable depth of trust and the person of faith (or deepest understanding) appears as a Saint or Realized One.
The quintessential or archetypal story of total faith is probably the Passion of Christ. Faith is not Love so much as it is the mechanism through which greatest Love is revealed in action, a Love that has been transformed from a mere attitude or belief into an actual transformational event.
Christian Mysticism is somewhat unique among the great Wisdom Traditions in the attention that is given to the “Dark Night of the Soul”. St John of the Cross made it abundantly clear that the Dark Night is an essential phase or passage in the process of spiritual development. It is in the Dark Night that one passes through the trials of total annihilation and confronts the truth of the void in which prayer and God and concepts in general all fail to produce the desired results. Nothing is there. This is the first great experience of non-duality as the Void. It’s truly terrifying to the personality (or ego). Surrender is the only option. And in surrender Grace arrives and Faith is made firm.
The Dark Night is the great initiation into realization that “Form is nothingness. Nothingness is none other than form.” In Buddhism’s Heart Sutra the result is the Great Mantra“Gone. Gone. Gone completely beyond. Nothing left to defend. Awake. Sobeit!” Similarly, in the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna says the Man of Knowledge is beyond all dualities and outcomes. He is “bound only to letting go”. Thus the Realized One has total Faith that all life and spiritual development is a process of surrender, continuously renewed
This kind of Faith continuously births and reveals the greatest Love and Compassion and Healing into the world. And one who has it knows that his/her job is to shine, to just shine in the face of any and all circumstances. In this regard, the story of Jesus and His mission (bringing Christ Consciousness to Earth) has no parallel in the literature of spirituality leading some to conclude that Christ Consciousness is the Field of Divinity itself.
Krishnamurti once said that he found it amazing that the Church chose to worship the suffering of Jesus rather than his passion. That the Vision of Christ has been able to survive the accumulated baggage of 2 millennia of dogma and distortion is but one testimony to its power.
The realizations of the individual human heart are still greater than the most “meaningful” story -- much greater than the most powerful worldly hierarchy or cultural framework. To receive the gift one does not have to embrace the conventional Christian story. But one must ask with deepest inner intention and trust.
What a gift!
Click Here to enter your own Response, or
Return to the Comment Page