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These are hard words for some to hear. Actually they are incredulous to most. Faith is a crutch that humans have used for millennia as a way to explain the unexplainable and used, as a way of dealing with the torment, pain and suffering of daily existence as human animals in this world. As you know rather well, a crutch is a temporary aid until one walks on their own. If you stay with a crutch when you do not need it, you can become lame by reason of the crutch itself. The crutch must be abandoned, thrown away and then you can walk freely again, without pain, on a course of healing. Perhaps the crutch is necessary for a time but once you have some confidence, some intuition that you are healing, or perhaps when one tells you "You do not need it anymore" then you can simply toss it aside. It has done its purpose.
Faith or any belief system as a whole is the final hurdle to overcome in the human path towards freedom and joy. Let me say it on a very personal level. Until you, as a human being, are able to completely abandon what you believe, have been told or taught what to believe or believe in, you will never experience this moment of reality as it is. You will never be fully free. You will be conditioned to experience present reality through a veil of the past, because beliefs are traditions from the past. This is not a joke, not any agnostic or atheistic principle. I am trying to point you to your own total human freedom to be able to live in this world joyfully, in love and compassion until the day you die.
That which we have called God, the infinite, the eternal, the essence of all, the permanent, Adonai, the Unknown, the creative energy of the universe, Being itself, existence itself, the Almighty, Allah, love, order, truth, is ness, the Other, and all the rest of the adjectives, nouns, verbs and concepts used in describing this, is simply this moment of reality. You can not believe or have faith in this moment because again very simply: you are this moment. We have a hard time with this because this moment is sometimes filled with intense physical or emotional pain. The answer is, at times like this, to turn within to the gentle, permanent, ever present reality of the pure silence of who we are that never suffers or feels any pain. And at the moment of death, the ultimate personal painful moment for each of us, there is no difference. Since we are, at the core of our being, pure silence, which is eternal, we can embrace that moment when it comes as well. We do not need to try and evade it or cloak it with a belief system that promises another moment other than this. Remember God is not the future, not heaven, God is "I am", present tense, this moment.
The word "believe" comes from 2 old English words "be" and "life." As a matter of fact the root "leubh" from which comes the "lieve" part, also means love. We can conclude that the original form of I "believe" meant I be or am love, I am life. This is a far cry from the current usage of the word. As a matter of fact when we say we believe we are "leav"ing the "be", or being now.
When we "believe" in something or some one we are following a tradition of the past, which as we can see in the world, still influences so many people and their actions. Beliefs have divided the world. The world can never be one unless we can come back to the original meaning: to be love!
When one says I believe, what is it that is meant? Is it not that this entity which is considered the "me", with brain and awareness, is putting , rather throwing all our energy, mental and emotional, onto a traditional concept created by human beings sometime in the past? Instead of living now, we turn our fixation to another person's thoughts "about" reality rather than experience this moment "of" reality. And that other person's thought is from the past, it has no bearing on now. Reality is now. Being is now. In the words of the prophets there is no God but God, there is no moment but this moment. There is no reality but this reality. There is no now but now.
We as an evolved species have great difficulty accepting the simple fact of just this. We find it hard, yes even impossible to fathom that there is nothing but just here and now, as it is. Until one can learn to embrace this fully, no matter what the pain, what the crap, what the situation, we will never be free, never be fully alive to this marvel called Being.
Allowing the pure silence, the emptiness, the openness within you to be experienced, relaxing into the space of no thought, need, want , desire or belief you will soon realize that you are what you have believed in for so long and perhaps tears will come, or emotional jolts at the magnificence of this. That is wonderful. That is the moment you have waited for your entire life. You will have come home to here, now and this. And that is love itself. In the words of Krishnamurti, the great spiritual teacher "Stop believing in anything and you find that which is love and truth itself." This is so.
Be love!
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