Dear M,

Thank you for your question.  First, I want to say that there is no such thing as a faithless person. Faith is an aspect of consciousness. Everyone has faith in something. The question becomes, what do you have faith in — fear or love? As Albert Einstein put it, “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a hostile or friendly universe.”

I would encourage you to take stock of where you are putting your faith and see if you can recast your thought patterns. While you may not be able to immediately change your circumstances, you can at least change your mind about them. Sometimes, it just takes a subtle shift in perception to alter your entire trajectory.

As a start, I would suggest bringing some level of “acceptance” to the many losses you have experienced. Acceptance doesn’t mean that you have to be happy about what has happened. It just means that you don’t resist what “is”. Be gentle and patient with yourself as you grieve your losses in whatever manner is appropriate for you. Trust that these experiences, as painful as they may be, are an important part of your spiritual journey.

People often think that once they become more conscious, they won’t suffer anymore. This is not at all true. In fact, suffering often plays a “starring role” in the awakening process. While nobody wants to suffer, it can work to our advantage. The more we suffer, the more motivated we are to transcend our pain, and the greater our potential for growth. Like a tree that sheds its leaves in the fall, we too may need to experience loss in order to prepare for the next stage in our evolution.

I recently heard an interesting story about Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound. When he landed his plane, Yeager told the press, “What I discovered is that the cockpit shakes the hardest just before you break the sound barrier.” I think this also applies to our spiritual journeys. We need to be especially strong in our faith when the “cockpit” of life is shaking the hardest. It is in this critical moment, when we are most tempted to give up, that we need to shift from fear to love and know that we are on the precipice of a powerful breakthrough. Right now, your cockpit is shaking really hard, and you have a lot at stake. The best thing to do is to hold tight, and trust that you are on the verge of a healthier and freer way of living.

I would also recommend that you forget about trying to “make sense of it all”. People tend to believe that the spiritual path will lead to a place where all of our questions will be answered, and life will finally “make sense”. Even if that were true, the human mind comes from such a limited perspective that it would be incapable of understanding this big picture. The saving grace of the spiritual path will not be an unraveling of this great enigma, but rather the capacity to fearlessly walk head on into the mystery.

Many blessings to you,
Amy

<< Prev Page

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 12:30 am and is filed under General, Inspiration, Self-Help, Spirit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.