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Thought and faith

Man is a thinking animal. In fact, man in modern times may be a victim of the disease of compulsive thinking. Our problem is not an inability to think, our problem is how to stop thinking. Thinking that is habitual and mindlessly repetitive tires us without achieving results. It is unintelligent and stagnant, based on fixed notions and ideas. Most importantly, it is a result of a stagnant self image that we are clinging to. We may cling to a past glory or a fact that is projected to establish our worth. Clinging is born of the past. It is born of fear. It arises when we fear the uncertain and the unknown. The movement of life is always uncertain. It is forever an unfolding of the unknown. Therefore, when we fear uncertainty and the unknown, we fear life. When fear becomes the basis of living, peace, contentment and joy fly out of the window. All our thinking is futile and counterproductive. The thinking tires us and frustrates us. It becomes a burden as we are stuck in patterns that lead nowhere. We are stuck in a hole and cannot stop digging. The most important thing we have to do is to stop thinking and become still.

If we can become completely still and abide in that stillness, we feel once again the freshness of life every moment, we face great difficulties with courage and calmness. We live with intensity and fulfillment because we are centred in the present moment. We are receptive and responsive to the new. In that stillness, we have become aware of life as it is, an everchanging flux. We have allowed our obsolete notions and ideas to fade away. We have unclogged the choked corners of the mind. We have allowed the light of timeless awareness to enter and heal us. This needs no technique. We only have to abide in stillness. This is our natural state. Yet, our habits of compulsive thinking have conditioned us to become self forgetful of our natural, spontaneous state of love, peace and joy. All techniques, then, in one way or another, are aimed at peeling the onion of conditioning. They are aimed at bringing us back to an unconditioned awareness.

Although we may not realise it, although we may not say so, although we may not admit it to ourselves or even know it, our greatest enemy on our path of self discovery is ourselves. This is so because we stubbornly cling to the past, to fixed notions and patterns of thinking. The thinker who is caught in the rut of mindless, habitual patterns of thought is a thinker stuck in the past and with a static self image. The past gives us an identity. The past represents the known. The known gives us security, however miserable that security maybe. Most of us are fearful of a leap into the uncertain and the unknown. So we cling to the past, to a petty self image rooted in the past. We need to leap out of the hole we have dug ourselves into. No amount of logic and reason will help as the thinker is rooted in the past. He is confined by fixed notions. To break free and embrace freedom needs all our strength and courage. Not in some remote future but this very instant. It needs a clear understanding of the futility of habitual thinking in giving us new direction and meaning on the ever changing journey of life.

We need to rediscover the light of unconditioned, timeless awareness that is beyond thought and time. To do so, we need to leap out of the hole we have dug ourselves into by mindless patterns of thinking based on petty self images and fixed notions, limited ideas and distorted perception, likes and dislikes, pride and prejudice and most of all, a blinding egoism. What we need is a tremendous leap. The energy needed for this leap is beyond the power of thought and time. It is rooted in timeless awareness, a state that knows no fear and doubt. This leap from confusion to clarity, from doubt and despair to confidence and optimism, from alienation to integration, from grief to joy, is a leap of faith.

This leap is a leap of faith and faith transcends reason. It is a conviction that there is nothing to fear. Faith must be built on reason but soon transcends it. It is a superstructure. The superstructure of faith is built on a firm foundation of reason. It is not an abandonment of reason, of common sense but the courage to go beyond it, to build on the results of reason.

The leap of faith is to admit the possibility of perfection, of boundless joy, of the meaningfulness of life. It is a conviction that has the courage to persist in the face of every obstacle in its path. It is the triumph of courage that arises from far beyond common perception. It is the vision of perfection that can see beyond the ugliness of mundane life. It is the refusal to surrender to despair, to defeat, to hopelessness and to meaningless greed and fear, conflict and hatred. This leap of faith is a decision to choose sanity and equality, peace and oneness even when they seem distinctly unlikely. It is a conviction that is rooted in unusual insight and understanding of universal laws and the inevitable transience of every situation. Faith is the anchor in the stormy seas of life. Where thought is an impressive ship that is wrecked by stormy seas, faith survives impossible odds. It is a refusal to succumb to the trials and tribulations of life.

While thinking stirs us up, faith is a retreat into stillness. While thinking is the noise of the day, faith is the silence of the night. While one is the active, the other is the passive. Faith and thought are two wings of the bird of human awareness. A one winged bird cannot fly. In glorifying thought and looking down upon faith, we are breaking one wing of the magnificent bird of human awareness. A one winged bird, however magnificent and strong, cannot fly. Our minds need stillness for sanity and insight, for clarity and perspective. It is only faith that can enable us to retreat into stillness and abide in it. Faith is the power of love. Love is an expression of our essential oneness. Love is not a conclusion arrived at logically by thought. Love is immediate. It is faith in action.

Thought is useless unless it ends in definite action. It is only a play of the mind, at best dazzling to deceive like a mirage in the desert. Life is to be lived, in is joyful and sad moments, in the midst of triumphs and tragedies, in the midst of trials and tribulations, in th midst of uncertainty and the unknown. This calls for, more than anything else, firm faith and decisive action. Thought maybe a brilliant star on the distant horizon but faith is the very ground we walk upon.