The theme for April on Notes On The Spiritual Life is faith. Faith is one of those words like love, truth, and/or beauty which is hard to define in our English language. It means different things to different people. Faith is often considered synonomous with belief, but faith in the sense we will be exploring is not a set of beliefs, not a creed, but the basis for a way of life much of which is usually unconscious. Faith is the expectation of what will make us happy and often is mistakenly acted upon as a matter of ego rather than a matter of spirit.
Often the expectations of what will make us happy turn out to be counterfeit and do not bring us happiness in the long term even if they did in the short term. So what should we put our faith in? What will make us happy in an enduring way?
It is written in A Course In Miracles that "Perfect love casts out fear" and "If fear exists, there is not perfect love" and even further the Course insists "Only perfect love exists." and "If there is fear, it produces a state that does not exist." And then the Course goes on to say emphatically, "Believe this and you will be free. Only God can establish this solution, and this faith is His gift." T.1.VI.5:4-10
And so, the Course suggests that we place our faith in love which cannot be defined but which we can become aware of if we can overcome the barriers and obstacles to our awareness of its presence.
The Beatles wrote and sang a beautiful song, "Love is all there is." and yet those of us bogged down in the ego world of drama and crimes have little faith in it and as Jesus said repeatedly, "Oh ye of little faith. If you only knew how much your Father in heaven loves you!"
The idea of the Perennial Philosophy of Aldous Huxley leads one to the idea that God is too big for any one religion. How is it that sometimes people outgrow their religion of childhood? James Fowler, among others, has mapped out a model of spiritual development. Osho says that a person cannot enter into a spiritual life until he/she rebels against childish religious beliefs. Notes On A Spiritual Life intends to explore deeper understandings of an authentic spiritual life.
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