Losing Faith In Spirit – What Does It Mean?
Recently, I have had many people tell me that they are struggling to keep their faith in Spirit during these challenging and changing times. Some of these are long term followers of spiritual traditions and people who have strong practices. They are wondering why, even if they pray or meditate every day, their lives are so difficult and why many of the life experiences they pray for just never seem to come about. It appears timely to address this challenge at this juncture since it seems to be an epidemic. What makes the doubt so important is that without a spiritual path at this time, you are most likely toast.
The problem seems to stem from what people think Spirit or God is and what it is for. Let’s try to shed some light on this and so we will begin with a fundamental truth. There is no proof for Spirit. No one has ever seen, touched, tasted, smelled or heard Spirit because Spirit is not a thing to be experienced by the senses or measured by anything that exists in the physical world. Spirit is the context for content. If you are looking for content you will never find Spirit, just a great variety of content; ideas, trees, rocks, buildings, computers, and the ten thousand things that make up our world. Spirit is awareness, isness, suchness, I am-ness, consciousness, presence and so on. You cannot see, touch, smell, taste, or hear any of these qualities directly and as a result, it would be easy to ignore and dismiss what you can’t prove to be real. However, you cannot have content without context so you cannot have things without awareness or consciousness (Spirit or God). That is a wee bit of a dilemma. Can you really keep your belief in things if they have no context or space to exist in? You can’t have one without the other.
Remember the story about the fish who goes in search of water? There was a fish swimming around in the sea but try as she might to discover and find this thing called water, she finally gives up in despair. She concludes that water just does not exist. Of course, she misses the fact that without water she ceases to exist as well. To jump to another metaphor, is the planet going dark or is it just the cataracts that are distorting and limiting the light the eye normally sees? Some people with cataracts will swear there is nothing wrong with their sight, but there is something wrong with the world.
Unbeknownst to many, human beings easily slip into ego-oriented thinking even if they have active spiritual practices. Here are a variety of ideas and attitudes that are quite common for us humans. “I require that everything go the way I want if I am to believe in Spirit. I require that people behave the way I want them to. I require that I get what I want in life. If these things are not my experience, then there is something wrong with Spirit. I have done everything I am supposed to do, dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s. Now, where are the goods? I have been a good girl or boy, obeyed the rules, now where is my payout? Other people who are assholes get everything they want and need. Spirit then, must not exist. Is Spirit really supposed to be Santa? I’m sure you can think of many more such thoughts and demands.
People used to think that if you lost your faith Spirit would smite you. Some believe that today. The truth is Spirit does not care whether you believe in it or not. Spirit knows that it is the context of everything and that you could not exit without it. At the end of the day, Spirit includes you and that is that. There is no argument or debate..
Despite the fact that Spirit cannot be known directly through the five senses, it is possible to know that Spirit exists, can be felt, can be experienced within and ultimately is the only thing there is. Many great saints have shown this to be true. Are we to conclude they have all been deluded or simply wrong? Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Krishna, Freya, Bridget, Isis, and on and on? Are we really so bold or arrogant as to conclude that we know better than some of the greatest humans that ever lived? Yes, I have done it, we all do it at times, sometimes we are that foolish and deluded.
Let’s take this whole business apart a bit and look at the simple facts of the matter. There are two octaves to human consciousness. Yes, only two, but this covers a huge range. Most people do not know that the higher octave exists because they have never experienced it, they don’t know how. Both octaves are radically different experiences. The lower octave is ego land – the terrain of the false personality. Here are the majority of experiences that human beings have had over thousands of years. It includes competitive thoughts, jealousy, envy, anger, grief, depression, anxiety, bullying, passivity, projections, fear, martyrdom, stubbornness, greed, self-destructiveness, arrogance, self-deprecation, belligerence, boredom, vengeance, and so on. Let’s face it, most people are engaging in these thoughts and feelings most of the time. These activities are lower vibration and involve a common characteristic, a subconscious denial of Spirit.
We could not engage in any of these behaviors if we in fact were cognizant that Spirit, like the fish’s water, is everywhere eternally. And no, it does not work if it is just a theory. It is not a theory, it is fact. But if we were to experience this then we would be functioning in a higher vibration, perhaps at the very top of the lower octave and feeling the bottom of the higher octave lurking. In the higher vibration the denial of Spirit is impossible. In the lower vibration the reality of Spirit is extremely difficult to perceive and we mostly take the wise one’s word for it if we do believe in Spirit but not because we experience it to be true. Most traditional religions are actually functioning in the lower octave and are riddled with contradictions regarding what Spirit actually is. Most of the clergy of these religions have no clue. They deny God with regularity and don’t know it.
The Higher Octave.
Many mature souls have risen to the upper part of the lower octave and have briefly perhaps made forays into the bottom of the higher octave. Perhaps this took place in a meditation retreat, doing spiritual reading, listening to powerful music, experiencing a teacher plant like mushrooms, listening to an enlightened teacher, or even in the midst of a great trauma where the personality reached its extreme limit. Little by little through evolution and exposure the soul learns to breach the higher octave more and more and becomes extremely attracted to the experience of having no more fear or depression. In these states the person may feel enormous peace, exceptional beauty, communion with higher plane teachers, and extraordinary understanding. However, these experiences may be few and far between, gained and lost, gained and lost many times over. At first the experiences may appear randomly, at unpredictable times, making it difficult to repeat them at will. The personality still functions mainly in the lower octave and is subject to all the suffering that goes on there.
There is also the matter of programing, cultural imprinting that the person has to deal with. What is considered normal everyday activity, the news media, people’s conversations, expectations of peers or peer pressure to think and act normally, pressure from family members, colleagues etc. All the hypnosis of the culture functioning at the lower octave levels, sometimes extremely low, creating an enormous pressure on each person every day. Just how many enlightened teachers would you expect to cross tracks with on a daily basis. Not Many! Unless of course you went out of your way to read their writings every day or listen to their lectures, podcasts, you-tubes and so on.
Eventually the magnetism of the higher octave begins to exert a tremendous pull. Like gravity, it is always there. The higher octave exists concurrently with the lower octave but is in reality much more powerful than the lower octave. It is like the difference between the effect of the earth’s gravity on your body and the effect of the moon’s gravity on your body. The higher octave is so powerful because on an essence level every human is already there, regardless of their soul age. However, their younger soul ages prevent them from being conscious of it. Sooner or later, it is going to draw you up into it. That is the destiny of every human being in existence. That is the revolution taking place right now on this planet. For the next six thousand years the higher octave is going to begin to dominate the earth experience for humans. At first it will be little by little and gradually an avalanche. Just imagine where we are headed.
So, when someone says, I am losing my faith in Spirit it is painful temporarily, but not even possible in the big picture. In fact, if it weren’t so painful, it would be uproariously laughable. That is what many people do when they finally rise up into the higher octave for good. Meanwhile, it is a gradual process for most, and a sudden awakening for a few.
What are ways to raise one’s vibration high enough to transit into the higher octave? First of all, putting the body through restrictions, abstinence, torture, and pain is not the preferred way. At times it may involve fasting or retreats away from all the stimulation of the culture. As long as you are not torturing the body for torture’s sake. The best way is to practice regularly, every day, many times a day for brief periods rather than long tortuous meditation sessions or restricting sleep, kneeling for hours and those crazy behaviors of the ultra-zealous. In fact, zealousness will definitely keep you in the lower octave longer. Public displays of your piety are also backward and ego boosting. Dump the piety altogether and be normal.
Do many five-minute meditations, concentrations, or contemplations every day. For example, refer to your own awareness of your aliveness often. Ask yourself, Am I present? Am I aware? Am I conscious? Look to see that you are and then say, “Yes.” By the same token, reverse the statement and say, “I am in my being.” “I am in my presence.” I am in my knowing” and so on. You can say, “God or Spirit is everywhere eternally” and notice what that means. You can say “I am here, I am now, I am new, I am free” and notice what each of these statements mean. You can be involved in any activity and observe that you are actually the context or empty space of that activity and not the content of it. You can look around you at any time and notice that anything you see or experience is just an idea that has manifested temporarily. You can be driving your car or running or walking and realize that on an essence level you are not going anywhere. You are always in stillness. There are a million of these little practices that all add up in the long run to being in a higher octave.
My dissertation advisor in graduate school told me, “At the end of the day, your doctoral dissertation is just several thousand baby steps.” That made all the difference in my attitude about finishing it. Translated that would be, “At the end of the day, awakening to the higher octave is just several thousand baby steps.” It does not matter at all whether you believe in Spirit or God every second of the day. Does it matter if you don’t believe in the sun, it still shines regardless. You are allowed little relapses into the lower octave so you can suffer a bit. Just realize that relapses don’t mean anything in the long run, and we are all in it for the long run. No one is going to punish you for a moment of doubt or even years of doubt except maybe yourself. In the end, you are going to find that it is doubt that is the hallucination, not Spirit. Hint, God does not come and go but you believe you do. How is that possible if you are both?
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