Thursday, April 9, 2009

What is faith?



This is a complex issue. But simply put, faith is our trust or love of God!...Or it can be our faith in a spiritual master, someone who can lead us on the path of truth towards enlightenment.....But most importantly, faith is our trust in ourselves, in our own capacity of understanding things, faith is a sign of self-confidence that we all need to achieve anything in life.


So many people lack this today......Or they are so lazy that they can only count on others to let them understand things...; they never make any effort to understand things....They prefer to rely entirely on "professional thinkers" like the priests who would tell them what they need to believe in, what exactly they can believe in.....They cannot think by themselves, they rely on the religious institutions or bodies to think in their place!!

This is very sad, because the greatest spiritual masters and divine teachers of all time, Jesus included, have always encouraged spiritual inquisitiveness....Today people are so scared to ask themselves difficult questions....They really prefer to stay in ignorance rather than make the effort of looking for answers themselves....Very simple look at lives of Jesus or Gautama Buddha would show us that these universal masters have always been hostile to the priestly class, encouraging people to have a direct and personal relation with God always..through prayer, meditation and even study....Jesus has always fought against the control of the priestly class over the evolution of the mass....He taught all his disciples to have faith in themselves and in their ability to understand things by themselves....We all have the divine spark and are entitled to spiritual knowledge.....So many people don't know what meditation and prayer are because they have been so used to let others pray for them..."The priest is there to pray and ask for me......I am not good enough to ask or search for myself".

Why can we trust Jesus or anyone of the great spiritual masters of the world? Not because we bear a title or identity as Christian or Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim, but because we have faith in them, in their ability to lead us on the path of truth.....Our faith is our faith in their teachings, not in what the religious institutions themselves want us to believe in, or in the dogmas that have culminated over the years.....And we don't need to be impressed by their deeds to have faith in them.....We only need to see the good that they do for humanity to see that we can trust them, that we can follow them!! We don't trust them for their miracles or impressive deeds but for the good that they did to humanity, for the good that they still do!


"If there is ressurection, then I can believe in Jesus....If there is no ressurection, then, I don't...." is an argument, often expressed by some Christians who come across the idea of a post-crucifixion life of Jesus. This is such a poor effort to understand the grandeur of the great souls.....Laziness is what has lead to such an attitude....I can only pray for enlightenment of the world, but it is clear that so many walls will have to fall first for this to be achieved.....What if Jesus did survive the crucifixion…What if he did continue to live hereafter?….Does this mean that he is not the divine being we’ve been brought up to believe in? Does this mean the end of Christianity? Does it mean that he is not praise-worthy anymore? A true definition of a Christian would be 'One who follows and puts Jesus' teachings into practice'.....Where are the teachings? What are the teachings? These are the questions that a good Christian should be asking himself...Whether Jesus survived the crucifixion or not does not make his teachings less worthy, and doesn't make his life less admirable for the rest of humanity.


The Roman Catholic church has enclosed Jesus’ teachings and life within such a limited perimeter….So limited that people could only end up feeling unsatisfied with their spiritual experience within the church. But the Jesus’ spirit is still out there in the world, working for the good of humanity. People still experience his presence in their everyday life…..This is because God is always faithful, no matter what man decides to do.