Practicing Your Faith

A Course in Tranquility Lesson 8 of 14 – Practicing Your Faith

“That one who has faith has God knowledge. Devoted to that, controlling the senses, and having wisdom, the devotee quickly attains the tranquil state.  The ignorant person, who does not have faith, who is of a doubting nature, perishes.  For the doubting person, neither in this world nor the realms beyond, is there happiness.”

– Bhagavad Gita 4: 39,40

We are practicing our faith at every moment. That which we hold to be true about life and its processes manifests, because it is the nature of consciousness to reflect what is presented to it. However we expect life to be, will be brought into our life experience either in the near or distant future. There are, at least, three levels of influence on our consciousness that shapes our life experience and determines our faith: our conscious thoughts, our subconscious store house of memories and past thoughts, and the thoughts and ideas of other people. To be a spiritual master, a fully mature human being, entails gaining dominion over what we allow to shape our faith.

Our minds are built of past perceptions. The building plans that create structure out of our past perceptions is based on our judgments. As we make judgments on experiences, we sow the seeds of our future.  We arrange those past perceptions in a certain way, based on the direction of our judgment. As has always been true, what you sow is what you reap.

Imagine you are attempting to master a musical instrument, and during your early months of first getting acquainted with the notes of the scale, where to put your fingers, and how to hold the instrument you meet with failure at every turn. You play your scales wrong. You have a hard time following the metronome. You get a kink in your neck, because you have poor posture. Now, let’s look at two different possible perspectives in relation to these events.

Option 1 Thought Process: “This is terrible!  I hate this instrument! I’m not any good at all. My friends were right, and I should stop wasting my time learning to make beautiful music!”

Option 2 Thought Process: “Hmmm. This is turning out to be harder than I thought. I guess I’m going to have to slow down and focus on one aspect of this at a time. That’s OK. All this hard work is going to pay off, when I can finally play that Gypsy Jazz Swing  tune I love so much. Let’s get back to work!”

Note that the experience, or the reality of the experience, was exactly the same from both of these perspectives. The difference came in the interpretation of the experience. From those interpretations, the person who chose thought process number one, gave up on music, eventually took a job that was boring and tedious, and every time she listened to the music she loved, she thought back with regret on letting a few obstacles (ones that nearly every musician goes through) get in the way. The person who chose thought process number two, went onto to play in a symphony and became a teacher, inspiring young children to also express their own music through their chosen instrument. She’s happy for the most part, and looks forward to her work in music everyday. This same principle is applicable to our spiritual growth process.

It is easy to think that anyone with spiritual clarity and peace made no effort to this end. When we think this way, we can make excuses such as:

“There is something special about that person that I’ll never have, at least not in this life time.”

“They had better opportunities and better information.”

“I’m not as strong as them or as dedicated.”

“They can just close their eyes and meditate without any distraction or thought.”

“It was easy for them to think positively and have faith in the process.”

Again, we must remember that these are all excuses. For a person to experience success in anything, it requires a strong faith and dedication to maintain the course until the desired end is reached. This is applicable to music, building a business, having money, being a nice person, and even enlightenment.

Now, I’m pretty certain that our life is infinite and that the body, mind and personality are the only things that really change. I’m also pretty sure that as we move from one body to the other we carry our states of consciousness with us. The personality may be a little different, and the history will change with each incarnation, but deep down inside, whatever state of consciousness we had in our last incarnation is most certainly going to show up again once our mind, body, nervous system and personality come to full maturity this time around.

This being the case, you can bet that any spiritually aware person had to wrestle with impatience, greed, lust, the monkey mind, lack of faith, disease, mental instability, being honest, developing a sense of unyielding happiness for no reason, etc, either earlier on in this lifetime or at some other point in infinity before they expressed soul consciousness as clearly as they do now. To think otherwise is just creating another false story, that will empower your own lack of clarity about what you really have to do if you want to wake up.  They did it. You can too. You can say you are too old or too young or too wild or two worldly. It doesn’t matter where you are on the circle of infinity, you can find an excuse. When you decide to stop having excuses and start getting down to business, you will begin moving forward in the direction you want to go.

If you choose to doubt this perspective, you will experience situations that sustain your doubt. If you choose adopt this perspective, you will find that with hard work and renewed enthusiasm, a new and life affirming paradigm will dawn in your awareness.

Three Levels of Influence

As mentioned above, our faith is determined by the current thinking processes we are aware of, the accumulation of past thoughts in the subconscious, and the thoughts of others. All of these need to be dealt with to reshape our faith. Being realistic, this can be quite a job. But remember, we are infinite beings. We have as long as it takes to accomplish this end.  Wasting your time not undertaking this task is only prolonging your experience in infinity as being negative and less than enjoyable.

Our current thinking process is the most immediate level of influence we can change. These are most specifically related to our judgments about reality. If you find that you are thinking negatively about anything, the immediate response is to admit you have had this habit in the past, but to choose to think positively now. What ever reason you have to think negatively is just your excuse, with no correspondence to reality. Countless people have experienced terrible atrocities, and yet still remain buoyant and optimistic.  Countless people also have everything handed to them on silver platter, and can still find reasons to complain. It’s up to you to decide which way you go in life.

At the outset, this may feel like a waste of time. Your negativity persists. You feel you are lying to your self about the possible positive potential of an outcome. You may even begin to experience a quick result of your change of thinking. Something that was about to turn out bad, may unexpectedly turn out good. Then, like clockwork, you think, “But this isn’t going to last.  When is the other shoe going to drop?” Then things go wrong, and you say, “See.  I knew that was going to happen!” This is faith in action.

But if you persist, doing your best to change one little thought at a time, eventually those little drops of thought accumulate into a bucket full of positive faith. Continue, and eventually you have a swimming pool filled with positive thoughts ready to germinate and sprout. The quickness with which you fill your mind with positive expectations, is in relation to your receptivity and stubbornness. If you say, “I’m too stubborn to change too quickly.” Watch your thoughts.  Reaffirm, “I am done with the habit of stubbornness and can accept quick results of my change of thinking.”  Keep this up until your acceptance of good fortune is more powerful than your past habit of accepting ill fortune. Whichever has the most gravity within you wins, and a habits particular gravity grows with the more attention and intention we invest in it.

Our subconscious, that which stimulates our deep feeling state, is vast indeed. You can do your best to change your thinking, but if your subconscious does not align with that thinking, you are at odds with your self, and potentially canceling out your intentions. If you say, “I am very willing to do what it takes to be spiritually free.” Yet, in the pit of your stomach, you feel “Well, yes, this is true, but only if I don’t really have to challenge my current way of life.  As long as I don’t have to make any major changes, then yes, I am willing to do what it takes to be spiritually free.” This is one sure fire way, to not experience spiritual freedom, because you are not one hundred percent committed.

You may say, “I’d like to make more money.” Or “I’d like to have perfect health.” Yet, when someone offers you work, your inner feelings come up as a sense of resistance, and your actions will show your inner subconscious beliefs. You will be late for your interview, or forget to set your alarm, or just decide the work is too hard, and say to your self, “Well, that’s just not the right job for me.” When you decide to have perfect health, it may be easy to tell your self “I’m healthy and happy!” Yet you may find that your subconscious does not agree, because you take no initiative to exercise or to get enough rest, or to choose to avoid actions which inevitably cause suffering.

Watch your actions and your inner gut reactions to any changes you make in your conscious thinking process. If your actions do not align with the new way of thinking, you may need to work on your subconscious too. One very helpful method, is to set up your life so that you can ignore your thinking mind while changing your subconscious and thereby strengthening your faith. Here is how to get around the inertia of the subconscious.

Exercise to Change the Subconscious

Example 1: You decide that you want to be more spiritually awake. You’ve changed your thinking process, so you are no longer telling your self the story, that it is too hard, and you don’t deserve it, or that you are too young or to old.  You read spiritual inspirational literature every night before sleep and do your best to eat your vegetables, exercise, pay your bills, and be friendly. Yet, every morning your alarm goes off at 6 AM, the time you decided to meditate.  Your thoughts kick in and say, “But it’s so comfortable here. I need all of my rest for work, so I can do a good job.” Then you unplug the alarm, and drift back into sleep.

Proper response:  The night before, as you fall asleep, you tell your self, “I am going to get up at 6 AM, and meditate. Before I even begin thinking I’m going to get out of bed and go sit in my meditation chair.”

The alarm goes off at 6 AM. Before your mind gets a chance to engage, you swing your feet out of bed. Put on your robe, and go sit down in your meditation chair and begin with a short prayer, then you practice your chosen meditation technique.

You do this every day. The mind doesn’t gets a chance to engage and express all your subconscious conditioning and resistance towards meditation. Before the mind knows what is happening, you are already sitting and meditating.  You then find your mind was wrong, and that you actually have more energy and are more peaceful by starting your day on such a positive decisive note. If you can do that, you can be successful in just about any other undertaking.

Example 2: You have always wanted to write a book. You have many great ideas, enjoy reading, and have always wanted to contribute your own creativity to the world. Yet, you have made up a reality that you need to be an English major, and you need more time, and you aren’t that creative anyway. You tell your self it is a pipe dream, etc. The result of this kind of faith is that you spend your evenings watching TV, and waste time on the internet surfing for information that has no bearing on your life.

The alternative is that you decide you are not going to tell your self that story anymore. So you do. Everyday you wake up and say “I’m ready to write that book! As soon as I get home from work, I’m going to get started.” You get home from work, think about your book, and then get sidetracked on the internet, or doing laundry, or staring out the window. Your subconscious resistance is at work.

The solution is that you tell your self, “I am going to write that book, and I’m going to do it every day after work for at least 30 minutes to an hour.” Now, as soon as you get home, before the kids favorite TV show is over, and they are demanding your attention, you immediately sit down at your computer and start typing. You brainstorm. You type what ever comes, in regards to your ideas about the book. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t know what you are doing. The point is that you get started, and you don’t give your mind a chance to engage in all its subconscious crap about the impossibility of this project. A half hour goes by, and now you are excited, you don’t want to stop. You experience the success of starting, so that every day when you get home, you don’t think about your negative faith in your abilities, you immediately make the habit that you are going to sit down and start writing.

You may find that you do need more information about how to write dialogue or sculpt a plot or make believable characters, but now you are no longer surfing the internet mindlessly, you are looking for books on “writing books”, you are reading forums about the best way to publish. As the months and years go by. Your thirty minutes to one hour a day, turns into a passion, and you have a completed novel.

This same process can be applied to any area of life. Set a specific time each day to take action in your chosen endeavor. Don’t think about your chosen endeavor through out the day. Then when the bell rings, indicating it is time to take action, you immediately start doing whatever it is you have chosen. You circumvent the mind and your subconscious and begin reshaping your subconscious, your faith and your destiny to a new end.

Your Task

Pick something you have always wanted to do. Set aside a realistic and specific amount of time every day, at the same time every day, that you are going to dedicate to accomplishing this. Set an alarm if you have to. Don’t go through your day anticipating this event, because that gives your subconscious plenty of time to fill your conscious mind with reasons as to why this is silly. Just decide that you are going to do it, and no thoughts or doubts or anything or anyone else is going to get in the way. Once the alarm goes off, you will know its time to begin. Immediately go to where you can get to work and start the process.

It doesn’t matter to me if this is a “spiritual” goal, or a normal everyday goal. Once you can master this process with one aspect of your life it will be applicable to any aspect. I have also found, that my spiritual growth and inner poise has increased simply by being more purposeful and finding that I can do what I say I’m going to do. I meditate better, and am happier throughout the day. You are learning to reshape your subconscious, and as your successes or at least your tenacity to succeed continues, resistance to success falls away, until your natural state is a successful one.

Other People

Other people have been shaping our lives, by our own concession, for as long as we’ve been alive. In an ideal world, we would be raised by healthy minded parents and family and surrounded by supportive friends and coworkers. You may have noticed that for most people, this is not the case.

The way we see the world, what we expect, our judgment and ultimately our faith is usually in direct relation to the people around us. Luckily, after we grow up, and move out, we have the capacity to assess the validity of the faith we have accepted from other people and decide if it is useful, or if we need to recreate a faith that is more useful to our purposes in this world. Just as we may seek out a church that is more in line with our spiritual faith, we can seek out new people that are in line with our life faith.

Listen to the messages you are given by those around you. Are they positive and encouraging? Are the messages demeaning, and restrictive? Do they say, “Sure you can accomplish those little things, but don’t get too ambitious!” Why not be ambitious?  Think of the messages you were given as a child. Are they still valid? Do you find it worthwhile to keep listening to them? Do you somehow think that the people who gave you those messages are special in someway, or are entitled to a specific revelation of truth, that you are not? Look at the quality of the lives of the people who’s messages you allow into your consciousness. Are they happy, successful, wise, and good to the world? If so, their messages may be worth considering. If not, consider if you like participating in their faith, and make a decision.

We are eternal beings, temporarily identifying with a personality, history, mind and body. There is no merit in maintaining a state of consciousness that is no longer useful to you. Change is constant in the external world. Our faith in life can change too, and it should, otherwise we become living fossils of a lost age. When we are children we may see God as a child does.  As we mature, so does our understanding about life. Wear your faith like a garment. When that garment becomes old, worn and useless, cast it off, and decide to take up the mantle of a faith that more accurately reflects your aspirations. As you stay true to your path in life, you will know when a change of direction is called for. Have faith in the universe to provide what you need when you need it, and you will experience the endless flow of grace that is accessible to anyone who chooses to accept it.

Faith is the essence of how our life expresses in this world. The Gita states that, “one who does not have faith or is of a doubting nature perishes.” This is because if we have no faith or aspiration we are in decay. To doubt is to negate. That which you doubt has little power if any tangible force in your life experience. Joseph Campbell said, “You see no Gods outside of you, because there are none within you.” If you have faith in a divine presence, or your higher Self, that aspect of consciousness is empowered and you can depend on it.

Faith the size of a mustard seed, is said to have the power to move a mountain. The best medicine in the world can fail, if we do not believe in its efficacy. Similarly, in Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, friend of the great Sri Yutkeswar was brought back to life, by seven drops of lamp oil, because of the powerful force behind Lahiri Mahasaya’s faith.

William Blake once wrote, “If the Sun and the Moon should doubt, they’d immediately go out.” He also wrote, “The questioner who sits so sly, shall never know how to reply, he who replies to words of doubt, doth put the light of knowledge out.” We can confuse wisdom and knowledge with the thinking mind, but that does not make our thoughts knowledge. Knowledge, real knowledge comes from within. It is an inner knowing, and cannot be explained in words. By your meditation practice and surrender of your limited ego to a higher power, you tap into soul liberating knowledge. You no longer have to convert people to prove your view point is correct. You no longer have to explain to others why you believe what you do, because it is enough that you know it.

To have faith is not to hope something will occur or that something is true. Hope implies doubt. Faith is the power of life. Remember, if the sun or moon doubted they would promptly go out. To have faith is to live.

It is good to remember, that one faith is not better than another. Just as meditation techniques or spiritual teachers are not in competition. No matter the chosen expression of our faith, if we stay true to our path, we will experience the results of our commitment. Then we will know happiness, because we will have followed our calling to the very end, and then we can return from the journey and tell others what we have seen and experienced. We can strengthen the faith of our fellow travelers, and sustain the divine expression of life.

One Last Thought

This can be a lot to take in all at once. There can be many changes that you can imagine need to occur to be successful in reshaping your faith and moving into a state of spiritual tranquility. To say to your self, “OK, from now I am always going to have faith, and be purposeful and always make the right decision, from now until the end of my life” is a good way to overload your system, and then promptly give up, when on day three you slip back into old patterns.  The best way to approach this transformational process is one day at a time.

Spend some time reflecting on what your life of faith would look like when all is said and done. What will you have accomplished?  How will you have lived?  What values and ideals will you chose to express? What will people say about you after you are no longer in their presence?  Write these down.  After you’ve taken some time to get clear on this, then decide that for the rest of the day, you are going to do your best to live in such a way as to support these intentions. However, unnatural it may feel, you are going to get used to it until it becomes enjoyable and pleasant.

Then you wake up tomorrow and promptly decide you are going to do your best to live up to this new idea of your self. Then through your own will power, and divine grace, you will take the steps towards that end.

There will be moments, hours or even days, that you fall off the path you’ve decided to walk, and get a little turned around. As soon as you are aware of this, you decide you are going to find that path and start walking again. No guilt. No shame. No beating your self up. When you fall down, get up. As long as you are gentle with your self and persistent in your new vision, your new faith, it will eventually grow up out of the dirt and reach to the sun, where it will finally blossom, sharing its fragrance with the world.

Sincerely, Ryan Kurczak 2010

Intensity in Spiritual Practice and Divine Love

Intensity in Spiritual Practice and Divine Love. Presented at Center for Spiritual Awareness of Asheville, by CSA minister Ryan Kurczak.

The Yoga of Renunciation: Bhagavad Gita 5:10-18

The Eternal Way - A Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita - By Roy Eugene Davis

The following excerpt is from Roy Eugene Davis’ commentary on the Bhagavad Gita entitled The Eternal Way.

10. Having abandoned attachments, offering all actions to God, the devotee who thus acts is not tainted by misfortune, as a lotus leaf is not wetted by water.

Steadfastness in yoga practice is the key to being able to accurately discern.  We are steadfast when we are committed to the soul awakening path, when we are grounded in understanding of what we are in relationship to God and the realm of nature, and when we practice what we know to be best for us.  It is then easy to remember that we are ever a witness to our thoughts, feelings, actions, and to externals.  We are in relationship but we are not other than what we are as expressed units of Consciousness.

11.  To purify individualized awareness, one who practices yoga, established in renunciation, performs actions with the body, mind, intellect, or merely with the senses.

Purification of the devotee’s field of awareness is the purpose of practice.  This is accomplished by right understanding and equaniminity, using the body as an instrument to accomplish purposes, practicing to refine and diminish mental fluctuations and transformations, and improving powers of intellectual discernment, and regulating sensory impulses.

12. One who has renounced the results of actions and is disciplined in yoga practice, experiences peace. The undisciplined person attached to results is bound by actions which are impelled by desire.

The ideal inspiration-to-right-action is to cheerfully do as duty what needs to be done.  In this way, we can be inwardly peaceful at all times.  Without this kind of discipline, we may be inclined to remain in bondage to desires, to performance of actions which can make possible fulfillment of desires, and to the end results of such actions.  The devotee should meditate daily as spiritual duty, disregarding thoughts or feelings which might tempt one to do otherwise.

13. Inwardly renouncing all actions, the embodied soul, having mastered them, dwells comfortably in the body, neither acting nor causing actions.

It is not necessary or wisdom-guided outer actions that must be abandoned; it is mental and emotional attachment to them that must be renounced by the practitioner of yoga.  This is an entirely inward process.  One then lives at ease, knowing that actions belong to the realm of nature; not to the soul which is stable in Self-Knowledge.

14.  Supreme Consciousness is not the creator of the means of action, the actions people perform, nor the relationships between causes and their effects.  Nature is the field in which these circumstances occur.

Although Supreme Consciousness provides the impulse that results in the emergence of the field of nature in which all actions occur, the Field of Pure Consciousness is not modified by what occurs.  All-pervading Pure Consciousness is the field in which relative phenomena manifests.

15. All-pervading Supreme Consciousness is not influenced by righteous or unrighteous deeds of people.  Unenlightened people are bewildered because their innate knowledge is obscured by delusions.

The Omnipotent Field of Pure Consciousness remains ever what it is. The field of awareness of the ordinary person is fragmented and confused because delusions and illusions suppress and veil Self-knowledge.  One who hopes to accomplish spiritual growth while clinging to conditioned, self-conscious attitudes and behaviors aspires in vain, for these are the very circumstances that restrict soul awareness.

16. For those in whom ignorance of the Self is banished by knowledge, their enlightenment allows the Supreme Self to shine like the sun.

When one’s field of awareness is cleared of all obstructing conditions and Self-knowledge is actualized, the full reality of God is spontaneously revealed.

17. Those who direct their attention to the Absolute, whose total awareness is absorbed in That, whose intent is to realize That, who aspire to That as the highest objective, whose faults and limitations have been removed by knowledge, awaken to full liberation from which there is no return.

Enlightenment is not caused; it is experienced when restricting influences have been renounced or weakened and banished.  Complete liberation permanently removes awareness from all conditions which formerly blinded the soul to Self-knowledge.  Note the emphasis on the need for aspiration to the highest good and of having restrictions to soul awareness removed so that knowledge prevails.  Some causes of soul limitation, and how to remove them, are described in the Yoga Sutras 2:4-11:

Imperfect perception of the Real is the field of all restricting influences, whether these be dormant or active.

Ignorance is assuming the non eternal to be eternal, the impure to be pure, the painful to be pleasurable, and the ego [sense of selfhood independent of God] as the real being.

Egoism results from the soul’s identification with matter.

Dwelling on pleasure and objects of pleasure produces affection [for them] which results in attachments.

Being repulsed by that which may contribute to pain or discomfort produces aversion.

The urge toward death exists along with the inclination toward life, even in the wise. These urges are propelled by their own innate drives.

These restricting influences should be overcome by resolving them into their subtle origins.

The gross modifications of pain-causing influences [life-diminishing mental conditionings and self -defeating tendencies and habits] are to be overcome by calm, introspective, self-analysis and superconscious meditation [samadhi].

18. The discerning devotee sees the same Supreme Consciousness in all people and creatures without exception.

Before the emergence of innate knowledge, it is possible to train ourselves to look through and beyond outer conditions to acknowledge the reality which supports their existence.  We can then easily relate to all people and all expressions of life with respectful appropriateness.