So easy to sow

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. Khalil Gibran

Doubt is an interesting word. Many times I have heard people say, “I would love to let go of doubt”. The phrase is usually accompanied by a downward look or a wistful sigh and little or no belief in the possibility of success. Doubt seems to be a given in most lives. It appears to be a chronic illness that plagues us. The problem though, is that doubt has a certain value in casting off dogmatic ways of thinking and releasing ideas and behaviors past their usefulness. First we doubt; then we move beyond doubt. Well used, doubt moves us into action, stirs us into discovery and curiosity, so that we sit always atop the razor’s edge, balanced between doubt and certainty, centered in our heart. Doubt, when it leaves us wrapped in razor wire, tangled in mind’s uncertainty, is quite another story.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. Rene Descartes

Have you ever wondered why it only takes a breath to undo the promise of friendship or the commitment of a family, why in a moment we can come up with a fabulous idea and ten reasons why it can’t be done? It is a common story, the visionary enters our life and we turn our back, consciously or without understanding, and choose instead to believe in what we know. The visionary could be that still small voice within our head. It might be the guru or teacher. It may come as the voice of a child, of one unschooled in what can or can’t be done.

Whether the seed is planted by someone else or ourselves, it takes but a whisper to move us from unlimited possibility into the narrow opening of an approaching dead end. A few mislaid words, sometimes even an unexpected look, and the potential slips away or at the least is shrouded in doubt, hidden beneath timid hesitation.

Why are we so quick to believe in the small solution, the idea or thought that reinforces rigidity rather than one that catches our breath and animates our imagination? We search for answers to feel good about ourselves, so that we can know our legitimate nature, and yet we routinely, as if we were robots, prove to ourselves over and over again that we aren’t worth that much. Rather than denying the visionary wouldn’t it ring of wisdom to deny the whisper?

What is doubt anyway but the stepchild of our own knowing? If we were wide open in childish awe of the unfolding mystery, if we believed in miracles and the goodness of life, if we were devoted beginners refusing to know and taint our ability to learn, if we held all God’s possibilities within the palm of our hand, if we didn’t know how life should be, what would there be to doubt? Doubt is a knowing, a comparison, a belief in limitation, a seed of ‘no’ in a universe that merely wants our yes.

What is required to step into the adventure and quit seeing life as a challenge, a problem to be solved? What would it mean to step blindly onto the rollercoaster with full trust of the outcome, not caring whether the coaster was slowly climbing the grade or preparing to fly through the curves? Have doubt and worry ever been grand allies? Has a tight-fisted hold on the moment ever kept it from passing into history? Perhaps there is much more to gain in risking the step than there ever was to lose. Doubt if you will, but keep moving until you leave both doubt and certainty behind. Mind sees the possibility of loss where heart sees only possibility.

Doubts and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend. Helen Keller

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The Prodigal Child Returns

I would rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not. Kurt Cobain

We tread upon a path, learning to connect more deeply with Divine presence, humanity, family members or whatever siren sings our name in this moment, feeling as if we are trying to get somewhere. We know we are on our way. The suffering and associated pain of change and transition are evidence. Even though at some level we know we stand amidst an unstoppable course, for no matter how hard we try, the shifting sands claim our dreams and alter our passions, we aren’t quite sure where we are going, where this force is taking us. Some christen that passageway the spiritual path. It might be more accurate to identify it simply as life, useful and of full purpose. The name is irrelevant. What is important is the connection we seek, what allows it to flow freely and what stops up the flow, short-circuiting the sought after reunion.

Connection is our natural state, the state we are when we drop our stories. The idea of letting who we really are out of hiding and into the open is a scary proposition. We have spent our lives constructing walls, readjusting the barriers whenever a breach seemed imminent, making certain that we were loved for who we were not. These walls were intended to hold back the biting comments, the sense of being unwanted, the fear that if we stepped out and into risk we would find ourselves more alone than when standing within our secure prisons.

As a child I craved to be a part of the group and yet, always felt as if I was on the outside looking in. I can still hear the words I used to escape into, “Just wait! When I grow up I will be so amazing that everyone will have to love me”. Those words made life bearable then. Contrary to the fairy tales we hope for as children, that feeling didn’t leave when I became an adult, no matter how successful, no matter how much money I deposited in the bank, or how many exotic trips I took. It didn’t even leave when I was blessed and found true love later in life. If it didn’t leave then, would it ever? The walls of my childhood reality shadowed my adulthood.

At some point, I realized that the moment I awaited was never going to happen. Some would say that I was just a pessimist. I prefer to think I fell face-forward into grace, for that was a brilliant day. Sometimes we have to hit bottom to begin ascending the spiral path towards Home. I knew Home existed. If I could envision it, feel it, and imagine its possibility, blind hope said it had to exist. Otherwise the ideal of Home could have never entered into awareness. I was willing to risk the possibility of being wrong, of the truth being a worse reality than the reformatory I had created. The pain of hanging onto my prison walls didn’t come close to matching the pain of never finding Home. In that moment I set out upon the path in earnest search of something yet unknown to mind.

The more I learned the more I realized that mind, while great at repetitive tasks, wasn’t quite suited for leaps into the unknown. No matter how motivated, it couldn’t take me to what it didn’t already know. Its realm was the jurisdiction of historical thoughts, emotions and events from which it shaped and twisted its endless stories. Mind’s logic had trapped me inside myself and made me believe I could connect deeply with others, with my family and with the Divine, while hiding the truth of me inside a closet of self-loathing, for what else is refusal to be fully seen other than a distaste for this personal uniqueness of God.

The known inadequate, the unknown called. All things I had tried, failed to connect me in the meaningful way my heart desired. A deep hunger for Truth, whatever shape or flavor, had replaced my need to self-protect. I had reached the divine nexus and preferred to be hated for who I am rather than to sacrifice any shred of truth, sensing that any and all denial of ‘what is’ stops the flow of grace required for entry into the unknown. With that choosing new steps along the path began to unfold.

The heart is our entry into the promise of the mystical, the magical, the unfamiliar—the great unknown. It holds the promise that mind claims and cannot deliver. Listening to our heart is how we further the transition from trusting our brain to living in Truth. In this process we begin to trust the spiral path Home, spiraling in each pure decision upward, homeward to where we know we belong, where we find certainty that we are not alone, where we know deep inside that all our previous desires and wants were merely warm up for heart’s true request.

When one begins to look in earnest, it becomes pretty obvious rather quickly that protecting this individual is painful work, and yet we continue, at least until we tire of wanting to be loved for who we are not, either because the truth of our folly becomes so clear we can no longer deny it, or because our resistance is so painful we are willing to try anything, surrender included, to get beyond the pain. Each person we deny, our self included, each time we turn away from the truth of this moment, we hammer a nail into the coffin of separation—rather a harsh analogy, but nonetheless accurate. We create separation in our aversion to sitting and taking all that life dishes out. Separation, death and suffering are mind’s game.

Heart doesn’t partake. Heart sits and smiles at our childish diversion, patiently awaiting us to tire of the game and return Home, to step upon the spiral path of Truth, of readiness to be with whatever is, regardless of how painful and just walk. Our willingness to step from the known into the unknown is step upon the path and feels like a giant leap of faith, paradoxically alien to mind. The more pronounced our step, the bigger our YES, the more often we return to live within this moment, the closer we get to opening the door and stepping back inside—the prodigal child returned!

As long as you are pointed in the right direction, all you have to do is keep on walking. Buddhist proverb

 

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