Faith

For most of us, life is often a struggle between faith and faithlessness. In the moments when we feel connected to the divine we are full of courage. But when faith gets shaken we begin to get scared of our own shadow and nothing in the world seems to go right for us.
 
A recent psychological research carried out at Princeton, New Jersey concluded that people for whom faith is an important part of daily life, experience a greater degree of emotional well-being under all circumstances. They also feel more positively about their present and future than those who lack faith. Clinical experience shows that even those who are badly affected by traumatic experiences recover fast, achieve self-growth and find a meaning in suffering so long as they hold on to their faith.
 
Many people would argue that faith has let them down because they did not get the kind of help and protection they wanted. Interestingly, some of my patients reported that during times of acute distress when they were struggling to survive, faith appeared to be an illusion or a philosophical speculation. They were extremely depressed because they had lost important anchors.

But in many cases, after a while, maybe a few months or some years down the line, it became apparent that the loss motivated the person to take on a different path and find something new. And now this new discovery gives a better meaning and fulfillment to their life.
 
The Mother of Auroville maintained that the greater our surrender to the divine, the more we can be assured that the best will happen to us from a spiritual point of view. Because we have limited perspective about who we are and the purpose of life, we are not able to appreciate this fact. She believed that even the greatest crisis can become a means for our self-growth, progress and manifestation of truth if we can preserve our faith.
 
The Mother highlighted some important approaches through which one can build and preserve faith in the divine. Firstly, one needs to create an intense aspiration so that one can pray for more faith. Secondly, we need to build a childlike trust so that we can completely surrender to the divine in the belief that whatever help is needed will come. Thirdly, a majority of people have a deep conflict around faith and their mind is engaged in an unending debate over the presence or absence of faith. Rather than doing this we should allow ourselves to be open so that divine grace can enter and give us faith.
 
Another important method to build faith is to observe oneself carefully and try to eliminate all the anti-divine formations and forces that lie deep within ourselves. Apart from this, we should also keep our ego in check and cultivate gratitude for whatever grace we are blessed with. Although it is a long journey, once our faith is as hard as rock, nothing can stop us from realizing the truth and living in divine consciousness forever.

Kabir captures this divine moment- ‘Khoji hoye turat mil jaoon, ik pal ki talash mein. Kahe Kabir sun bhai sadhu, main to hoon vishwas mein’ -- The divine can be found in a moment of earnest search, provided we have faith