Faith And Despair

Faith And Despair : 

For some, faith – the ability to believe in something that is beyond everyday consciousness and understanding – comes naturally. It’s an innate gift, or talent, like being able to sing well, or have a flair for mathematics and be able to work out complicated sums in your head. But for many if not most, faith is not something given, but something that has to be acquired, a process made doubly difficult because you don’t have faith in the faith you are seeking. So why seek this elusive faith that you don’t believe in, that you don’t have faith in, in the first place? You only seek faith when in desperation you are driven to faith by the opposite of faith, which is despair. Despair is like a bad attack of spiritual sciatica, an unbearably painful condition brought on by an overwhelming sense that not just your particular life, or human life in general, but the working of the universe itself is totally devoid of meaning. Despair can be caused by any number of factors: the devastating loss of a loved one, the post-traumatic stress of a life-threatening experience. When the pain of despair can no longer be borne, we seek relief. Some might seek it in psychological counselling, or in medication, or in narcotics like alcohol. If the pain of despair makes you seek the above, the flower of the faith you hope to cultivate will blossom out of the seeds of your despair, and will be all the more enduring for that. For most, faith is not a gift, it is an act. An act of will, an act of choice to overcome despair. Act as if you have faith – try meditation techniques, participate in bhajans, or other spiritual or religious rituals and disciplines – and hope that faith will follow. Pascal called spiritual faith a gamble, a wager, in which if you lost you lost nothing, because you had nothing to begin with, but if you won, you won infinite riches. So try the gamble. Because what have you got to lose? Nothing but the anguish of despair.

Om Namah Shivay.