published July 2010 theme Faith
Faith
By Roos
Today I read an article about people who, out of discontent with their circumstances in life, seek comfort and support in religion. The author was not content with that and called upon the reader to rejoice in the experience of the beauty of creation and gratefulness for the incredible gift of life, received from God.
I agree only partial with the author. For me it is as a blessing of God that people join a religious community out of despair. That they don’t perceive the beauty of God’s Creation deserves our compassion, no condemnation. I believe that people long for a loving God during their darkest hours. And even if it’s too dark for them to see, God’s love is there.
Still, I agree with the author that we should observe the things around us with more positivity. Do we see our difficult circumstances, or do we see the support Baba gives us?
I still remember very well that I started to perceive Baba’s love in small things. I got a, what is known as very serious, disease and then I saw all kind of loving circumstances provided by Baba to bear the suffering.
For the first time in ages I experienced happiness.
People were confused when I told them. But the more I looked at life this way, the more intense became the experience that Baba takes care of us.
It amplified my faith and trust in Baba enormously. Without this faith I was submitted to the setbacks in life. With this faith however, every setback was a gift, an opportunity to come closer to what I really am.
This was a running jump to so much more. When we are able to embrace all circumstances and love Baba, whatever He bestows upon us, auspicious grace awaits us. Being aware that God’s creation is perfect and that everything goes as it should. Baba says: ‘There will not drop a leaf from the tree unless I want it.’ Every situation contributes to the growth of our consciousness towards perfection. Being able to see this perfection equals the experience of God’s love, the love within our self.
And the most beautiful of all is the insight that God is nothing but love.
It is just our mind who creates the illusion of evil. So, my call upon everyone is:
Believe in LOVE only, the rest is illusion.
Observe life as the game Baba plays with us.
The more we indulge ourselves in Baba, the more Baba Himself is present in us and leads us along all the obstacles and pitfalls life brings on. Then we can observe with compassion those who experience only despair and trust that Baba will lead them also to a life filled with love, so our deepest wish will be fulfilled:
Unity with existence, unity with Baba who is the Embodiment of Love.
Sai Ram
Faith is the very breath of life
By Dinah
Faith is the very breath of life. Without it, man is a living corpse.
Sathya Sai Baba
Sai Baba tells us that faith in God is the bed-rock on which one’s life should be built. He urges us to deepen our faith in God.
How can all the marvels in the cosmos be accounted for?
By whose power are millions of stars held in their places?
How does the Earth turn on its axis without an axel?
Who is responsible for designing the thousands of magnificent plant forms on the earth?
All this and much more is the work of the unseen Power working behind the screen. It is the unseen that sustains the seen. The Unseen power is the omnipresent and omniscient power of God. The entire cosmos is pervaded by this unseen power otherwise known as consciousness. To recognise the unity which underlies the diversity of manifest creation is the primary task of mankind. But mankind remains intent on dividing the One into many.
There is no place without God. There is no being without divinity. Each and every being is the embodiment of God.
Sathya Sai Baba
How to develop faith in this unseen power?
All spiritual traditions prescribe practises designed to shift the focus away from the outer world towards the divinity which resides within the spiritual heart. The object of all spiritual practice should be to establish firmly one’s connection with the divinity residing within. Formal worship at regular hours, which includes the recitation of the chosen name of the divine through mantra and devotional songs, is the very first step in the spiritual pilgrimage. As one’s vision turns inwards one begins to hear an inner voice. This is the voice of God. Develop full faith in the Divinity that resides within. In time you realize that there is no greater friend than God. He is beyond the reach of praise or censure. He will never give up on you, due to your failure to meet His expectations, because He has no expectations. God desires no offerings. God is the only friend who confers benefits on you without expecting anything in return. Self confidence develops, as one’s friendship with the Divine grows. Having full faith in the Divinity within oneself is the basis of true self confidence.
Such Self confidence is totally different to ego. Egoism and divinity are incompatible. Egoism is based on desire and attachment. It expresses itself through selfishness. Confidence in the Self is the basis of faith. Faith heals the agony of separation from God.
One needs to live in the certainty that God will always grant you what you need and deserve. There is no need to ask for anything. Nor is there any need to grumble when one’s desires remain unfulfilled. One must derive contentment from the knowledge that nothing can happen against God’s will. Faith in God must be rock solid. It must be constant. It must remain firm in the face of every challenge. One should never blame God for the difficulties that confront one. Such difficulties should be regarded as gifts from God intended for one’s good. They need to be regarded as God’s tests. One must be prepared to subject oneself to God’s tests. God will test you repeatedly as to how much you are attached to the ephemeral things of the world and as to how much you yearn for the Divine. The true spiritual pilgrimage is the journey away from faith in the temporal and transient towards the unchanging reality. If one takes the ups and downs of life in one’s stride with firm faith in God, the Divine will take good care of you.
The story of Prahlad illustrated this point. His father, the demon king, Hiranyakashipu declared that any person who worshipped anyone other than himself would be put to death. Through severe penance early in his life the king had been granted a boon by Brahma. He could not be killed during the day or the night. He could not be killed by a man or an animal. He could not be killed either inside or outside his house. When he was away on one of his military campaigns, the sage Narada visited Hiranyakashipu’s pregnant wife. Narada spent the visit talking about the greatness of Lord Vishnu. The unborn child listened to all that the great sage said from within the womb.
When Pralad was born, he was a confirmed devotee of Vishnu. His love for Vishnu was extraordinary. He chanted the name of his beloved Lord continually much to the annoyance of his arrogant father. Prahlad treated his father with all respect but refused to comply with his order to end his worship of Lord Vishnu. Hiranyakashipu decided to have his son killed. Prahlad who was constantly immersed in his great love for the Divine remained fearless in the face of his father’s many attempts to have him killed. Hranyakashipu attempted to have Prahlad killed by placing him in a vat of boiling oil; by throwing him over a steep cliff; by getting elephants to trample him; by administering poison; by luring him into a poisonous snake pit. After all these attempts to have his son killed had failed, Hranyakashipu enlisted the help of his sister, Holika’ who had been granted the boon that no fire could burn her. Pralad was made to sit in a fire with Holika. To everyone’s surprise Holika was reduced to ashes while Pralad emerged from the flames intact. Holika and her wicked brother had forgotten that the boon only offered protection if she entered fire alone.
The morning after the fire incident Hiranyakashipu ordered that a huge stone pillar was heated until it was red hot. He then challenged Prahlad. He asked his son if his beloved Vishnu, who he claimed was omnipresent, was also in the pillar, waiting to save him. Pralad answered that Lord Vishnu was most certainly in the pillar. His father then ordered him to embrace the red hot pillar. ‘See if your beloved Lord will save you now!’ As soon as Prahlad embraced the pillar it burst open and Vishnu appeared in the ferocious form of Narasimha – half man, half lion. Narsimha grabbed the demon king and dragged him to the doorstep. It was dusk. Narasimha who was neither man nor beast, killed the demon king when it was neither day or night, not inside or outside his palace. Prahlad’s faith in Lord Vishnu remained unshakeable throughout the repeated ordeals he faced.
Faith in yourself and faith in God is the secret of greatness. You and God are not separate. Faith in yourself is the same as faith in God. Develop faith in your divinity by having the confidence to follow your conscience.
Sathya Sai Baba
When you pray to God for worldly boons you stand the risk of losing faith and thus losing your moorings. The challenge is to develop the love that asks for no return. That is the only basis upon which faith can be built. By developing the love that asks for nothing in return you are rescued from the duality of exaltation and despair. Consider everything, pain and pleasure, loss and gain, joy and sorrow as God’s grace. From the Divine perspective people who appear to be demonic help the devotees to affirm their faith in God. If there had been no Hiranyakasipu there would have been no occasion for the Narasimha avatar to appear before Prahlada. Without hatred on one side, the power of faith on the other cannot be demonstrated. Prahlada emerged from all the tests as an ideal lover of God. He acquired undying glory. Hiranyakasipu was the instrument for revealing the greatness of Prahlada. God creates hostile forces to demonstrate the power of faith in the Divine, thus conferring peace and plenty on all believers.
All can achieve victory by facing all adversities with full faith in God. Lack of faith makes man susceptible to imaginary fears. Such anxiety is removed by full faith in God. Understanding that not even one leaf can fall without the will of the Divine, constitutes true faith. Rather than a sign of weakness, such surrender it is an indication of great strength.
Treat the universe as your text book and your heart as your teacher. There is no need to seek God elsewhere…. When the pilgrim has reached the final destination, he discovers that he has travelled from himself to himself. The road was long and the journey was often lonesome but God was all the while in him, around him, with him and beside him. He himself was always Divine, his yearning to merge in God was but the sea calling to the ocean. Man thirsts for God because he is composed of God and cannot exist without Him. When you have faith in yourself you will have faith in God. You will have realised that there is nothing beyond the power of God.
Sathya Sai Baba
The magical power of Faith
By Sita
As a child I used to love fairytales and I firmly believed in them. When I walked through a forest I would constantly search for fairies and leprechauns. I simply knew they were there and I couldn’t stand it that I wasn’t able to find and see them. In me there was a vague memory of this nature deva’s.
God was something much too far from my world. My parents didn’t follow any religion so, we never spoke about God in our house and nobody ever prayed. To me, churches, God, prayer, it all was just a different world.
But fairies seemed to be near and logic.
Once I asked the girl next door, who went to church every Sunday, about God. She told me that He was like a harsh Father above the clouds, constantly watching His children, being ever ready to punish them when they did something wrong. Well, I knew for sure that I didn’t want to belong to that family!
When I was fourteen I survived a severe traffic accident but I had to lay down on my back for six months. Somehow I discovered a book about the power of faith and prayer. This book introduced to me a totally different view of God.
God as a power of Love.
I couldn’t stop reading, for in this book I found back the magic I loved so much. And it was all real! Real magic!
But as all magic, it needed one main ingredient, namely ‘Faith’.
How could I have faith in One who I had never known?
It was wonderful to read about Jesus and what He had said about prayer and faith. So, if I should truly believe, everything would be given to me?!
How much I wanted to believe that… but still God was so new to me.
It all sounded too good to be true!
But what happened? My perception of who and what God is, changed a lot by reading this book. So I decided to give it a try, there was nothing to loose…
I prayed and tried to have faith in that power of Love that people call God.
‘God… when You really exist, can You please let me know?’
His answer didn’t come in an instant, but I will never forget the moment when He answered my prayer. It was just a few days later. I could finally walk again after lots of hard practice. It was night and I went to my room to get some sleep. I sat on my bed resting, after climbing the stairs with two legs which didn’t work the way they should.
Suddenly I felt covered with a blanket of Light and Compassion. I felt lifted and filled with such warm love.
I knew: This is God!
It was so overwhelming and so perfectly timed.
How can one describe this feeling when you realize that you will never be alone anymore…? That He always is, will be and has been around. That it was His protection which helped me to me survive the accident. Even when I didn’t know His name He knew mine.
It was the first experience after putting my faith in Him.
Only recently I’ve realised that it is not faith that we have to develop.
Most of us have plenty of faith. It is like Sai Baba once explained to us:
‘When you go to the market by bus, you have full faith that the bus will take you there and that the market will be actually there.’
We have faith in so many of our convictions. So when we have faith, why then don’t we experience more often the great miracles Sai Baba and Jesus hold out to us?
It is said that there are two major forces in our universe, namely Love and fear, or God and egoism, or Unity and separateness.
So in what do I put my faith?
In Love or in fear?
In God or in my little self?
In Unity or in separation?
In Expansion or in contraction?
The laws of the universe work exactly like Jesus and our Masters tell me.
So it is true, it is simply a matter of… in what do I put my faith?
Do you realize how many messages of fear are broadcasted to you by television, newspapers, radio and internet?
Am I aware of it? Better to say, is it dawning on me?
And then I hear my Swami’s voice , So, in what do you put your faith Sita?
Do I choose to believe in the messages of the media or do I believe in the messages of my beloved Masters?
Do I choose to belief in Swami, Baba, angels, fairies, good people and miracles? In all those things which inspire me and make me happy and energetic?
Or do I choose to belief in hate, violence, bad people and darkness? In all those things which depress me and make me feel sad and drained?
Do I put my faith in the growth of mankind to kind men?
Or in destruction?
In ‘we can’ or in ‘we can’t’?
In feeling responsible or feeling a victim?
Many times my mind automatically chooses to have faith in things which don’t help me or humanity… or the planet at all.
But I do have faith that Swami helps me to become more alert and awake, so that I will realize more and more where to put my faith in.
That makes me feel so grateful.
For faith in Love will make this world the beautiful place it is meant to be.
Miracles do happen! Can you see?
