Faith, Or Trust Yourself And What You Do – But To Know What To Do (II)

As we know, we are not perfect, cause we chose not to be, but we could, at least, obey the rules of The Perfect Being – which are the moral laws. And which these moral laws are? In order to simplify, and not to have to research the doctrines of the main existing religious systems (even if it would be good to search at least the one of the religion in which we were born), we could say these main laws are: first: don’t do harm to anybody, and second: do good to anyone, anyway, wherever, and whenever you can. Or, we can use the main commandement of Christian religion: love your neighbour as you love yourself. Cause, if we love someone, we are not able to harm them, and definitely, we should want to do to them whatever good we can.

It sounds so simple, that we may wonder why not everyone does so. The catch is that, in order to do good, sometimes it may be necessary to give up on our selfishness or convenience. To give only a simple example: if we see a hungry street animal on the side of the road, we feel compassion, and we know it would be proper to give it some food. But, if we are on the way to much more interesting activities, we could say to ourselves: ”I’ll do this another time!” But another time, the animal may not be here, or the little pieces of food that we could have given at that certain moment, would have made the difference between its’ life and death, or the life and death of its’ babies.

The same, if we have a small amount of money that is left over, and we plan to buy ourselves an ice-cream or a pie, and suddenly, we see a beggar in our way, the ego could say: ”Oh, I know this man is hungry, but in fact, he has not the right to beg, it’s illegal, and besides, I have my right to my little pleasure, cause I have worked all day like a slave”. That would be totally imoral, cause this man would only find reasonable arguments in order to justify its’ selfishness. Cause if we think a little deeper about the problem of begging, we may notice that society, in its’ actual way of structuring, effectively has no solution for street people. Some non-profts and churches try to bring a little support and ease of their lives. But the society as a whole has no solution for them, cause in fact, society barely finds the means to pay those who work, and the unemployed, and the retired. That’s why the society as a whole, and each of us, the people who compose it, have a great debt to these people totally left out, and who have no chance at all to acceed to the minimal rights of a human being. And they are however human beings, part of a civilized society! And if we think deeper about the reasons why society does not have enough money left for them, we could see that there are large amounts of money this society allocates to: weaponry, tobacco industry, video games, casinos, movies of all categories – even porn; sports, space reasearch. Otherwise said: this civilized society chose to ensure the amusements and satisfactions of mind and knowledge first, and even harmless activities, but it left outside human beings, who doesn’t have even the bare necessities. So, society as a whole has the same behaviour towards the poor as that individual who prefers enjoying his pie than give a small amount to a starving man. Or, pay a HBO subscription than contribute monthly with a small amount to finance a nonprofit.

But, if we do these, where is our joy of life? some could ask. We cannot live like this, sorry!

As an answer, you would be surprised how much joy the feeling of doing good could bring! How much joy and emotion only seeing the confident look and the love manifested by a street animal you use to feed! Or the joy in the look of a street child to whom you gave a pie, instead of eating it yourself! It’s easy to understand why the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who was known as a lonely man, and never had a family, said that obeying the moral laws gave him the greatest joy: ”What makes me happy is the starry sky above me, and the moral law inside of me.”

So, some of us obey moral laws, some of us, not so much, some of us even chose not to believe in God, cause it’s much easier for them this way, and consequently, He cannot help us all the way, and that’s why the functioning of the world is not perfect. That’s why there are injustices and pain, and sufferences. And He and His angels suffer along with us.

But, there are however many helpful mechanisms in this world, and one of the most extraordinary among them is that His laws allow the world to be helped, if there are even a few true followers of them in a great crowd.”If there are only ten righteous men in a city, for those ten men, I will not destroy this city.”(Genesis, 18.32) But, that doesn’t mean we have to lean on the few righteous men among us, and not to make ourselves the effort to become our best Selves.

So, what I wanted to say through this long demonstration was that real faith does not mean applying the Law of Attraction. Real faith is what I said at the beginning of this chapter: to believe it, before you see it. But you know why can you believe like that? Cause you already feel in your soul that it’s possible! Like I said in the chapter before: there are only the dreams that you deeply feel are possible and bring you joy, worth following. And this feeling pushes you forward even in the hardest times. Of course, there may be moments of doubt, and confusion. But if the dream is the proper one for you, faith returns with a new sunrise.

In fact, this feeling in your soul that a certain dream deserves to be followed, and must be followed, represents the answer of the Universe, or of the Supreme Being, to your request without words. Cause every dream, every desire, is a wordless request, or a wordless prayer, to the Universe and its Creator. Even if you don’t think about this!

Of course, this is only the first step, but it’s a very important one. Cause if you have the consent of the Master of Everything, then you could be certain He also decided to help you along the way. With a condition however: that you, on your side, do everything in your power. Cause He likes the people who agree to roll up their sleeves when they need something.

I have to make however a small addition to the statement before – that only the dreams we really feel worthy and bring us joy must be followed. I know there are people, mostly youngmen at the beginning of their path in life, who don’t know how to choose their purpose, cause nothing seems particularly attractive to them. For example, when it comes to choose a college! But, if they don’t feel the joy to follow a certain path, that doesn’t mean they don’t have to choose one. In this case, it would be better to choose something than to stay on the edge, and the further development will show them if this path is really for them. They could have the nice surprise to start liking what they do, but even if they don’t, they will know at least what they don’t like. Of course, it’s not a situation to enjoy, and in most cases it would be better to try to like what they do, cause every path has its’ beauty. As Voltaire says: ” Work saves man from three great evils: boredom, vice and poverty.”