Today, I’m outside of my friend’s home in this beautiful area. You get a bit of the feeling, you can perhaps hear the birds twittering away.
It is one of the hottest days in Poland, in Krakow, in this part of the world, for almost 100 years, supposedly. So obviously, they’ve had hotter days before, if you can believe such a thing, but it is still warm.
So if you will forgive me, I’m going to leave my hat on. Last night, I had an interesting experience. I went to a church because, of course, Poland is an extremely religious country.
Catholicism is very dominant here. So I went to a church Sunday evening, and it was absolutely full, full, large cathedral, but full, standing room only for an hour.
And I watched the images, looked at the images on the walls and what have we, and it was really quite a moving experience, whether one is profoundly religious, if you quote unquote, if you can put it that way or not.
And this got me to thinking about faith. Now, in society today, because of the streaming in my phone, maybe the 100,000 bits of data every single day, they say many people have lost faith totally.
And the levels of depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, they’re just growing, right? And so, how am I going to grasp once again my reality? Because of course, my reality, where I’m sitting, is out of my eyes, my perception.
I can be in control of my perception, so to speak. So what am I going to do to find this faith that everyone talks about all the time, right?
Well, I think the very first thing, the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to truly, truly, truly have faith in me, in this being called me.
Because there is no one like me. There never has been and there never will be. In this sense, I am unique.
And this is not to be associated with vanity. And it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Because there are another over 8 billion of me running around this earth.
But there’s no one like me. I am unique. That said, once I reinforce that there is a uniqueness in me, what am I going to do to go forward?
Well, then I have to recognize this uniqueness. Now I have faith in me, and now I must find a plan. I don’t know what to do.
Poor me. I’m lost. Okay.
Everybody is lost when they’re young, I think. And if they’re not lost when they’re young, many times they’re lost later. So I have quite a number of clients that are wealthy.
They have a family business. In other words, their father or grandfather has a family business, and now they’re going to leave it to this individual. So the path, if you will, is predetermined.
I’m going to finish university, and I’m going to enter into the family business, a little bit like the mafia in a bizarre sense.
But many of them have told me at 40 or 50 years old, they’re miserable, they’re totally discontented because this is never what they wanted to truly do. I had one student, his father was in the nail business.
Now, if you can imagine such a thing, a nail business, making all these screws and bolts and nails and what have you, successful, of course, lots of money, my God.
And he was going to take over this nail business, but he was an exceptionally good artist.
And I said to him, well, gosh, with this kind of money, you could just go to Paris, go to wherever you wanted, New York, whatever it is you could pursue this career. If that’s what you really wanted, then it actually was.
He told me, first love, this is what I want to do for my life. But, and I’m always afraid of these buts. But I must, and this is nonsense.
No one must do anything. We believe we must, like I believed I must, do certain things at 18 or 20 years old. But with hindsight, you realize there is no must.
There is only the must that Leon decides. So this young man eventually entered into the screw business, and I’m sure met a nice girl, and had 2.2 children or whatever the average is, and lived out his life. But he never fulfilled his mission, right?
So the second part of faith, faith in myself, and then I must have faith in the mission. And what is my mission? I don’t know.
Well, once again, there’s no excuse here. There can’t be an excuse. Get the notebook out and begin to document my life, the beautiful life.
And it is a beautiful life, because if I’m not here, things are very different, right? So I’m a necessary being. But once again, like a raw diamond, if I don’t polish that diamond, if I don’t polish it, it just dissipates.
It has no value, so I must get to work on my mission. And I can try the first mission. It’s not my mission.
But eventually the real mission, whatever it is, will come to pass, I believe. Well, history has told us, it’s not only my belief, right? Find my mission, takes time to find my mission, then I can fulfill my mission.
And the third aspect to faith and belief in yourself is belief in something bigger than me. Some people say it’s God, some people say it’s Gaia, some people say it’s the universe, Transcendentalism, for instance.
Okay, but find a faith, truly find a faith and believe in that faith. Why not? Judaism in particular is very big on this.
It says, find a belief in God, right? And don’t fill this image of belief in God with useless dogma, right? Useless, many times.
And there is no ultimately right and wrong. You can believe, wonderful, that there is a right and wrong. My faith is true.
But like Dr. John Hick tells us, there is something he describes as the real, which is above all of our concepts because they are earthly concepts.
And I think if you’ve ever had a spiritual experience, and I have had one fortunately when I was 18, 19 years of age or so, still remember it, unique. People say it’s false, it’s delusion, whatever it is, doesn’t matter.
To me, it had a lot of value and helped me go forward. So, faith in myself, faith ultimately in the mission, and then faith in the universe, God, Gaia, whatever you want to label it, and then go forward.
Now, all of that aside, what are the alternatives to no faith?
Right? Let’s have a look there. Well, I think all you have to do is to speak at individuals that ultimately are victims.
They’re victims in life. Poor me. I’ve lost my money, I’ve lost my wife, whatever it is.
And then I’m going to satiate that pain with drugs or alcohol. Or bad relationships can even be, right? Crazy.
Crazy. Stand back. Have a look at yourself naked in the mirror.
That’s what everyone sees. They don’t see the beautiful you inside of you, right? They don’t see it.
Nobody can see it. That’s a private world, a safe world, if you will. But that interior self does not have to feel like a victim.
For sure not, like we spoke about before, like Victor Franco walking along on that chain gang virtually in Auschwitz. This quarry, stone, if I may can imagine, pretty tough life. But he realized, no one can take my thoughts.
No one. So in the morning, when you awake, listen to nothing, if at all possible, for the first one or two hours of the day. Keep away from social media totally.
And then try to fill your home with positive sounds. I leave the radio on, classical music station, and I get nothing but classical music, which I find extremely calming. Write in your notebook, right?
But reflect on faith. Really do, because first of all, you’re an independent agent, you are a necessary being, and you can have faith in yourself, you can have faith in your mission, and you can have faith in God as you see him.
And you know what they say, you know what they say in this beautiful weather.
My gosh, critical thinking is necessary, especially if I’m going to find my own faith, my faith in me, in the mission, and in God, and critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care. God bless.
Bye bye.