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Great Faith. Great Doubt. Great Effort.

There’s this thing we could call the leap of faith, which lies directly between con­ven­tion and fully liv­ing. Like many things, there’s a orderly (or not so orderly) progression.

Here’s how it goes.

Most peo­ple enter adult­hood as fun­da­men­tal­ists — by that, I mean that they mind­lessly fol­low the rules and reg­u­la­tions of their tribe, cul­ture, and fam­ily. They have a burn­ing desire to fit in, so as not to ruf­fle feath­ers, or be seen as an out­sider. Thus, every­thing is about doing things “the right way,” even though such think­ing leads to semi­au­to­matic, unre­flec­tive being.

Soci­ety wants us to behave “cor­rectly” in all areas, such as:
1) relationship/marriage,
2) child rear­ing,
3) employ­ment,
4) political/socio/religious actions and perspectives.

Peo­ple believe that such fun­da­men­tal things as how we relate, how we do “what, and with which, and to whom,” what career to fol­low — in short, who we are and how we think, is graven in stone.

We fear the sup­posed ostra­siza­tion that we imag­ine will result from disobedience.

And cer­tainly, given the last 100 years and geno­cides, there’s no ques­tion that appear­ing dif­fer­ent can lead to extermination.

Pos­si­ble, yet not likely, for the major­ity of us.

Yet, many sit in the mid­dle of a great pile of dis­sat­is­fac­tion (aka shit), and spray room fresh­ener so as not to notice the stench.

The way out is a path, one we describe again and again, in dif­fer­ent ways.

Really, it begins with a com­mit­ment to an arti­cle of faith — or, Great Faith.

Faith is described as “con­vic­tion about some­thing unseen, or not cur­rently present.” With­out an under­ly­ing faith that it is pos­si­ble to engage with life dif­fer­ently, despite never hav­ing tried it, we are doomed to “pile sitting.”

Faith, then, is choos­ing to look closely at the rules you oper­ate under, to look closely at how you are and who you are, and to grasp the pos­si­bil­ity that, if I change my actions, I may get dif­fer­ent results.

This seems so obvi­ous as to be not worth stat­ing, but here is the “thing” that keeps most peo­ple stuck.

We become heav­ily invested in the main­te­nance of the sta­tus quo, and in sup­port­ing our culture’s norms, and fixed in blam­ing other for our issues. This exter­nal focus means that, for the major­ity, self exam­i­na­tion is threat­en­ing, and with­out an iron-clad guar­an­tee of suc­cess, they’d rather just sit there, thank you very much.

But lets just say that you are sick and tired of your lit­tle pile, and decide that you have faith that shift­ing to another way of being is pos­si­ble. With effort, but pos­si­ble. How do you move from fundamentalism?

Great Doubt.

The Bud­dha said, “Believe noth­ing, no mat­ter where you read it, or who said it, no mat­ter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own rea­son and your own com­mon sense.”

And, “Do not believe in any­thing sim­ply because you have heard it. Do not believe in any­thing sim­ply because it is spo­ken and rumored by many. Do not believe in any­thing sim­ply because it is found writ­ten in your reli­gious books. Do not believe in any­thing merely on the author­ity of your teach­ers and elders. Do not believe in tra­di­tions because they have been handed down for many gen­er­a­tions. But after obser­va­tion and analy­sis, when you find that any­thing agrees with rea­son and is con­ducive to the good and ben­e­fit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

Here’s the key.

Ini­tially, there are 2 things to ques­tion. First and fore­most, you must ques­tion every­thing you have learned from your soci­ety / par­ents. Sec­ondly, ques­tion your will­ing­ness to stay stuck, doing the same thing.

Every­thing, each prin­ci­ple, must be tested. Note that the Bud­dha pro­vides two are­nas for test­ing.
1) rea­son and com­mon sense, and
2) obser­va­tion and analysis.

Rea­son and Com­mon Sense—Our explo­ration, or Great Doubt, then, might begin with a rig­or­ous self and rule analy­sis. “If I think this way, I act this way. If I act this way, I get this result. Do I want this result? No! OK, then I must change both what I think and how I act, or at the very least, how I act.”

Rea­son and com­mon sense dic­tate that what I say I want, what I do, and what I get should match. Thus, if I say I want good com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and I fail to com­mu­ni­cate, and then I blame my part­ner, all of this might well fit our culture’s habit of blam­ing “the other,” while sit­ting on our pile.

But if I exer­cise Great Doubt, I might notice that the part I have con­trol over — whether I com­mu­ni­cate — is right there, for me to do some­thing about. But only if I exer­cise my doubt by get­ting rid of the “blame oth­ers” rule, AND then do some­thing different!

Obser­va­tion and analy­sis—I can’t actu­ally observe “just think­ing about” some­thing. I can only observe some­thing phys­i­cal. (Imag­in­ing a pizza is not the same thing as observ­ing a real one.) I may have all kinds of fears about what chang­ing a behav­iour will lead to, (like the old joke, “Why don’t Bap­tists have sex stand­ing up? Answer: “It might lead to danc­ing.”) but I won’t know what actu­ally hap­pens unless I do some­thing dif­fer­ent. This is what the Bud­dha meant by not sim­ply buy­ing into new ideas. Rather, it was, “Try it out. If it doesn’t work, then drop it. But if it DOES work, you know what you must do!”

The last cou­ple of weeks have been inter­est­ing. The Injured Work­ers have shifted behav­iour, and gained mobil­ity and peace of mind. Sev­eral clients in a row have pushed their self-imposed lim­its dur­ing body­work, and rather than shut­ting down and scar­ing them­selves, have had life shift­ing moments of open­ness, clar­ity and pas­sion. Oth­ers have exper­i­mented with let­ting go of long held beliefs, by doing some­thing dif­fer­ently, and imme­di­ately saw a dif­fer­ent result.

Choos­ing to reach out and touch some­one, when the “rule” is DON’T leads to con­tact of the most pro­found kind.

We use Great Faith in the process we choose, and Great Faith in peo­ple we trust who seem to be liv­ing as we would choose to, as the cat­a­lyst to begin chal­leng­ing what we believe. Great Faith dances with Great Doubt.

Great Effort is demon­strated in behav­iour (obvi­ously!)— and this is the leap of faith.

Don’t you just love circles?

The rea­son it’s a leap of faith is that you are by def­i­n­i­tion required to exert effort doing some­thing new — com­pletely new — with no assur­ance that you’ll like the result. You do it because you KNOW you hate what you are get­ting, and hate sit­ting in your pile. But mov­ing through Doubt to Effort requires actu­ally doing some­thing, and that’s scary.

So, here are three observations:

Assum­ing that a leap of faith is across the chasm between uncer­tainty and sta­bil­ity, it is best

1) to leap unbur­dened by a backpack,

2) to not attempt to make the leap in two jumps.

3) to not strad­dle the gap.

Leap Unbur­dened

You can’t take any­thing with you — not your sto­ries, not your friends, rel­a­tives, partners.

They can also choose to leap, but leap­ing is a solo event.

Many want to bring their vic­tim sto­ries along, sim­ply out of attach­ment to them. “My mom never loved me.” “My dad abused me.” “Every­one betrays me.”

These things are the waste prod­ucts of your for­mer con­fu­sion, and have no place “on the other side,” where the rules are dif­fer­ent. You really must drop all your stories.

There is effort enough required to leap — bring­ing along a life time of sto­ries means a nose dive into the void.

Leap

There is no half way attempt.

Many are the peo­ple who want to try a bit, have a rest, take a week or month or year off, an then try a lit­tle more. They did­dle, divert, and play at change.

The gap is there, and it’s real.

You can’t walk across, or go across in stages. A leap of faith, Great Effort, is a leap, sin­gu­lar. You back up, run like hell, and leap. You engage fully, no excuses, noth­ing held back.

You open every cell of your being, open every part of you, and fling your­self heed­lessly into the gap. Leap, and you will land unscathed on the other side. Dick around, fid­dle around, daw­dle, and it’s nose dive into the void time.

Un strad­dle Yourself

And then there are those who want it all. One woman I knew, a ther­a­pist, wanted me to train her to do body­work. I said, “Well, why don’t you have sev­eral ses­sions first, and see first hand what it’s about.” She said, “You mean me? I don’t want to do it, I just want to learn it! ”

This leap means leav­ing every­thing behind, includ­ing what you pre­tend you know.

You must trust (have faith in) your guide, unbur­den your back, and let every­thing go. If you attempt to strad­dle the gap, keep­ing hold to, say, a dys­func­tion rela­tion­ship while engag­ing in another one, you are going to get pulled in half, (or end up doing a nose dive…)

When I see clients try­ing to strad­dle, I say some­thing like, “All this strad­dling must by killing your crotch.” Not coin­ci­den­tally, peo­ple in the mid­dle of shift­ing, in body­work, feel exactly that — butt and groin pain. It’s like the body knows when we’re try­ing to strad­dle, and gives us a jab.

The leap of faith is just that… a leap. You typ­i­cally land on the other side, in a heap, naked and unbur­dened. The ter­ri­tory is new and strange, and you are unsure and pan­icky. What to do, what to do?

Look around. Likely a guide is right there, ready and will­ing to give you some direc­tion and a sense of what works “over here.” And a gen­tle touch to heal your raw­ness, and a word of encour­age­ment, and a kick in the ass. Because now the liv­ing and the walk­ing start in earnest. Into a world where you ques­tion every­thing, trust your­self, and act like you’re whole, open, vul­ner­a­ble and complete.

Because you are. Even if you don’t quite believe it.

Leap, and you will.

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Related posts:

1. Putting Your Soul into your Being
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Tagged with: common sense • doubt • effort • enlightenment • faith • faith doubt • great faith • leaps • orderly • progressions

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