Faith

“The money’s great, by far the best of the three offers. Everyone things I should take it.” Sarah was focused on the tea bag she was dunking in the cup of steaming hot water on the table in front of her.

“But?” said her closest friend, Abigail, who could always read Sarah’s mind.

“I just don’t know if it’s the right job for me.” Sarah set the tea bag on a napkin and looked at her friend. “Which do you think I should take?”

Abigail sighed. She had been down this road so many times before with her friend. Would Sarah never learn to stand on her own two feet?

“What does it matter what I think?” Abigail said.

“I value your opinion.”

“Ah, I know what that means. It means you want me to tell you to take this job so you don’t have to make a decision that’s contrary to what your mom and dad, your brother, and everybody else with an opinion thinks you should do. All the years I’ve known you, you’ve wanted other people to decide for you.”

Sarah responded, “Well, I’ve no idea which job I should take.”

For years Abigail had listened to Sarah go back and forth on every decision she had to make. Sarah always ended up doing what the majority thought she should do, without ever discovering what she really wanted.

Abigail hated to see her friend relying so much on other people’s opinions. This time she wasn’t going to give hers. “Do you want to sit here and listen to me pontificate like a Mother Superior?” she asked. “Or would you rather get to the place where you don’t need other people’s approval and figure out what you want to do? For once, trust your own feelings and perceptions, regardless of whether anybody else thinks they’re accurate.”

Sarah imagines there’s safety in numbers. If enough people approve of her decisions, she must be on the right track. Once again, because her parents and several close friends stressed the importance of security, she took the job that paid the most money.

When she ended up hating her work, the truth of Abigail’s words dawned on Sarah. She realized that, had she listened to her heart instead of the opinions of everyone else, she could have known that the job that paid less money was the one she should have taken. It was the kind of work she liked.

Faith involves learning to stand on our own two feet, trusting ourselves, and needing validation from no one.

It’s one thing to gather information, or even to talk something over with a close friend to see if there are aspects of an issue that we’ve missed. But it’s something altogether different to look to others for what we should do.

We want someone to tell us the safe course of action. We go over the same ground again and again with family, friends and coworkers, instead of going within ourselves for the answers.

Direction doesn’t come simply from thinking something through, talking to others, and then making a calculated choice. It comes intuitively, without thought, spontaneously. It’s a silent knowing.

Faith is learning to trust our deepest being, regardless of what others think. It’s feeling the right choice—not at the level of emotional reactions, but deeper than this. It’s being in tune with the infinite Presence at our core.

After all, how can someone else possibly know whether we should marry a certain person, take a particular job, have a child, or undergo chemotherapy?

Equally, how can we know what someone else should do? It’s arrogant to think we know what’s best for another.

Faith means to let go of our dependence on external authority and find our authority within, in the sacred Presence at our center.

After years of looking to other people for validation, it isn’t easy to become a self-directed person. Messages from our true self dart into our consciousness but we dismiss them in favor of the opinions of others.

After all, how could someone as ordinary as us have a thought that’s truly significant?

When we don’t believe in ourselves, instead of becoming poetry, our lives are lived at the level of prose.

But if we once allow ourselves to feel our spiritual center beckoning us through our desires and intuition, our deepest yearnings and hunches will be illumined with a halo of significance.

By tuning into our creative center, we’ll shrug our shoulders at the mediocrity that has beleaguered us. Following the cues of our deepest self, we’ll stand on our own two feet and find the fulfillment that comes only when we have such faith. In the words of Michael Brown, author of The Presence Process, we’ll “show up.”

There’s just one person to trust in life when it comes to making decisions, and that’s yourself. But this trust isn’t in your ego, and it isn’t in a track record of past experiences. It’s a trust that’s based on an inner “knowing.”

No parent, spouse, therapist or minister experiences what it is to be you, which is why you alone are qualified to decide your course in life.

For at the end of the day, you are the one who has to live with the consequences of your choices.

May we each stand on our own two feet, charting our own lives—not individualistically, but grounded in the infinite oneness of divine Presence.