Last night Liam stayed up a little past his normal bedtime after an especially busy day. Wendy and I were guiding him to his bedroom.  He was holding Wendy’s hand, and I was guiding him from behind. He was kind of stumbling along. We thought it was because he was so tired. Only after he ran into the door frame to his bedroom did we realize that he had been walking with his eyes closed on the way to bed. He had shut them on purpose because  he thought it would be fun.

This makes me think about how so many people think about faith. They think that faith is blindly following  a person, a guru, a savior, a church, a teaching, a teacher, a faith, a tradition, political party, country, or dogma. I guarantee if this is how you are living your faith, you are going to eventually run into a lot of door frames too.

Here’s my take on faith. faith to me is living my life with my eyes wide open, being as aware of everything going on within and around me as I possibly can. And while living in this way, I trust that God and others and my spiritual self will help me become aware of everything else I need to become aware of to step more fully into who I really am and who God really is and who others rewally are. I trust that evertything I need to perceive and become aware of will be revealed to me with perfect timing and in the absolutely perfect ways for me to do what I need to do to fulfill my destiny.

By questioning everything that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t support what we truly and deeply desire, we are creating the space to become even more faithful. While this may not have been what you have been taught. It is absolutely true, especially when it comes to the most hallowed and cherished beliefs, creeds, dogmas, and traditions that we have chosen to accept “on faith.”

Mental assent and agreement doesn’t compare with the wonders and joys of a constantly-expanding awareness of infinite possibilities! This is what true faith is. Anything else is only a cheap imitation!

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When people find out about my business, I get to have some very interesting conversations. Recently, I was having a conversation with a lady about what makes a religion more or less true.

At some point in our conversation, it came to the point where I asked her what she knew to be true. She replied saying something like, “We believe that…” I pointed out to her that I was not interested in what she or anyone else believed. I also pointed out that I was only concerned with what she knew based on her own personal experiences and perceptions (not on the affirmations of a bunch of people called “we”).

She said that I was splitting hairs and playing games with semantics with the distinctions I was making between believing and knowing. Actually, no I wasn’t.

Here’s an example of the difference between believing and knowing that you may appreciate:

When I talk about my relationship with my wife, I speak about what I know, not what I believe. I know my wife from our almost 20 year relationship. I know her because I live with her, talk with her everyday, love her, experience her love for me, play with her, make love to her, laugh with her, cry with her, make money with her, face challenges with her, create things with her, travel with her-you get the picture.

I know my wife. I don’t know her completely and totally, but we have a relationship where I have confidence in who we are to each other because of the depth and quality of our relationship. When I talk about my wife, I don’t say, “We believe that [such and such is true]…” I say things like, “My wife is [insert any wonderful adjective here]…”, “We are [insert pretty much any positive phrase here]…”, “She is so good at [this wonderful and important thing]…”, “I love the way she [does something good]…”

I don’t tell people that I believe that my wife is anything. Why would I talk about what I think or believe when I actually know her to the extent that I do?

If you can only talk to me about what you (or what you and a bunch of other people believe) about God, you don’t know God. [If what I just wrote upset you, you really need to get to know God better!] We don’t get upset and defensive about who and what we really know. When we are challenged (like I am challenging you right now), we only get upset when we are afraid that we are wrong (and conversely, that the annoying guy pushing our buttons is right!).

We don’t know what we don’t know. If I were to somehow “lose” my relationship with God (or my wife or son for that matter), I would know what I was missing. I would be significantly challenged if any of those relationships ended.

If you don’t know God to this extent right now, I suggest that you carve out some time every day to seek God with all of your heart. This way you will begin to know what you don’t know right now. You will begin to receive something that can never be taken away. When it comes to God, you will be able to speak of what and who you know instead of what you and other people think and believe. There’s a lot more power in knowing God than you can currently imagine.

Go and know God!

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We’ve all had circumstances in our lives where things do not go as we planned or as we had hoped they would. We pour our time, energy, creativity, commitment, and love into something only to experience fear, anger, confusion, disappointment, despair over the end of something we really believed in and truly wanted to work out. We desire to create and sustain good things (otherwise we wouldn’t bother). So why don’t things always go the way we hope they will?

The short answer to this question is, “Because space is being created for something even better.” Let me elaborate.
In my world nothing happens by accident. Nothing. Everything that exists has wonderful potential purposes, and I believe that one of my main jobs in life is to take whatever circumstances I have attracted into my life and do the best I can in that moment to make the most of them whatever they may be.

One of the ideas I depend upon every single day goes something like this:

I can trust God, the universe, myself, and other people to conspire perfectly for my benefit and for the benefit of all. Regardless of circumstantial appearances, I can trust that all things are working together for the highest good of all concerned.

I think many people believe that things often get much worse before they get better. Despite this faily commpn belief. many of us assume that if things aren’t going the way we want them to go they must be “BAD.”

This kind of thinking denies us the opportunities to maximize the circumstances that we attract into our lives. If you think about anything that has happened in your life that you didn’t want to happen, chances are the first thing you did was resist it. In some way you denied it or pushed back against it, thinking “This can’t be happening!” or “I hate this!” or “I wish this would just go away!” or whatever exclamatory phrases occurred to you at the time.

What if, instead of resisting, we chose to act as if this thing we do not want is actually an opportunity? What if we have actually been waiting for this very moment to take our lives to a whole new level? What if the thing that we do not want is actually the secret doorway to an unbelievably wonderful future?

We all have stories of circumstances that we thought were terrible that actually turned out to be “blessings in disguise” once we had the benefits of time, experience, or perspective. How about we take that attitude all of the time, regardless of appearances? What do we lose by doing this? (Perhaps the sick pleasures that go along with being “right” and miserable?) Thinking that there is absolutely no possibility of anything good ever coming from a particular circumstance only delays the realization that whaever has happened or is happening is a great growth opportunity.

What I know for sure is that our chances for success are much better if we are open to the possibilities within less-than-desirable (or downright horrible, terrible, absolutely no-good) events and circumstances. While most of us resist these kinds of experiences out of habit, my hope is that we can all open up at least a little bit more to the possibility that even the worst circumstances and events hold the seeds for real progress for ourselves and for others.

Good farmers plant their seeds. They trust that the seed, sun, rain, and soil will do what they are supposed to do (well, at least organic farmers do!). All of life is rigged for our benefit, whether we believe it or not. Perhaps the next time something doesn’t go the way we want it to (or even right now!) we can choose to believe that it has a useful purpose, even if we can’t see it yet. Let’s believe that it may very well be exactly what we need to expand into an much more expansive experience of life. I humbly submit that that is exactly what it is.

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