When we cherish doubt, it is like cutting off one of our legs. When we cherish suspicion, it is like cutting off the other leg. If your legs are taken away, your heart still can function. But when cynicism enters into the heart from the mind, at that time the heart is gone; there is no longer anything inside it. The heart-flower is torn into pieces. The heart-garden is destroyed and the little flower that you have in the heart is also completely destroyed.
To silence the mind's cynicism, we have to call on a superpower. This superpower is not like an atom or hydrogen bomb. No! The absolute superpower here is faith — faith in oneself and faith in God. When we say faith can move mountains, it is absolutely true.
It is easy to have faith in God. The moment we think of God, immediately we think of Somebody greater than ourselves — Somebody who knows infinitely more than we do and who can accomplish things that we cannot accomplish. So it is very easy to have faith in God.
But to have faith in oneself is a most difficult thing. Sometimes we feel that our arrogance, haughtiness and stubborn qualities are our faith in ourselves. Many, many times I have seen this in my disciples. It is the height of stupidity to think that haughtiness and arrogance represent our implicit faith in our own capacities. Faith is not like that. Faith is something that constantly reminds us of our own divinity, whereas arrogance does not remind us of our divinity. Faith is something that we have inside us that is in the process of becoming infinite; it is part and parcel of our own divinity.
We cannot have faith in ourselves if we are all the time thinking of the past. "Yesterday I was not a good person. The day before yesterday I was worse, and the day before that I was impossible." If these ideas enter into our mind, immediately we have to discard them. We have to say absolutely, "No, I was not that." If the mind tells us that we did this bad thing and that bad thing, we have to say, "No! You are a liar. I didn't do it! I am not that person. I am only going forward, diving inward, flying upward. I have that kind of faith in myself."
How do we get this kind of faith? There are two ways. One way is by touching the Feet of our Absolute Supreme and crying helplessly like a child for a new life to please Him, fulfil Him and manifest Him. The other way is by offering gratitude. We have to say, "Although I am bad, although I have become useless, still You have not given up on me, still you have selected me as Your chosen instrument. If You had given up on me, I could not have stayed in Your Boat even for a day." If we feel this, then gratitude has to come forward.
So either by shedding a flood of soulful tears or by offering gratitude, gratitude, gratitude we can bring back our lost faith. Then the cynicism of the mind will be illumined and our mind will grow into the oneness and fulness of our aspiring heart. At that time we will see a new faith-tree with most beautiful flowers and fragrance growing inside our heart-garden.From:Sri Chinmoy,You are your life's progress-joy-drum, Agni Press, 1993
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