Venture Fourth Weekly Work
Week Eight Sept 27 and Oct 4, 2009

Humility/ honor & respect/ responsibility/ mudita/ patience/ compassion/ gratitude

Sept. 27: now we add Faith (taken out of order), p.220 in Everyday Holiness

Oct 4. Integration of all the qualities thus far.

Faith. Sharon Salzberg has a beautiful little book on Faith called Faith, Riverhead Books, 2002. I offer it as optional suggestion. It's available on Amazon used for as little as $4.25

Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience by Sharon Salzberg (Paperback - Sep 2, 2003)

We want you to work with faith, around the experiences you are having with your guides. What is Faith? We look at the traditional teachings: there are three levels of faith, blind faith, verified faith (based on experience) and deep knowing. How do we transition through these three levels? If you asked me when I first met Aaron, "Is he 'real'"? I would have had to say, "I don't know; I'm just going to take it on faith, because something helpful is happening. Information seems to be coming, to which I had no previous access. " This is blind faith,. It's built on my direct experience and seeing real change as I opened to new information. And Aaron was the first one to say,
You do not have to believe I am real, or a being separate from your own mind, Just work with the information and see if it is helpful."

After many months had passed, I saw direct changes in myself based on what I was learning. My faith deepened that someone/ something other than my own mind was there. As I released doubt and stayed in that neutral zone of "don't know," I had increasingly clear ability to hear his thoughts.

Years passed and the changes in me were obvious to me and to everyone. I could clearly feel his vibration as different than my own, just as you can feel the difference when you walk outside, passing from sun to shade to sun again. You don't have to open your eyes and look; the body knows. Thus, I passed from verified faith, which is still faith, to knowing.

Using a different example, in the beginning I had blind faith in a dharma path that could lead to liberation. I read and heard about it and decided to explore for myself. As I practiced, I experienced clear small moments of liberation that verified my faith. As these experiences deepened I had a clear understanding of the state of total liberation (though I am certainly not yet there). There was no longer faith, but knowing.

We may start with blind faith in our ability to master calculus or to learn to swim. As we practice, we see results and realize we do have this potential. As we deepen in our abilities/ understandings/ connection to the subject, knowing develops.

Many of you are experiencing your guides, and feeling some doubt about if this is real or your imagination. At this point, don't worry about that. Just listen and practice. See where it takes you. It's no different than if I offered to teach you to swim, if you were all non-swimmers. Forty years ago, I taught swimming to adult non-swimmers, confirmed non-swimmers. We'd go into the pool and people would say, "But I cannot swim; I cannot learn." I'd tell people, "Let go of that idea and just be here in the water. Don't 'learn to swim' or not learn; just be here in the water." So they got in with me, with blind faith. Over the weeks, people would learn to trust me to support them while they floated, to put faces in the water, to hold a kickboard and kick the width of the pool. Only after learning all these skills would we put it together. Then verified faith came when they floated on their backs or stomach and kicked their way across the pool. "Ahh; I CAN learn to swim." Slowly we added arm strokes and they were swimming. There was no longer faith, but knowing,

As you practice here, watch the direct experience of doubt. What is doubt and how does it impact faith. Doubt is not the problem, but self-identity that gets caught in the doubt. If doubt arises, can there just be doubt? It's just a kind of energy. Don't get caught in it as something solid. It will arise from conditions and it will pass.

On the other side, don't get caught in needing to believe, which is very different from this progression through blind faith, verified faith and knowing. Knowing happens naturally. There is no contracted energy of a "someone" who needs to know, no clinging. Knowing develops from a place of love and non-contraction. Belief is more forced, with contraction an fear. Try to feel the difference through your practice and your daily experiences. In 'knowing' is there a knower?" Probably not. In belief there is someone who needs to believe.

Look at your work with humility and how it is balanced, empty of self, neither arrogance nor unworthy feelings. True faith is the same. It comes from a space of emptiness and is not belief in a forced way or doubt as belief. Begin to know the energy of faith.

I am attaching a dharma talk from last spring at Emerald Isle what may speak more to this topic. Click here.

After a week with faith, please look at all the qualities thus far and consider how they are coming together in your experience.

We'll continue on Oct 11 with Order from the book.