Faith

QUESTION: I would like to ask something about self-responsibility. Would not self-responsibility lead to irresponsibility toward others? If I am responsible for just myself, how then am I my brother’s keeper? Wouldn’t it lead to selfishness, being responsible only for my own life and well-being? I would look for that which is best and most suitable for me first, and only then consider the other person. Although I would give the other equal rights, I would consider myself first.

Having to choose between everyday alternatives that confront you often generates confusion. These alternatives are not crassly “good” or “bad”; they both stem from the same basic struggle in the human soul.

QUESTION: How do faith in God and hope tie in with this path of self-purification? ANSWER: Do you see any contradiction between our path and faith in God and hope?

In this final session of the year, I would like to restate certain facets and goals of this path of self-realization. When you live unto the day without understanding the relationship between you and your life, you must be in despair. Whether or not you know it, you go through life searching for the answer. Only too often you seek the answer outside of yourself; and there, as you know, it can never be found.

Meditation is conscious and deliberate creating. It is one of the most dynamic and creative acts imaginable. You constantly create, whether you know it or not. You create by what you are, by what the sum total of your feelings, your conscious and unconscious opinions and convictions are, by your conceptions, which determine your actions and reactions, by your goals and attitudes.

When you go deep enough and look astutely enough, you also find out that what really obstructs you is the sum total of everything that is negative and destructive in you. The mind does not want to accept this. The mind has concocted all sorts of other explanations for unhappiness.

When you reach a certain level of awareness you will come across an attitude that says, “If I believe in the positive, I will be disappointed, and I may chase it away by my very belief in it. It may be smarter to believe that nothing good can happen to me, that I cannot ever change, that I cannot ever grow out of my obstructions.” This is a game, a kind of deliberate but destructive playfulness, which is based on nothing but superstition.