The Long Journey (Part I)

I have been on a very long journey that started back in December in the following e-mail message to student of mine. He has kindly given me permission to reproduce it here.

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... Wayne Dyer says that anxiety doesn't exist in the world. You can't SEE anxiety walking down the street or in the jungle or forest or visit it in the zoo. It is something that simply does NOT exist in the world. Isn't that a wonderful and liberating image and idea???

Really, if you think about it anxiety can only exist in the mind. For me there is only ONE weapon against it inside ourselves: faith. Faith that everything will be well, that you are in good hands. And the best part is that it's very easy: just two steps. 1) Believe it. 2) Trust your belief in it. That's all, nothing else. Then feel the comfort in that belief, because that is what will make it grow.

For example, suppose I think, "Yes, I have faith." and then I think, "I certainly HOPE it's true." Then I have no faith and get no comfort from it and it dies. At best I have hope. Hope is like a beebee gun ... against anxiety--it's better than nothing but not much better.

FAITH, on the other hand, is a 1,000 megaton neutron bomb against it! Now suppose I think, "Yes, I have faith." and then I think, "I KNOW it's true with every atom in my body." Then there is no anxiety--there's no room for it; faith has occupied all of the available space, and yet there is still room for faith to grow as it grows stronger and stronger and certainty becomes more firmly implanted!

Here's the downside. Suppose it isn't true and there's nothing to have faith in--just suppose for a second. What have you lost? NOOOOOTHING!!!!! You've lived a life that's free from anxiety and fear! Your heart can be full and expanding without that little empty dark space where anxiety lives and keeps you tied to the earth. You can fly above it all like a balloon over the countryside. All for the cost of nothing! Just believing, just knowing, just loving! Loving life, loving the cosmos, loving all that there is to love!

Please DO NOT read ANYTHING religious into this message. I AM NOT ABOUT THAT AT ALL!!!! The faith I'm talking about here BEGINS where religion ends! I mean true faith. That enormous, profound, sublime faith that is deep within us. Not faith in some institution. But if it is in that institution (whatever it may be) that you find the larger faith--good for you! Go there, find it, live life and be free!

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That last paragraph might strike some as odd after the rest of the text, especially written with such CAPITALIZED vehemence! But I really meant that even though I may not have known then exactly what I was on about. Find out in the next part where the next leg of the journey takes me!