Is there something that you would like to have more confidence with or in? Perhaps a decision you have to make or an action or performance you have to make?
Maybe you’d like more confidence as a partner or parent or teacher or student?
It is interesting to me that the word confidence has two parts to it – the prefix ‘con’ which actually comes from the word ‘com’, meaning together or with, and ‘fidence’ meaning firm trust.
You know, I’ve been training myself to be very careful (meaning full of care rather than cautious) with my words. In fact, I often find that words get in the way of our ability to experience something fully.
It is said that when a child, who naturally sees things ‘as they are’ is given a word for the thing that it sees, it ceases to see the thing ‘as it is’. Instead, its experience of the thing is now mediated by a word. In other words, it now sees and experiences a symbol rather than the actual thing itself.
Can you imagine, therefore, how far we as adults are removed from the actual , unmediated experience of things, from the true nature of things ‘as they are’? And these things include everything that we encounter in the physical world as well as our very selves.
In other words, we relate with everything and everyone, including ourselves, through the ideas, concepts and beliefs we have about them and about ourselves. This is why every credible religious tradition exhorts us to ‘know ourselves’, to know who we truly are, beyond the ideas, concepts and beliefs we have about ourselves. In other words, to know ourselves in an unmediated way.
And until we do, we will always feel, consciously or unconsciously, as if we are incomplete or flawed or imperfect, dissociated from our true selves, our true nature. Which brings me to my initial interest in the word ‘confidence’
I’ve taken the attitude that if we are going to use words (and at this point in our evolution words are necessary), then we might as well understand them and get the most out of them.
So, the word ‘confidence’, a conjugation of two words or meanings – Together and Firm Trust – is a word that we might get some use out of :). For instance, who or what are signified as being together? Who or what is to be trusted firmly?
Simply this: When you take away the symbols – words, beliefs and ideas – by wihich we have come to know ourselves, we are left with our essential self. Some call this god. I refer to it variously as god, Infinite Intelligence, Source, the Field, our true nature, the Universe.
It is this that we are naturally drawn to trust but unnaturally conditioned not to trust or to trust by way of an unequal relationship. What do I mean by an ‘unequal relationship’?
Well, I mean one in which we feel separated from and inferior to the ‘other’.
But God/Infinite Intelligence, the Source, the Field, our True Nature is not separate from us. It is all there is and we are equal expressions of it THOUGH WE ARE (MOSTLY)UNAWARE/UNCONSCIOUS of it.
Also, there is no rationing of the qualities, attributes and possibilities of god/source/field/Infinite Intelligence so that we only hold or are imbued with some of them and not all of them. No!
We are whole and complete expressions of the One but our beliefs, ideas and concepts about ourselves keep us ignorant and out of touch with this fundamental truth.
The longer we live in this world, the more distanced we become from the truth of who we are. Until we wake up.
Meditation is the means by which we wake up. We can fill ourselves with intellectual understandings about what I’ve just said but until we allow ourselves to experience this, we will never awaken.
But what’s the big deal about awakening, you may ask.
Let me put it this way:
All suffering, all pain, in whatever form it occurs – physical, emotional or mental – is a result of our IGNORANCE, our lack of AWARENESS of who and what we truly are.
Now, I can almost see and feel you bristling with indignation at this claim. How the heck do you attribute the suffering from an accident like a plane crash to my personal unawakened state, Lucy? And what about a brutal rape or torture? What about environmental disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes? Did they happen because the victims were unawakened? To even suggest a spiritual or metaphysical link or cause such as this is preposterous, never mind a personal one!
I agree. It is preposterous. But perhaps the problem lies in the way we construe it and our approach to the solution. Let me explain.
If we use our limited vision and understanding and interpretations of the physical world to try and make sense of how reality works (something notable scientists including Einstein, Pauling and Bohr understood despite practising exactly that), we are doomed to draw inaccurate and even wrong conclusions. It would be like trying to get a complete picture of the sky by looking at it through a pin hole.
And while I have my own intuitive understandings and ‘insights’ about how reality works, I shall leave that for another time. Meanwhile, I would ask you to consider two things and they should help to at least arouse your curiosity and perhaps suspend your rejection of what I’ve claimed.
The first is this:
Regardless of how we believe something has come about, whether that be cancer or a plane crash or a tsunami, I’m sure you’ll agree that the suffering each of us experiences (whether as victims or sympathetic onlookers) will be determined by our beliefs – about life, about relationships, about god, about nature, about ourselves.
For instance, we will surely suffer more if we see ourselves as helpless victims of a cruel, capricious god or universe. And we are likely to suffer less if we trust, if we have confidence, in our co-creative role and response to our life experiences.
In other words, quite aside from the event itself, the more impactful thing for each of us is what we believe and whether or not we have confidence in that which is beyond our personal and collective configurations of beliefs, ideas and concepts about ourselves, about life, about ‘reality’ and so on.
The second is this:
If we can accept, as most scientists do, that the physical world as we know it, arose from an unimaginably infinitesimal,, non-physical event known as a ‘singularity’ – the basis of the Big Bang theory – then is it so inconceivable to see that there might always be a non-physical precursor to all physical manifestations? Where or how or what precisely the nature of this non-physical precursor is may be something to debate.
However, more and more of us are becoming aware of how our thoughts, but especially our feelings which have the stronger vibrational force, are the precursors to most of our physical everyday events – from putting a meal on the table to exchanging words with a partner or colleague..
And all this to say that as we awaken and stay awake more, we are more likely to have confidence, to put our firm trust in and with who and what we truly are – that which is beyond the ideas, beliefs and concepts we have about ourselves and the world!
The effect of this, as more and more of us are realizing, is an increasing sense of peace, joy and effortless living..
And you will also find that when your confidence is placed in something that is not a product of your conditioning, but something that has always been and always will be, the very source and cause of all there is, you will experience the supreme power and possibility that such confidence provides!
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