Patterns of Spirituality

Faith or Wisdom?

In my 30s, I developed faith in two yoga teachers. Faith was an exhilarating time for me, but over several years I noticed that it did not answer many questions about the problems encountered in life. Eventually I was dis-illusioned and lost my faith; I then regarded my former teachers as friends, instead of teachers. Later on I took up the study of Buddhism.

What I have always found is that religious teachers, who may personally be really nice people, were good at exhortations to put goodness into action, but lacked understanding of why things go wrong. They never had any answer to why bad things happen to good people. The people who could accept reincarnation usually gave karma as the answer. However, this is a "one-size fits all" answer and doesn't really do anything.

For example, many times I started the day by making pleasant affirmations to show loving-kindness to everyone. This was part of my morning Buddhist routine, the brahmaviharas (see wikipedia for explanation of this). So I went to work with the intention of being very nice and helpful to people. But I found that the more helpful I was, the more I attracted bad "vibrations" from people, so that by the time I returned home at the end of work I was usually in a bad mood myself. I started the day in a good mood and ended it in a bad mood. Why? It took me ages to understand this effect. What was happening was that my good intentions increased my level of sensitivity beyond what it normally is, and then this increased sensitivity allowed me to detect the normal amount of hostility that exists in the ordinary work-a-day world. The overall result was that I picked up people's hostility, thereby making me feel bad whilst they felt better (because I had absorbed some of their negativity).

Why does a good person absorb some of the badness of another person?  In more extreme terms, why is a good person affected by evil?  Now we are into the traditional debate on good and evil.

The problem with all western religions is that the issue of  good and evil  is strait-jacketed. Only two possibilities are given, in that badness comes either from god or from man. Since it cannot come from god, so man becomes the source of evil. This leads only to puritan ethics and is completely out of touch with modern dilemmas, particularly in medical ethics. Buddhism is a bit more realistic, in that it does an incomplete analysis of the mind. From my experience of analysing the mind, it is clear to me that badness (and goodness) reside in the mind. Therefore the problem becomes that of understanding the mind and learning how to manage it effectively. In other words, the issue of good and evil has three possible answers - god, man, and mind.

Many things went wrong in my attempts to practice a spiritual way of life. Then in my early 40s my soul gave me a choice: I could focus on a life of faith or I could pursue wisdom. I could not do both. Faith centres on devotion, whilst wisdom centres on empiricism. Since I was obsessed with finding out why I always seemed to fail, I chose wisdom. What I learned early on is that the mindset that seeks faith is completely different from the mindset that seeks wisdom. Hence faith and wisdom are mutually exclusive, at least in the early stages of spiritual growth. One of the reasons for this is that in order to acquire wisdom the person has to dissect and analyse faith.

Having chosen the pursuit of wisdom, my inner drive propelled me into empiricism, exploring ways to understand the subconscious mind. So began my psycho-analysis, which I did on my own. It produced some very intense experiences over several years as I was cast into various psychological hells and had to think my way out of them. There were no short cuts. In order to think my way out of my troubles, I had to do an enormous amount of reading and studying on all aspects of human nature and relationships. This was a highly unpleasant path through life, but I ended up with the understanding that I needed. I have put my ideas on my website Patterns of Spirituality, and it is focused not on inspirational thoughts but on understanding the failures and tragedies that we experience.

What I have found is that each person needs to take his own time in doing an analysis; he has to be given time to face up to his inner turmoil. It cannot be hurried up by a therapist. He should never be admonished to "get over it ". So I am against therapists and teachers who are confrontational.

My pathway is that of using psycho-analysis to understand causes of distress. The issue here is that removing the causes by analysing the mind is a process that takes many years to achieve results. During this time the person is focusing on the failures and disappointments of his life, and so his overall state of mind is mainly negative. Not many people can live with such regular negativity, and so inspirational teachings are much more popular. However, faith does not remove the causes of problems. It's a choice that each person has to make, whether to attempt to understand the mind or to follow a life of faith. Each path goes in a different direction to the other path. However, neither is better than the other. Ultimately it comes down to what meaning the person seeks in life. It all depends on personal preference, on personal predilection. I have tried both paths. I prefer wisdom.

Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
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