Classroom Talk
Fifth and Sixth Grades Archive
Hot on the trail of "what is faith?"
Posted by John on 07/21/2003 17:05:18
In reply to Re: Not shaken, inspired. posted by Eddie on 07/21/2003 16:15:54
At first I was having a strong negative reaction to your posting, Eddie.
"Oh, no!!!" I was thinking, and my body clutched up with negative
emotions. I took it for granted that I knew what you meant by
"intentionally shaking it up in Classroom Talk," and knowing you are a
good Man, I trusted your sensitivity to yer ol' Coach, by now, and knew
that you weren't intentionally hurting me. Yet I was hurt by your
posting, and I reacted.
To me, it was that you were presenting another great topic for study in
this class, one that is a personal favorite of mine because I haven't
been a man of faith over my life, and a forum on faith would surely bring
a lot of healing and new enlightenments into my own life as a human
person. You all ought to know what I mean in saying this by now.
Scores of times I've interrupted my coaching here to remind you not to
have faith in me. I've urged you not to have faith *period*. Or rather,
I've said "Have faith in what you can wake up and see."
I've said it's better to pause and study the situation with mindfulness
and find out what you can *know* with your own eyes by studying your life
in the present with awareness. I have been more biased against "living
by faith" than any other mindlfulness teacher that I know about. For I
don't have much faith. You could almost say that not having faith is
like a hole in my over-all makeup as a person in my life . . . so far.
At least, now, for the first time in my long life, I've got an idea that
can change.
One thing I *do* know is that most spiritual and religious teachings do
talk a lot about having faith. My problem is that I don't understand
what, precisely, in experiential terms, the old scriptures *mean* by
"faith." How I'd *love* it at this stage of my life to find out that we
*can* teach this old dog new tricks. I'd love to be able to put faith
into my warrior's bag of observations and strategies that I carry around
with me on my hip wherever I go, and be able to pull it out and put faith
into play at the appropriate times for it that come up in my life. I
sense that I would be a more balanced human being, and even a better
coach, if this could be so. But I don't know how.
Take lately, for instance, when I've been in a bit of a funk, Folks,
depressed at times and very pessimistic about what's left for me in my
life. (That's not very realistic when I look at the potential for
development of my life that lies beneath my fingertips—as right now—
seated at the musical keyboard of Classroom Talk. Heh-heh. Yeah, I'm
grinnin' and being cheerful right now, alright! But I do get down at
times, and I have been getting down lately.
I do have these times when I'm feeling depressed. Despite my recent
luck, I feel no closer to the kind of companionship I am wishing for than
when those four interesting women first showed up in my life. I did
damage to my lungs in standing in for work during all those days when the
forest fires filled the valley with harsh smoke and cinders. I'm paying
for it in daily pain. (Doctor says I'm on the mend as well as could be
expected.) The news on television that I've been lying around and
watching is punishing. I've been taking a daily pounding on my body from
all those things, bodies and words I absorbs from the television. It's
as stressful as living in a camp of enemies of peace, where fighting is
constantly going on. And last week's news—did you notice?—was the
wierdest week of painful news I can remember in a long time.
The old man who killed ten people with his car over a distance of several
blocks?????? . . . . . . . The nuclear scientist in London who killed
himself when uncovered as the one who blew the whistle on the Blair
government for exaggerating the intelligence on Iraq to manipulate
English people to want to follow him in the war???? Kobe???????????
(Coached by a mindfulness teacher on the basketball court, he candidly
expressed his shame for what he did. That was an impressive press
conference he did, to me, in terms of awareness game coaching. (No, I
don't know if he is guilty of the charge, and I'm upset—even loving him—
that I maybe never will.) I would like to see him express more
contrition about what he did to the public, if he can find that in him.)
. . . . . . . . . . a soldier a day being killed in a war that wasn't
thought through carefully enough. (If Bush and Blair could swallow their
pride and ask the world to bail us out from going in way over our heads,
beg the U.N. to take the whole Iraq thing over for them, it seems that
would be best for all concerned, including the "liberated" Iraqi people,
as well as us living in my country. To the extent that either of these
gentlemen is a "Con Artist" on our personality wheel, that kind of
contrition would truly take a spiritual transformation to come about.
Heh-heh.
Ah, I've been enduring a wave of cynicism lately about the possibilities
of the human race ever working things out and achieving world peace. As
you students know, that is what I am fighting for in this life.
So, anyhow, that's all by way of saying that I've been depressed at times
lately, and I was bummed out by your posting, Eddie, for a reason none of
you in the class might ever guess.
I just didn't want to have to change my coaching focus at this time from
the subject that I have been watching like a hawk for a couple of weeks
now . . . . . the nature of the personal relationship that has been
happening before our eyes between Student John and Rob.
Now, the beauty of the power of a group is that when Student John came
along and was charmed and delighted by your posting, Eddie, it healed me,
right on the spot. That is, my resentment and resistance to your posting
dissolved on the instant. My ego had been caught up in feeling we had to
be focused on my observations of Student John and Rob interacting
together. I was feeling that was the important thing right now, and not
the topic of "faith."
I don't know if I am making this clear. I was so intensely caught up in
my own ego agenda, which seemed *absolutely* right-on to me, that *
anything* that seemed to detract from that seemed like "an enemy" to me,
and my body—like a knee-jerk reaction—had to stand in resistance to it.
Student John's saying he was inspired by your posting brought me back to
real life again, back to realizing that the flow of reality in the field
I am living in is not all tied to me. For a couple of weeks I had been
over here "equipping my Self," so to speak to begin a lot of what I felt
was key awareness game coaching on "The Movie of Student John and Rob,"
and something else happened. Life turned in a new direction.
I realized that I could flow with this new direction, too. I could see
where it would go . . . wherever it would go. I didn't have to pit the
strength of my body against it (as an automatic ego reaction). Perhaps
it would lead to the most new learning, for me and for all of us. If I
could drop the (let's call it, "intense") program I was riding along on,
caught in my conditioning, and just flow with the new of the now, perhaps
I could have faith that this, too, would deliver it's part in fathoming
the meaning of it All around here.
Now, with this came other healing realizations. If you have been able to
follow what I've been talking about, in my reaction to Eddie's posting, l
had adopted a kind of "either this or that" attitude. Either it was
going to be the Movie of Student John and Rob, or it was going to be a
possibly mind-blowing Forum discussion of Faith. And I had been wanting
the former. Well . . . once having seen the position my ego-driven
personality had put me into, the position I was defending against change,
it came home to me that I've got a whole darned week of being home this
week, and all the time I care to invest in it for sharing experiences
with you other Forumeers. In other words, I was stuck for awhile
suffering in an "either/or" situation, and, and by being facilitated to
work on through the blockage of it, I had discovered that, in reality, it
can be a "this-AND-that" situation if I make it so. We can talk about
either topic, or both, Kiddees, and it's now okay with me.
Thanks for your beautiful posting, Eddie. I love it, too . . . at last.
If this leads to my having a richer understanding of Faith in my life, I
will be the lucky one, indeed!
By chance, on the news this morning, I saw an interview with an old
Colonel who had been held in capitivity during the Vietnamese War and
survived. He attributed his survival to faith. When asked to clarify
that, he said: "Faith is the ability to believe something is going to
happen when you can't physically prove it's going to happen."
Yes, that seems like a pretty good definition from this old soldier! If
that's not a valuable tool to have in our warrior's bag of powers that we
carry around, I don't know what is. I bet Pauline can have a lot of
insights on "faith," and Rakesh.
Student John, your sharings in the last couple of weeks have been very
expert, in terms of awareness game coaching. (That is not to pre-judge
things that are still unknown.) I appreciate that you are *working*
here. Each time, I see that you are deliberately putting things that you
have learned here into actual practice in the Forum. More than anything,
that is what I wish for the Forum in Classroom Talk to be, at this stage
of our training. We can practice the things we learn with each other,
Folks. And if we can learn to see through each other's eyes, as well as
seeing awarely through our own, there is much in this world to be seen
that can lead us to having peace together instead of war.
That's the only thing I teach around here that's grounded on faith. And
as you Folks can see, I'd be glad to have more of it.
I didn't even have faith in the beginning of this school that this class
would ever reach such a point of potential for learning together as a
group, as we seem to have now. I think the combined Essences of us all,
as individuals, may have "fused" enough by now to form an unusually
polished "instrument" for the study of life together.
And if I'm to gain a little more faith in my fellow humans that we are
someday going to be able to pull world peace off as a race together
through sharings that are made in this interesting little webwide forum
that we have at our disposition here now, so much the better, I say!!!
Coach
Lord of it All, please give me faith.
Archived 09/22/2003