QA166 QUESTION: Can you help me to believe?
ANSWER: To believe, generally? I would even say you will know, not believe. “Believe” in the sense this word is usually used, is a wrong expression. Because you either know or you do not know. When you say, “I do not believe,” you are not in truth any more than the person who “believes” – maybe in that way it is correct.
But do not say, “I do not believe,” because you do not know. Say, “I do not know and I would like to know.” The inner knowing, the inner experience of a vaster truth must come from within yourself, which can happen only to the extent you are willing to see truth – generally about the universe, and specifically about yourself.
If you do not close yourself up to the truth and if you, for example, see your own negativity, you will see, “Here I cut myself off from knowing the truth.” What you call belief – belief in the universal spirit, belief that life is eternal and that in life there’s nothing to fear – is only wonderful expansion, and everything else is illusion.
Your not experiencing this is a result of a negativity you build up. Now, once you recognize and get in touch with this negativity, in the sense of saying, “Yes, here I see myself saying it is all bad,” in one form or another, your saying it is all bad is a negativity.
Next ask yourself, “Why do I say it is all bad?” Isn’t this a defense in itself – some kind of little island you want to protect yourself on and not enter into life because you fear life? Just by this very act of evading life and of not entering into life, you create a negative experience.
Because you constantly create negative experience, you must assume life is negative, and you are thus in a vicious circle. So the only way you can, as you say, “believe” – and I would prefer saying “experience the truth of life which is good, which is safe, which is beautiful, which is forever more expanding and exciting in a peaceful way” – is by your recognizing your defensive negativity.
