Practical faith

Forget about the magic and miracles, just stay, breathe, and get as comfortable as you can.

Photo by Key Notez from Pexel.com

There are days when I feel the spirit of God moving within me, nights when I hear my guides and ancestors speaking to me. Then, there are days when I feel like God, guides, ancestors, Buddha, Jesus and all the other denizens of the spiritual realm are about as real as the Easter Bunny. And that’s OK. I feel wonderful when I’m brimming with faith and see magic in all of life. But I’m also learning to accept the days when I do not believe, the days when I have zero trust and confidence that God or the universe has got my back.

I grew up Catholic but refused the sacrament of confirmation (where you receive the Holy Spirit and commit to Christian life) at fourteen. My mom told me it was one of the saddest days of her life. Now that I’m entering the second half of life, I understand why this saddened her. She knew: life is difficult and faith is useful in helping a person hang on when the going gets rough. For many, faith – complete, blind trust (in religion, in ghosts, UFOs, or simply that a loved one will come home at the end of the day) is the only way we can access hope in hopeless situations.

In my teens, I was into “Fate” magazine, Ouija boards, fairies, crystals, Wicca, Tarot cards and divination. Later in life, I explored New Ageism, Buddhism, Sufism, Hinduism, Tantric Shaivism, Gnosticism, the Kabbalah, alchemy, Shamanism, you name it. I’ve met entities and angels while on mushrooms, ayahuasca and DMT, and I’ve also returned to reading the Bible, seeing the old stories with fresh eyes. I love learning about all the world’s different religions and mystical traditions and have always been drawn to the metaphysical and supernatural.

Spirituality – the idea I can be connected to something bigger than myself, a higher power, something cosmic and mysterious – has always fascinated me, but I was never sure that this something bigger was a distinct conscious outside myself, one that’s been called Shiva, Brahma, Yahweh, or Allah, or God.

Then, in my mid-20s, I had my first spiritual experience. It was surprisingly prosaic. At this point in time, I had just left my family home in Singapore to study journalism in London. I was living on my own for the first time, in a 90-square-foot bedsit with no windows and a moldy bathroom with a mice problem. I was poor, grieving the end of a five-year relationship, and weaning myself off a ten-year relationship with psychiatric medication and alcohol (used in combination against the advice of my psychiatrist). I had also just started experiencing chronic pain from two herniated spinal discs which led to a trapped nerve in my neck and right arm. And because I was not sleeping enough and eating too much junk food, I put on weight, had recurring cystic acne and greasy hair. I was miserable on so many levels. My soul was exhausted. One afternoon I had a panic attack while studying. I tried calling friends and family members but for some strange reason couldn’t get through to anyone. I left my bedsit and meandered aimlessly through the city to calm my nerves. On top of the panic, I started to feel an overwhelming sadness, which led to me crying buckets. The funny thing was I didn’t know what I was afraid of or sad about, the feelings were not attached to any cause. I was in so much emotional pain that I just wanted to disappear. I didn’t want to be back in my prison cell of a bedsit, but by the late afternoon, the sky had opened up, releasing gusty winds and a torrential downpour. I did not have an umbrella, so I rushed back home, soaking wet and cold, flopped on my bed and screamed into the pillow. “F*** you!” I said to an unseen entity who up till then, I had never acknowledged. “F*** you for doing this to me!”

As a child, I had gotten on my knees and said rote prayers and even the rosary because my parents told me to, but it was all perfunctory. I might as well have been reciting the words to a wall. I had tried incantations and mantras while seated crossed legged in front of altars with candles and incense but had felt nothing. As much as I willed it, there was no one on the other end of the line. But this time, beaten down, alone and in pain in my bedsit, something shifted. “F** you! Why are you doing this to me?” I said to a god I did not believe in.

“Because.” came the reply.

“Because what?” I yelled silently.

“Because I want to come closer to you. Because I love you.”

And that was it. Connection established. I started communing with God, and He with me.

One honest declaration, one heartfelt remembrance, is worth a thousand petitions. I’ve discovered that a “working” God demands a naked heart. Come as you are. The rituals and creeds are beautiful, but they are for us, not for God. We eat the Eucharist, light the joss sticks, study the medicine wheel, spin the chakras, meditate, go on pilgrimages, drink ayahuasca, all in the hope that there is such a thing as “the eternal life of the soul”. The rituals are not for appeasing God or the spirits. The rituals are here to console us because as creatures created for love, joy, peace and life, knowing that grief, illness, tragedy and death are coming for us is hard to bear. “God, if you are real, why are you doing this to me? Why do these things have to happen? Why do they have to happen to me and those I love?”

I think this is why the story of Jesus is one of the most popular spiritual narratives in history. On the night before his death, Jesus prayed to God in the Garden of Gethsemane. “O my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not what I want but what you want.” “Not what I want but what God wants” – could this be the only way for us mortals to reconcile our desire for an easy life with our awareness of the inevitability of our current or impending losses and deaths?

I once had an experience on ayahuasca where I felt as if I’d gone deaf. For a few moments, I was enveloped in utter silence. I then heard a sound like a single note from a tuning fork. The tone became a word – Jeeeesus. It was loud and clear. It felt like it originated both within and beyond my mind, and my heart became soft. Jesus. I saw myself as Jesus on a cross with blood and water flowing out from the wound on the left side of my torso. My arms were outstretched. This position left my chest and heart completely unprotected. Blood from my spear wound nourished the dry, dusty ground, causing things to grow where it had fallen. Then I saw myself as the dust on the ground. Even as insignificant as dust, I sensed the crucified figure’s concern for me. “Jesus loves dust” came to my mind. Such is the impartiality and completeness of his love. This man was capable of loving anything and everything, even a speck of dust. Even a dust mote felt valued and grateful in his presence. The character of Jesus epitomizes God’s first perfect creation. Jesus was perfect because his desire was the same as God’s—to love everything and everyone without conditions.

For a while after the ayahuasca ceremony, I felt a strong connection to Jesus, but that feeling gradually faded. I reverted to feeling naive, brainwashed, and unprogressive for clinging to an image that, over the course of my adult life, had morphed into a symbol for conservative, unrealistic moral ideals.

At this time, my spiritual practices included elements from different traditions. I used dhikrs, shamanic rituals, Buddhist mantras, and Hindu mudras not because I wholeheartedly believed in their effectiveness, but because I enjoyed the placebo effect I derived from their perceived sacredness. But meditating on the name Jesus created considerable inner turmoil. Every time I tried to stay with that name, my mind fought it. “You’re buying into fast food spirituality, colonial rubbish, fundamentalism, an authoritarian religion. You’re succumbing to the brainwash. You’re a lemming. Jesus is the symbol of the oppressor,” my educated “woke” mind would say. I reflected on my reluctance, and became aware of why contemplating the name of Jesus Christ proved so challenging.

My mind was rejecting Jesus because the idea of sacrificial suffering—physical, emotional, and psychological—is something I want to avoid at all costs. His tortured body and his humiliation compounded by the suffering he saw on the faces of his mother and friends, all this because he healed the sick and proclaimed his divinity without shame. Where’s the fairness in this?

I could not accept the image of Jesus on the cross because of my own inherent aversion to what seemed to me to be unnecessary or unjustified pain and death. If I say “Yes, Jesus existed and his way was a good way” does it mean I’ll have to say yes to suffering myself? “This is my body, which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me”. Does it mean that I too have to feed others with my time and care and attention? Make food for the hungry with my limited mortal resources? Does it mean I have to make the supreme sacrifice and willingly accept my own death and the death of my loved ones in whatever form it may come, for the greater good, for the cycle of death and rebirth?

For those of us who sacrificed promising careers to care for a dying parent or sick spouse, who shelved our dreams for our children, or volunteered our time to others in need, Jesus’s self-sacrifice may resonate.

The story of Jesus shows us that selflessness is possible, despite our weaknesses, our limited lifespans, and our natural instincts which compel us to protect ourselves and guard our own interests. This man (or fictional character, whichever way you see it), through his life and death, demonstrates the challenging yet rewarding task of holding fast to love amidst life’s storms. He shows us how to stay attuned to love’s frequency, which includes suffering and death. He shows us – we’re designed to give our lives away.

“Just how many Jesuses have I sent you already?” said a voice in my head while I was journeying with psilocybin. “Remember everyone who has supported you, from family and friends to the people who enable your work and daily communications, even those you’ve only briefly met. Don’t you see me? I am still here. I am everywhere. I pour my being—body, mind, and spirit—into your life daily, through the people who love and uphold you, enabling you to flourish. Don’t you feel me? I’m right here. I’m everyone who chooses love. Every time you choose love, especially difficult love, over self-preservation, you are Jesus.” I was told that Jesus, and others who lived like him, with love as their compass, represent the antithesis of the oblivion of consciousness. “If you are tired of the void, of the nothing, come to me, return to my sacred heart, and you will find comfort and safety again”, I hear.

Abiding in Christ consciousness means embracing everyone and everything with love, including those we’ve lost, and those who got left behind, remembering them with gratitude and compassion. In the spirit of Christ, we consider others, remember them, and wish them well—not only those we love, but also those whose faces we see in our minds for unknown reasons, the deceased, and those in in peril across the world. We extend compassion to as many people, animals, places, and things as we possibly can. Even when physical expressions of love are impossible because of distance or other limitations, we can still love through the act of remembrance. Remember and send good will to as many as you can. This is how we pray with honesty.

Cupping my palms together in the gesture of alms-begging, I ask “How do we hold all this suffering?” As my palms meet and press together, a voice, gentle yet firm, echoes in my ears, “Pray. Pray constantly. This is the only way to hold all this suffering, all the suffering of the world, all the suffering of life, all the pain of being human.” Christian writer Emmet Fox claimed that prayer is the only real action in the full sense of the word, because “prayer is the only thing that changes one’s character [and] a change in character, or a change in soul, is a real change.” Author Melody Beattie sees praying as the way we link our soul to the Source. The opposite of the bleak, emptiness of non-existence is the profound connection to all things, a joining of minds, hearts, and spirits in prayer. If hell is where we are isolated from everything, then perhaps heaven is where we are one with all. I imagine this was how the man named Jesus was resurrected to become Christ. In the prime of his life, he willingly surrendered to death, to becoming nothing, but broke through the darkness and returned because he remembered everyone and everything.

One of my early ayahuasca ceremonies had felt like a trip to Disneyland. I was dancing and communing with half a dozen ancient spirit helpers wearing ornate headdresses and colorful attire. But at my last ceremony a few weeks ago, I saw nothing. “Where are you, guides, helpers and ancestors? Why can’t I see you?” I asked them. “You can’t see us because we are now in your heart and in your bones” came their replies. Perhaps this is what feet-on-the-ground, God-as-man spirituality ought to feel like, eternity found not in temples, shrines or churches, but in the very cells of our bodies put to good use.

There was a time when I demanded proof of God’s existence, and the existence of my own eternal soul – show me miracles, ghosts, give me visions, premonitions, synchronicity, happiness and prosperity – in exchange for my faith. Now I couldn’t care less. Faith is not a feeling, it’s showing up when I don’t want to. I had attempted to end my life when I was 17 because I felt I had lost hope, but today I am so grateful I did not succeed. Faith is staying here on earth, in my body, no matter how distressing or inconvenient it gets. “Stay, breathe, get as comfortable as you can. And start giving it away,” –– that’s my mantra du jour, a faith that’s practical.