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Tag: faith and God

Godliness lonliness

While checking out from a recent hotel stay, the receptionist, a man in his 50s, suddenly asked if I believed in God and in miracles.

Why would he ask me such a thing out of the blue? I really have no clue.

He told me, that two decades ago, he had to go to his hometown, a small village in India.

Due to transportation delays, he only managed to reach at 3 am, and was dropped off in the middle of nowhere, and it was dark, raining and potentially dangerous.

With an infant in his arms, and his wife in tow, he prayed for a miracle. In 5 minutes, he said a man appeared seemingly from nowhere. He managed to find an auto rickshaw for them, negotiated a decent rate, and even rode with them all the way to their final destination.

The receptionist then said, that as soon as they reached their home safe and sound, and stepped out of the auto rickshaw, within seconds, that helpful man was nowhere to be seen. Poof. Gone. He was convinced that man could have been none other than God. What do you think?

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Upstairs

We often have a lot of faith in the man/woman upstairs. Not literally, but the one supposed to be in the heavens. This is good of course. Hardly anything really happens solely because of our efforts. We’re so dependent on other people and things for getting our work done. However, do we take this faith too far, and could it be misplaced?

It’s not uncommon to hear “It’s all in the hands of ‘uparwala’.” (which in Hindi refers to God as the man upstairs).

A new age pharmacy start-up called PharmEasy in India took on this aspect with a catchy advertisement. When an old couple are sitting at home bemoaning their health, and utter “It’s all in the hands of the man upstairs”, momentarily the ceiling caves in with a man sitting in his bathtub and holding his phone with the PharmEasy app. He says, “Why leave it to the man upstairs, when you’ve got the PharmEasy app?!”

People often tend to put off health related concerns and leave it to God. Not just health, but many other aspects too – “I am like this only.” Even when they have the means and opportunity to eat well, sleep well, study well, work well, exercise well and so on. We may not be able to predict the future, but we can certainly prepare for it.

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Why faith needn’t be about God

When someone is going through a tough time, we tell them “Have faith. All will be well.”

An atheist will consider this to be nonsensical. “There is no God, and therefore I have no faith in Him/Her.”

However, can we re-purpose this faith?

Deep inside us, there is a life force, a spark of consciousness. A spark that differentiates us, from the mere amalgamation of flesh, blood and bone that corpses are. This spark, according to the ancients, is the very essence of life and creation itself. To those who concur, it is also known as God.

If this spark aka Brahman, is the source of all creation, then surely this spark can also create any of the mundane things we run after – wealth, a promotion, a job, a family, a better life? This is also the crux of ‘creative visualisation’ programs.

Our mind currently thinks that everything we want can only be achieved by the body. But this is far from the truth. If this spark is within us, then all we need is to have faith in is in ourselves – the true us, not limited by our bodies.

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