I rid myself of my doubts by remembering that there is a valid reason for everything that happens.
In the first part of this book I described the ideas and opinions you’ve been exposed to that have probably influenced your life. Many of those ideas, given to you by others, may now be your daily reality, defining for you what is possible and impossible in your life.
I’ve encouraged you to abandon many of those beliefs and make a new agreement with reality that is based instead on what you know is your truth. Once you know your personal truth, your reality will be free of doubt.
You might not think that doubt could have much of an effect on your life. But part of the damage that it creates is that it is so thoroughly etched on to your belief system that it becomes impossible to think any other way. Doubting our potential achievements, we proclaim with certainty just what is and what is not possible. But when doubt is banished, we come to a knowing that leads to creative and inspired solutions far beyond what we believed was possible.
With the attitude of doubt you are unable to successfully tread the path of your sacred quest and realize your sacred self. Be steadfast in recognizing this obstacle to higher awareness. You will need to deliberately and actively work at banishing doubt from your inner world. When it is removed from your thoughts it will disappear from your outer world, and you will find yourself on a most satisfying inner and outer journey.
Andrew Cohen, in his blissfully simple book Enlightenment Is a Secret: Teachings of Liberation, explains one way to get rid of doubt:
Q: I’m not clear on how to get rid of doubt.
A: By throwing it out. If you saw your child playing in the kitchen, noticed she had found a bottle of rat poison and could see she was about to drink it, what would you do?
Q: I would slap it out of her hand.
A: Yes. Because you know how dangerous it is. When you know how dangerous doubt is, you will do the same thing. An ignorant person doesn’t realize how dangerous doubt is, so they allow themselves to indulge in doubt and by doing so they destroy the possibility of truly waking up in this birth.
As you begin banishing doubt from your life with this first key to higher awareness, recall this dialogue and how simple it is.
The presence of doubt can prevent you from awakening. Seven simple words describe why that is true: As you think, so shall you be. We do become what we think about all day long. Don’t allow your thoughts and actions to be dictated by doubt.
Permitting doubt is the same as having a traitor at the helm of your life. Doubt is a traitor because it uses limitations and shortcomings to influence the course of your life. To travel the path of the sacred quest, guided by your higher self, means you must banish doubt.
Can you imagine your reality if you were brought up in an environment free of doubt? How would your life be different if you had never heard, “It can’t be done,” “That’s not possible,” “Accept your limitations”? What if you had been encouraged to exercise the energy of your mind? You might have used that energy to explore your power to influence other beings, things, the weather, your creativity.
That may sound a bit weird to you. But remember, you are assessing the possible and the impossible with doubts that automatically creep in when anyone suggests something you believe to be outlandish or absurd. If you had been fortunate enough to be raised without doubt you would possess an incredible inner sense of your magnificence.
Never would you utter sentences that reflect doubt, such as: “I’m not talented enough,” “It can’t be done, get real,” and “Don’t you know there are limits to everything?” With doubt-free processes you would have had a handle on your divinity much earlier in your life. You would have known your inner capacity to create the world and tackle social evils and ills with no doubts about your ability to create Utopia.
You would know that mankind is fundamentally good. Human shortcomings would not be blamed on inherent inferiority or the devil. Satisfaction of the ego’s demands would be known as the activity that created those shortcomings.
The sacred self knows no doubt. It has no limits and no boundaries. What would our world be like if we had learned this in childhood? It is time to know that we have a personal responsibility to incorporate the sacred quest in our lives and to introduce our children to this aspect of human life.
I offer my own children opportunities to learn about their inner limitlessness in a variety of ways. For example, I invite them outside with me to make clouds. After dinner, we often take a blanket outside to lie down on, and we engage in what has come to be called cloud making.
The children start by creating an inner picture of a form they want to see in the clouds. Then they concentrate their energy on a particular cloud, attempting to influence it to design their inner picture. The neighborhood has gotten used to hearing my kids shout, “I’m making a house, Daddy. Watch my cloud move. I’m moving it with my mind!”
Many of the children in the neighborhood may be thinking, “Those Dyer kids are crazy, actually believing they can make clouds into designs.” But why shouldn’t children learn that they have the same divine intelligence flowing through them that moves the clouds? If it is in everything, which we know is true, then it is in both my children and the clouds. Why not feel so connected to it that they use it to make their own cloud shapes? Our children have very few doubts, and this inner knowing allows them to create the world that they want for themselves.
You do the very same thing every night when you go to sleep. You enter your dreaming experience with a complete absence of doubt. In fact, you are unable to bring doubt into this nightly divine kingdom. It is as if God has a “No Doubts Allowed” sign at the entrance to your dreams.
In your dream state you are able to do anything that your mind can create. You can fly, visit the past, project into the future, converse with the long departed, see those who have died and know that they are there with you, jump over tall trees, breathe underwater, create dozens of characters and perform an endless list of other activities and scenes. For this one-third of your life when you are asleep, you have no doubt—and hence no limitations.
Then, when you wake up, you instantly introduce your constant companion, doubt, back into your waking consciousness. Awake, you believe that those things are not possible for you in your waking moments. The difference is that in your sleep you know what you can do and you do it; in your waking moments, you believe that you can’t, and you don’t.
Take time to really examine carefully the difference between these two opposing attitudes.
WHAT YOU KNOW—WHAT YOU BELIEVE
If you are able to make a clear distinction between that which you know and that which you believe, you will recognize the crucial role doubt plays in your life. The ultimate goal of putting this into practice is to shift all beliefs into knowings.
Here are the main distinctions between that which you believe to be true and that which you know to be true.
These then are the five characteristic differences between that which you believe and that which you know. It is obvious that most of our knowings are in the physical domain and they remain with us as long as we are in our physical bodies. The one characteristic that separates knowings from beliefs is the presence of doubt. Beliefs and doubts go together, while knowings have no doubt whatsoever attached to them.
It is my intention to help you shift many of your old beliefs out of your consciousness. But even more helpful for your quest for your sacred self, I hope you will learn to shift those that remain from mere beliefs to knowings.
Your knowings do not have to be restricted to the physical domain. You can have knowings in the metaphysical domain as well. For instance, you can know your guides—your angels and the loving presence—rather than just believe in their existence. Similarly, all of the qualities of the higher self, which are included in part 3 of this book, are available for you to know rather than merely to believe in.
Nisargadatta Maharaj, in I Am That, describes the process this way: “Mere knowledge is not enough; the knower must be known…. Without the knowledge of the knower there can be no peace.” This is a radical idea—getting to know the knower. It is the subject of the next chapter, but it is helpful for you to be acquainted with this idea now.
There is the physical you who has knowledge, and there is the known. But most significant, there is the knower of the known. This is your true identity.
The peace that Maharaj mentions and the way of the sacred quest become available when you are guided by that true identity, which is the highest part of yourself. To attain that peace and to find the way of the quest involve letting go of old beliefs and shifting to a new dimension—where knowing supplants believing and where faith replaces fear.
FEAR AND DOUBT
There is an old saying (the origins of which I am ignorant), “Fear knocked at the door, and faith answered, and no one was there.” Fear stems from doubts we have about our divinity. The antidote to fear is faith.
I know within that I am not alone, ever. I know that I have divine guidance available to me at all times. This inner knowing makes fear impossible. You too are not alone, and you also have omnipresent guidance accessible at will.
When you truly know that the loving presence is always with you, the possibility of living with both doubt and fear evaporates. It has to have the quality of being a knowing. Then the notion of fear vanishes.
As you begin to rid yourself of fears, you will develop a kind of confidence that reflects your inner awareness of your divine mission. Gabriel Saul Helig, writing in Tenderness Is Strength, describes how fear dissipates when doubt is banished:
We still tremble before the Self like children before the falling dark. Yet once we have dared to make our passage inside the heart, we will find that we have entered into a world in which depth leads on to light, and there is no end to entrance.
Fear is our prison. We must eradicate it by knowing the absurdity of being afraid of anything in this intelligent system we are a part of that has infinite intelligence flowing through everything. Bringing this one simple awareness into consciousness when you are experiencing any fear will help banish both the fear and the doubt.
The things we most commonly fear can be explained away by lengthy research and investigation. Or, fear can be eradicated with one short and simple statement. I have chosen the second way, hoping to stun you with the simplicity of eliminating fear.
These are the six fears that interfere the most with the way of our divine purpose. Know that you possess the inner tools to transform your life, and the fear will be gone before you can utter, “Get rid of it!”
One of those inner tools is to acknowledge to yourself when fear enters your personal picture. When you do notice yourself experiencing fear, please be sure to gently allow it into your awareness. Feel it. Refuse to judge it.
I have a friend who takes the time to have a silent conversation with her fear-thought. She tells me that this alone often causes the fear to dissipate because it is welcomed as an old belief that once was a loved part of herself. Other times, she and the fear-thought agree on a new “job description” for it. Feel the fear and do not let its historical effect continue.
The first time I walked out on stage to speak before several thousand people and had forgotten my notes, I experienced severe feelings of fear. Not acknowledging my fear would have kept it right there on stage with me. But I surrendered to the fear while I reminded myself that I was not alone. I went out on that stage with my fear as my companion. Before even a few minutes had passed, I was absorbed in my mission and my fear was gone.
By acknowledging the fear and then doing whatever you were afraid of anyway, you serve notice on those kinds of self-defeating thoughts. You also take a giant step toward banishing doubt from your life.
Fear and doubt are partners. That which you doubt will cause you to be afraid. That which you fear creates doubts about your ability to deal with it. As I mentioned a few pages earlier, the real antidote to doubt and fear is faith.
Developing faith as a means to eliminate fear from your life is a supremely spiritual lesson. A Course in Miracles beautifully elucidates this point, with the emphasis on knowing:
If you knew Who walks beside you on the way that you have chosen, fear would be impossible.
FAITH AS AN ANTIDOTE TO FEAR AND DOUBT
In most cases, the use of the word “faith” is associated with developing a religious framework for our lives. Faith and worship, in this context, go together. I am not writing about faith that way. I honor whatever your religious persuasion is, but I do not want you to confuse religious beliefs with the actual presence of faith.
Faith is akin to knowing God, which is different than believing in God. Knowing, as I am writing about it, is an experience on a cellular level of personal experience, which has not one iota of doubt attached to it. To me, faith is an inner knowing and capacity to see God in everything, including myself. This kind of faith does not come from books.
The kind of faith I am describing does not need a religious service or a holy book. It comes from having the direct inner experience of God as a part of your higher self. It is demonstrated in countless ways in daily life. You do not necessarily have to see this inner light with your senses, yet the experience is known. You know that what you do not see is there for you.
I’ve seen my wife, Marcelene, demonstrate this inner faith on seven different occasions when she has given birth to our children. Throughout her pregnancies, she talks to me about her faith in God being with her. She knows that bringing a child into the world is more than a physical experience. She knows that it is a holy opportunity that she has been entrusted with.
She has absolutely no doubt about her ability to proceed through all stages of her labor and childbirth without complications, pain or any suffering. This faith literally puts her into a higher state of awareness, and her physical appearance changes. She has left the confines of her body. Through the power of her miraculous concentration on what she is to do, she proceeds unaware of surrounding distractions.
Her inner faith has literally served to banish the doubt about her ability to deliver a baby in a spiritual and pain-free environment. She doesn’t believe that God is there for her, she absolutely knows it. The idea of any doubt being present is ludicrous for her.
I have been in the labor room with my wife while women all around her were out of control with fear and doubt. Marcelene, relying on her faith, is participating in the act of creation as an observer and a faithful participant. In fact, she has taken that same inner knowing, based on faith, to assist other women in having their babies. She accompanies them through the entire process—from the first months of pregnancy through delivery—helping them access their inner selves and reassuring them that if they banish doubt they will have a spiritual childbirth experience. I have yet to see it fail.
She instructs women to ignore all of the negative and doubt-filled sentences they hear from other “experienced” mothers. She helps them learn to go within, become peaceful, meet God and use faith to guide them through their experience. She is now in the process of writing a book about this spiritual approach to childbirth and infant care.
Understand that faith is a decision that you make internally. As your decision becomes a knowing, you will begin to sense the sacred energy that flows through everything in the form of divine intelligence in the universe. It is a mental decision to know that everything is on purpose. Faith then becomes an energy that resides within you at all times.
One evening, as I sat and watched a spectacular sunset on the Gulf of Mexico, I had a stunning realization. This entire planet, with everything on it, must weigh a zillion zillion trillion tons and more, and there is some energy propelling it around the sun giving the illusion that the sun is actually setting. What was really happening as I sat there was that I was setting and moving in orbit around the sun.
I contemplated the enormous amount of energy that is ceaselessly working to move this enormous planet and keep it spinning and staying on course in its yearly excursion. The same energy is moving the sun in a larger orbit and moving the zillions of other celestial bodies in trillions of orbits.
This energy gives the illusion that the earth is standing still, yet we know there is enormous movement. We have faith in that energy. We trust that there will be a sunrise tomorrow morning in the east. We don’t believe in it—we know it and have faith in it.
That same energy is propelling you through your life and is within you at all moments. That same energy allows your lungs to fill with air, your heart to beat and your body to stay together rather than disintegrate. You know it, you have faith in it.
That is the same kind of faith that you must develop about your entire life. You are being guided by that heavenly energy. Start to know it. You don’t have to see it to believe in it, any more than you have to see the wind to know it is there.
This invisible energy that is doing so much is what you want to know. The inner faith becomes a power that was previously hidden from you.
I have seen people walk barefoot as much as forty feet on red-hot glowing coals without blistering. Before they undertake this adventure, they are trained in nothing more than faith. Their faith gives them the ability to concentrate with an intensity that can prevent their feet from blistering.
I have used this kind of faith to swim across a lake in 45-degree water without experiencing any sensation of cold. I type for hours and see poems and chapters emerge, without writer’s block, because I know that I am not alone. The cosmic energy is there within me for my use in fulfilling my personal destiny.
I have witnessed precisely the right people showing up in my life to assist me with whatever I needed when I went to this inner faith and banished all thoughts of doubt. On one occasion, while sitting in a phone booth in New York City, looking up the phone number of someone I hadn’t seen in years, I looked up to see him standing there—an amazing coincidence or a connection to the universal energy that flows through both of us.
I have often had precisely the right book or article show up in the mail when I was stuck at a particular place in my writing. Frequently I have visualized the appearance of a particular writer in my life by concentrating on his or her words, and then “magically” had them appear in my life. Inner faith can produce the people and events that you need; it will work. (However, this is not to imply that obstacles will not surface as well.)
FAITH AND FRUSTRATION
Even after you develop this faith in God and yourself, you will find that there still are obstacles in life. The act of doubt-free thinking and knowing does not mean that riches and abundance automatically flourish. However, as obstacles and struggles appear, you will begin to process them in a totally new way—a way based on faith rather than frustration.
When you are tempted to view obstacles as hindrances, remember that life gives exams. Create a saying to remind yourself of the potential value in the obstacle. Your saying might be, “This restriction has shown up in my life to teach me something. When I get the lesson, I will then see my inner faith manifesting itself in positive ways again. I will bless this occurrence rather than curse it, knowing always that the ways of God will sometimes be mysterious to me.”
Recently my wife and I spent some time in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on a retreat to renew ourselves and our marriage. On the first night there, we saw a menu in the hotel lobby from a health food restaurant and decided to have dinner there. However, there seemed to be a hundred obstacles that kept cropping up as we set out to find the restaurant.
I kept getting lost and ending up back where we started. I’d make a turn that seemed to be the right way and end up back at the hotel. Santa Fe is a city that was laid out in concentric circles, and the street names change arbitrarily from one block to another.
The frustration was mounting after we’d spent over an hour and still hadn’t found the restaurant. I had asked at least ten different people for directions and finally made a phone call to the restaurant for help. All the while, I was also determined to discover what this exam was about.
When we finally arrived, the restaurant was completely filled. As we walked in, a woman from Naples, Florida, named Mary Reinhart entered ahead of us. She was being escorted to the only vacant table, and she turned and said, “Would you like to share this table rather than wait?”
We ate together, and in the course of our conversation she told us about a beautiful spiritual woman named Gangaji who was scheduled to conduct Satsang (a meeting for truth) in Santa Fe beginning the next morning and continuing for the length of our planned visit.
For the next five days, my wife and I attended Satsang along with hundreds of other people. We thought we had come to Santa Fe to be alone.
We came to know Gangaji. She is an enlightened soul who had been on her own course of self-discovery in India and was now traveling the world conducting Satsang, bringing the message of love, peace and personal empowerment. She did not take any money for her work, and she provided us with so much spiritual food.
In a private audience with Gangaji, she told me that her sister had read one of my books and that its message had contributed to bringing them back together. Her sister had chosen to leave when Gangaji had undertaken her own unique spiritual path. In our conversation, I received from Gangaji the missing link I needed to organize and write this book. She talked to me about the idea of freedom as a decision to be made each day and gave me the subtitle of this book. It was her focus on freedom as an absence of self-absorption that guided me to write on this subject.
Our trip to Santa Fe had been planned many months in advance but had been postponed three times because a woman who was due to deliver her baby with Marcelene as her coach was overdue. Now, put this together with all of the information contained in the previous paragraphs and you see a multitude of obstacles and “coincidences.”
The postponement of the trip, getting lost trying to find the restaurant (which turned out to be within walking distance of our hotel), incorrect directions, wrong turns, Mary Reinhart walking in at the precise moment that we did and inviting us to eat with her, Mary asking us if we were in Santa Fe to meet with Gangaji (whom I’d never heard of before), being invited to meet privately with Gangaji because an audience participant recognized me and the story of her reunion with her sister. And then the exact missing piece of organization for this book was handed to me by one of the most spiritual, lovely, kind, on-purpose human beings I have ever encountered. All of these so-called obstacles and coincidences conspired with fate to collaborate in producing the book that you are now reading.
You too have stories like mine that you may not have paid much attention to. I’m encouraging you to try on a new perspective when you are caught up in difficult times.
Detach from exclusive emphasis on your physical surroundings and your own body, and be on the lookout for what fate is conspiring to hand you. With this attitude you will have faith even when those obstacles seem insurmountable or overwhelming.
All the deaths or “accidents” in your life, including your transition back to no-where from now-here, are a part of the divine order. They may not be understood, particularly considering how we are conditioned to view these matters. With faith and without doubt you know what Edna St. Vincent Millay meant when she wrote:
Man has not invented God;
He has developed faith,
To meet a God already there.
Your faith can remain strong in the presence of obstacles. Your frustration that God is not working at the pace you think she should can be replaced with the inner knowing that everything in your life is there to teach you something. Your sacred quest will lead you to the knowing that the enormous energy that moves planets and galaxies, keeping them always on course, is flowing in divine order through you too, and keeping you on course, though your limited vision prevents you from seeing it.
Your faith cleanses your vision. What you then see are perfectly placed obstacles instead of frustrating impediments. The irony is that as you develop this faith and get the lessons, fewer and fewer of these blockades appear in your life.
HOW TO BANISH DOUBT
Below are some specific suggestions for removing doubt from your inner inventory. Keep in mind that doubt not only inhibits your sacred quest but can also be a destructive force in your daily existence.
When there is a profound revelation, in the very recognition that “this is revelation,” you have to become serious about your own life. The instant you recognize that you are seeing the truth as it is, you must realize the implications of what is being revealed to you. If not betrayed even once then your confidence in that revelation can only grow. The stronger the confidence, the deeper will be your wisdom. But if in the face of that revelation you needlessly allow yourself to indulge in doubt, you begin to walk down a precarious road, because by doing so your confidence will be undermined.
These kinds of inner sentiments will help you banish doubt and stop judging the ways of the universe. Keep in mind that your joy is divine—your suffering is divine.
Once there was a poor laborer named Sheikh Mahmoud. One day his employer gave him a clay pot full of ghee (clarified butter) and told him to carry it to the next town. “If you do this,” the employer said, “I will give you two rupees. If you drop the pot, you will have to pay for the ghee.”
Sheikh Mahmoud put the pot on his head and set out along the road. As he was walking, he started to think, “I’m going to get two rupees. What shall I do with them?” In those days, everything was very cheap. For one rupee, you could buy twenty-five chickens. Sheikh Mahmoud said, “That’s it, I’ll buy chickens. They will multiply, and soon I’ll have one hundred chickens, five hundred chickens, one thousand chickens, ten thousand chickens. Then I’ll sell all the chickens and buy goats. I’ll have goats and sheep and a big farm. The goats and sheep will multiply, and when I sell them I’ll buy goods. I’ll become a big merchant. Then I’ll get married and have a house. I’ll go to an office, and I’ll return home for lunch. I’ll have a very good cook to make delicious dishes. But if the cook doesn’t bring the food on time, I’ll get angry and slap his face. After all, I’ll be a big merchant.” As he thought about slapping the cook’s face, he raised his arm. As soon as he did so, the pot of ghee went flying to the ground.
So the ghee did not reach the next town. Mahmoud did not get his two rupees. He did not buy chickens. He did not buy goats and sheep. He did not get married. He did not have a house. He did not go to an office. Nor did he slap anyone. He sat down and put his head in his hands. After a while he returned to his employer and confessed, “Master, I spilled the ghee.”
The employer replied, “How could you do such a stupid thing? You’ve lost my week’s profit!”
“O master,” said Mahmoud, “you lost a week’s profit, but I lost my chickens, my goats, my house, my wife, my office, and my cook!”
Don’t lose what you don’t have simply because you have not learned how to discipline your mind and banish those incessant doubts that you create in your fantasies.
The banishment of doubt from your life forever will put you in touch with a mysterious power that previously had been obscured. I encourage you to let go of the doubt that you were so carefully nurtured on, and let in a new knowing. The famous Native American Sitting Bull described this power in the following words.
Behold, my brothers, the spring has come;
The Earth has received the embraces of the sun
And we shall soon see the results of that love!
Every seed is awakened and so has all animal life.
It is through this mysterious power
that we too have our being.
Notice that Sitting Bull refers to this power as love. That love within all things is also within you. Send doubt out of your consciousness and welcome the knowing that has been the subject of this chapter.
This first key to higher awareness is also spoken of in the Bible (Deut. 30:14):
It is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.
I leave the rest up to you. You have only to banish the doubt and carry it out.