The Power of Belief
I know how they say that it is never too late to go back to school. Or never too late to build a career. Or never too late to make something out of life. But I do wonder that for those who get the opportunity to pursue their dreams a little late in life as compared to others, how different their journey turns out to be? Particularly, considering the fact that the belief-shattering, mandatory midlife crisis that everyone deals with falls right in the middle of the hustle for them.
To have belief is an amazing gift, the pursuit of which is a beautiful journey. But only up until the time it evaporates into thin air like it never existed.
Beliefs change at a rapid pace. Be it in a thing or a person. We say things that we don’t do and do things we dont say. We fall in love and then fall out of it. Brave men willing to sacrifice their lives one day for their country come back to their sick mothers the next believing it to be their higher duty. Housewives becoming extremely career oriented. Hardcore, self-focused businessmen turning to philanthropy are all proof of the illusivity of beliefs. But sometimes beliefs simply die. Sometimes, as you struggle groping for another belief to grow upon, it just does not come. What happens when belief decides to leave you stranded right when you are at the peak of your hustle?
Here are the two secrets that might be revealed to you:
1. Belief is nothing but an illusion that comes and goes as you progress through life gaining knowledge, experience and exposure,
2. Ironically, inspite of being a mere illusion, belief is also one of the most powerful things in the world.
A strong belief can make you the most determined and hence unbeatable power on earth. It makes people go beyond their optimum potential, touch the limits of unimaginable creativity and oftentimes bring out the hero in them. The hardships willingly, bravely and happily endured on the way to materialize that belief later on become legendary heroic tales. The scars are flaunted with pride...
But belief also has the power to make you suffer. If it is not materialized, it has the power to put you in extreme agony. If the desired is not achieved, the constant yearning can make life a living hell for you.
However, at the end of the day when redundant beliefs that no longer serve us depart, both situations conclude with the same realization. That belief is temporary and hence an illusion. This realization is a blessing in both cases. In the latter senario, it puts an end to the suffering. Where as in the former, one day it dawns upon the hero that his heroism is just still too small to save the world. That he is extremely insignificant which means that there must be a higher power at play. This is where truely great things very very subtly begin to happen.
In the midst of this void left after losing a belief, first of all, it is very important to remind yourself of the cliche that it is all about the journey and never about the destination. It is about you experiencing struggle, failures and success associated with the pursuit of that belief and eventually hitting the deepest depth of self-awareness and self-actualization. The one who endures the entire journey eventually comes to a point where he realizes that he was never as great as he himself or others perceived him to be. Though this feeling can very quickly and easily be lost to arrogance and ego but otherwise deep inside he awakens to the fact that all that he went through and accomplished could not possibly have been the consequence of his humble efforts. It strangely seems fated as he looks back on the entire journey. Belief begins to seem only a bait to get people where they are in life after which it bids farewell leaving them looking for another belief to fall back on.
A bunch of questions start flooding the mind at this point. Is it wise to have an illusion to fall back on? If belief is an illusion that only depends on personal capacity to perceive things, then what really is the truth and how do you reach it? Is it possible that everything that everybody believes in is in fact an illusion? Does that mean that everything in actual is nothing? And then if it is so then how should it feel to believe in nothing at all? Limiting or liberating? Especially if it is in exchange to the ultimate truth that nothing really matters except the ultimate truth itself.
Dealing with the truth can not possibly be any easy either. It challenges your sanity and puts you in a turmoil. All your dreams and associated hopes are crushed and hence you cease to see meaning in anything. Nothing seems worthy of your efforts. If this continues for a while you might feel like the most cursed person with no aim, no inspiration and no motivation at all. Productivity and growth come to a standstill. The dreams that you once would have killed for shrink into insignificance as your belief in them is shattered. Bigger things come into picture and suddenly all your previous goals seem small and childish. In this phase of life where your whole belief system is shook, it gets hard to stay excited about material things. Not that this is not the most gifted experience. Its just that simultaneously, it is a great challenge to receive this rude wakeup call that your entire life has been a lie and that its time to redirect. So now, the death of previous beliefs triggers the quest for the belief in the strangely fimiliar concept of the non-material. The unseen and spiritual, but ironically, also the one that feels more concrete than anything else.
In the end, no matter which group you belong to, what we need is to know that we are doing just fine.
The one who is gifted with the blissful state of pursuing an illusion or the one who realizes and submits to the uncomfortable and challenging truth, both are in pursuit of the same thing. And both are doing just fine…
