We go through life experiencing various levels of cognitive/spiritual awareness from the humdrum repetition of our daily activities to the so-called “ah-ha” moment when some profound insight breaks upon us in a wave of awareness, understanding or the deeper insight of sharp pain, physical or emotional.
So, we operate at these different levels of awareness ranging from the surface level to a deeper level through to an occasional profound level of understanding cognitively spiritually and emotionally. The depth of this understanding varies from person to person as well as within each of us as we move from situation to situation throughout our adult lives.
Our “faith” and our understanding Of our relationship with our “god entity” is a product of this cognitive awareness. Does our image of God and our faith come at a surface level straight from the Baltimore Catechism and remain at that simplistic point over our lifetimes while at the same time our cognitive awareness in other fields continues to grow commensurate with our level of maturity? Should the understanding of our faith expand at that same exponential level of our human development or remain static and stuck at the level of a child?
There is a difference between a simple and childlike faith and a simplistic faith. A simple faith is one unadorned by obtuse semantic constructs while a simplistic one is unadorned by any intellectual or spiritual discernment.
As our faith develops we naturally look to others for guidance and example. These would be our spiritual leaders and mentors. These men and women may or may not be involved with the institutional practice or the business of religion.
Usually spiritual leaders are not self-proclaimed but rather recognized as such by those around them.
The spiritual mentors I have encountered in my life have universally been men and women of great humility who would feel uncomfortable if you referred to them as paragons of spirituality.
There are others engaged in the practice or business of religion who wear their self anointed title of spiritual master and who proclaim their faith at a very simplistic level for all those who would follow them. Their God sits on his celestial throne in majesty and looks out over his universe as a shepherd looks over his flock of sheep and only the Good Shepherd understands the mystery of existence so we must listen to him totally and without question.
That faith, operatingt at a simplistic level of awareness, gains no spiritual insight from the profound events of life that affect us, especially the pain of death and the joy of birth, events that shape and mold our faith well beyond the surface level of a simplistic undiscerned belief.
Simple faith is not the blind acceptance of sheep following their master through life, but rather one that is engaged fully and is blissfully absorbed by the wonders of creation, a creation that unfolds for us each day of our lives.
Our cognitive and spiritual awareness grows and becomes all-encompassing as we fully embrace our roles in this ever unfolding act of creation seeking the God within us rather than a celestial magician or puppet-master.
Each of us is, by virtue of our birth, both a philosopher and theologian because as a result of that birth we all face certain death.
The understanding of immortality we seek could be a Chimera always out of our grasp or could, on the other hand, be found in the richness of the present moment, alive for us as we journey through life, and affirmed at that journey’s end as we look back on the sum of those wonderful moments.
We should leave behind our simplistic faith and move to a simple faith that grows out of the profound awareness of the wonders of creation around us this instant.
And finally, we should remember the importance of looking for spiritual leaders and mentors. We must seek them out; they should not be imposed upon us by an institutional clerical bureaucracy. We know them by their lives, not by their affiliation