Guides to life

Having faith

Today, I want to talk to you about having faith. Of course, i can’t actually “talk” to you about it in the normal sense. But I do hope it will generate some thoughts in you and maybe connect us in a way as though we’ve just had a conversation, just because you have read my post.

I have been wanting to verbalise my thoughts on faith for a while. In an attempt to show my wisdom or ignorance on this topic (you be the judge), let’s set the background a bit.

I have been learning tai ji for the past 10 years, without actually learning tai ji. I couldn’t understand why I can’t do the things I’m supposed to do. i couldn’t understand why I can’t learn the things I’m suppose to learn. I couldn’t understand why has it taken me so long to find out that I haven’t learnt anything!

Ok, to put things into perspective, I did learn something. I’ve learnt the movements associated with tai ji. You can instantly recognise someone doing tai ji by their slow movements in the park. I have learnt how to show those movements with reasonable proficiency which could pass as someone who knows a thing or two about tai ji to the untrained eye. They might see some grace in what I do, maybe even feel the softness and the calmness in the choreography.

To me, those are superficial, because I know I haven’t learnt the real thing yet. I can theorise the principles associated with tai ji. I can relate the philosophy into my everyday life, although I can’t apply it when I can, which goes back to my understanding of tai ji, which is not strong enough to apply in the everyday world.

To be fair, I have made some decisions in life based on the teachings of tai ji. So to say i can’t apply the principles is not entirely true. But to be able to say I understand tai ji, I’ll need to be able to apply it on a daily basis.

So what has all these got to do with having faith?

Some months ago, i started a private lesson in tai ji. There were plenty of doubts as you can see in this post. The top of the list of questions is “am I the worthy student”. After several months, I still doubt myself, more often than expected, which also has the side effect of reducing how long and how hard I’m willing to train.

I’m not conceding that this is an unsolvable problem. In fact, this is not a problem to the world at large! There are plenty more problems that need solving immediately. But what do we normally do when a problem is unsolvable? What do we normally do when we are in despair? The common approach is to call out for God, to say your prayers, to ask for miracles.

It is this call that I want to talk about today.

I believe we have been calling for the wrong things. Regardless of your religion, we normally call for what we cannot achieve. And by calling for that, it’s telling the whole world (and beyond) that you can’t achieve what you want to achieve. Somehow, by calling this way, you are conceding you need out-of-this-world powers to help you achieve what you need to achieve.

I believe this is a self-prophecy. By telling the whole world that you can’t do it, what you’re going to get is just an echo of “you can’t do it”, which will in turn become the loudest broadcast to yourself to remind you that you can’t do it. That’s just going against what we are actually calling out in the first place!

I believe the call should be a call out to the world that I am going to have faith in myself. A call out to the world that I can actually solve the problem. A call out to the world that the solution that’s presented to myself is for myself alone. And if that solution is not the solution I was expecting, maybe it’s a solution to the “real” question that I am actually asking!

What I’m trying to say (in a roundabout way!) is that whatever you need is already in you. You just need to have faith in yourself. Having faith will immediately attract the tools you need for your solution. Instead of calling for the whole world to gang up on you, to remind you that you can’t do it, you will have the whole world watching and urging you to succeed!

© 2008 shang lee . com.