The Holy Unknown

I reflect, in the silence, on all the distant turmoil in my home time—and in my own ‘distant’ mind. I can’t help raising a challenge, “Your description of the Unknown sounds plausible and wonderful, O. I trust what you are saying. I know you don’t lie. [Your] third and sixth centuries are clearly better places than my own age. But in that world right now—in the Great Storm—terrible things are happening, befalling many people, nations, the environment, and all of civilization. My question is how can humans be expected to trust the Unknown in the midst of unspeakable horrors and violence?”

You answer calmly, “We indeed empathize with your plight. However, you cannot blame the Holy Unknown for that. Humanity has created the problems for itself. The Unknown does not create horrors. You do! Your ‘civilization’ has always been violent.”

“OK. True,” I allow. “But, in light of this, how can we ever come to ‘trust the Unknown’? I seem to be back to my original doubt: What’s to trust? When awful things are happening, how can we be comfortable with an invisible force, associated with the future and ‘destiny’, that keeps delivering terrible things?”

 You reply, “It is your lack of trust that creates the future you experience; it creates separation and cuts you off from the goodness of universal freedom. It is indeed a terrible, vicious cycle you live in. From our perspective, the answer is easy: Accept the deeper reality of what is—not the surface one you believe to exist. Go into your inner sensation and make faith—generate trust in what lives deep within you, within which you live and have your being.”

Again I challenge, “That sounds very much like an old, standard, religious platitude to me. They always say, ‘just believe in … whatever. Fill in the blank. … and you will be saved!”

You retort, “We do not believe, in order to be saved. That is expressly not what I’m saying. We accept and trust the Holy Unknown because we know it to be true—within our own being. It is not a concept in the outer world, in the words of preachers or of dictators or of decomposing dogmas. We do not take a ‘belief’ into our minds and substitute it for what we do not know. Faith is not that!”

“But how,” I ask, “is that really different from what humans are doing? You say ‘accept’. Isn’t belief just another form of acceptance?”

“Belief is a mental and emotional construct. It moves you away from inner knowing, not toward it. Strong belief inevitably turns into rigid political and religious systems through lack of true inner trust; belief does not link you to your essence. Instead, it holds your heart at bay and manipulates you into a governance not your own. ‘Belief systems’ are only proclamations, delivered from external authorities—with mass individual acquiescence—ending in debilitating uncertainty. There is no soul in them. The soul is within you! It is that Life force which permeates your being. Look deeply into what imbues your nature to find the acceptance I speak of.

“I don’t know, O. I’m still not sure your words can convince my readers that trusting the Unknown is any different from believing in an invisible, silent God who rarely, if ever, answers prayers.”

You say in conclusion, “The only difference is the essence you choose and accept—in other words, that you ‘take into’ yourself; that is what ‘acceptance’ means. The distinction lies in the conscious awareness of what you discover within. It constitutes the gulf between outer belief and inner faith. We are here only to say to you that the inner world of the soul is real and that you can remember it when you are ready. That is the difference you seek to understand.”

© 2018 Robert Lee Potter