Faith, Doubt, and Guru-Bhakti

Last updated on: July 29, 2015 at 6:00 am by Ambaa Choate

Faith, Doubt, and Guru-Bhakti 2015-07-26T11:14:56-04:00 Ambaa Choate

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As excited as I was to get a baby blessing from my Guru, as positive and energized and hopeful as it made me feel, it’s difficult to avoid glimmers of fear and doubt.

Just like how “faith healers” operate, if your wish doesn’t come true then you get the blame for it. You doubted. You weren’t totally confident the Guru could do it. Your faith wasn’t strong enough.

I don’t want to have doubts.

I want to have perfect Guru-bhakti (devotion) and trust with all my mind and heart and soul that the Guru’s blessing will come true because he said it, because he gave it and he’s an enlightened soul.

But is it really possible not to have glimmers of fear that maybe it isn’t enough?

I hate myself for my doubt. It swirls in my gut. It raises its hand each time I feel hopeful. I remember stories about people whose faith was so certain and strong and unwavering that they manifested what they wanted. I wonder if I’m doomed to fail because I don’t have that level of faith and certainty and trust.

If I can’t have perfect faith then I have to blend the strands of faith I do have with my own actions and hope that doesn’t destroy the whole point of faith.

I’m dieting, I’m exercising, I’m taking my thyroid medicine. I’m trying to remain hopeful, but it’s so hard in the face of the pain when other people have children. A close friend is about to have her second child. I started trying at around the same time she did with her first. Someone I knew in high school reached out to me a while back to ask about my experiences because she also has PCOS and was about to start trying. Last month she had her baby. No sign of any difficulty. I can’t describe the pain of seeing these dreams come true for other people and not for me.

Brad has so much faith. He’s certain that this is going to happen for us.

I think faith is something that I’m not very good at. Yet I do find that when I’m deep in the pain, I can remember the moment of the Guru speaking those words “I bless you” and hope floods into me and relaxes me. I can feel again that moment of certainty that I had right then that it’s all going to be fine.

http://www.sringeri.net/gallery/downloadables/sri-guro-pahimam

Sometimes I go weeks without thinking about infertility or worrying about it. And then someone else has a baby and the force of my desire overpowers me. The pain becomes so strong that I wonder what else I have in life if I can’t have children. Then I remember that really the only thing I have is my spirituality.

When everything else is gone, that is all we ever have. Even if my dreams of children do come true, that will not end the longing that is a built in part of this world. “Everyone dies alone,” Captain Mal points out on Firefly, but for people of faith we believe that we don’t die alone. We have God within us always.

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