Keeping the faith is not always easy. It is also not a choice.
“Why should I bother being enlightened in a world of unenlightened people?” I asked my therapist almost 20 years ago.
I was fatigued by the process of working on my own demons and I had started to believe I was already operating at a level higher than most of the normal slobs I regularly encountered. This was to be my reasoned exit from treatment and a reentry into the world of the blissfully ignorant.
“Do you think you have a choice?” she responded.
With that simple question she blew away my plans for a peacefully pointless existence amongst the unexamined masses.
There were things I could never un-learn or un-experience. I had felt the buoyancy of knowing that the power to change the world was within me. I just had to change myself. I had seen the light shining brightly on my responsibly to change my reactions to life. I had developed faith in a process of applying principled living to everyday life.
Principled living had produced miracles; sobriety, relationships, career advancement, and most importantly, peace of mind.
The faith was there, no matter how diminished, and it had forever ruined my ability to lead a truly unenlightened life.
Gerle Men 