Hard to Believe

   Face of Jesus by Rembrandt

It's hard to believe. Life is softer without it. Nothing makes the mind duller than believing.

I wish when I was 8 years old someone had said, 'Kid, there's no law requiring you to believe in anything.'

I don't believe in my heartbeat, yet I live. I don't believe in God, yet I experience God. It is through tasting God, not believing in God, that one finds ecstasy. That is why the Psalmist sang, 'Taste and see that the Lord is good!' (Psalm 34:8)

With the courage to abandon belief, I can listen to others instead of hearing my own mind. Wonder fills the vacuum where believing used to be. Through sacred unbelief, I become a pure observer. I see into the borderless fractals of a fern, and open my radiant emptiness to the stars. I love, because I have no doctrine about love.

A ladybug travels to the tip of a grass blade and stares into the abyss. She is so present that she is filled with God. I too am filled with God when I am present without belief. I and this ladybug are equally filled with God.

This is what happens when we give up believing: we see everything equally filled with divine Presence. It is not belief, but the abandonment of belief, that invites God into our eyes, our ears, our nostrils, our tongues, our flesh.

The other day I met Jesus in the village of unbelievers. They were all dancing. I said, 'Can you teach me this dance?'

Jesus answered, 'If you want to dance, don't believe in me. Become who I Am.'

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