I wondered as I listened to the woman converse with her friend, what made “a crisis of faith” an emergency? Thinking did. Thinking can be dangerous because it can open up that can of worms called feelings. Feeling your feelings is not debilitating when it leads to self-understanding. I have come to believe that many people think questioning matters of faith causes it to shrivel up. To think and feel is to practice the art of life.

Shifting her voice out of overdrive, she paraphrased her minister, “doubts about faith should be ‘expelled’ from my mind. He told me I should just not think about these things—just believe—and I will never lose my way, and that God doesn’t want me to feel confused.”

Her minister had told her how God doesn’t want her to feel.

“I immediately felt back on the road,” the woman now said softly. “We ended with a prayer, and he told me I was good to go.”

Her religious grounding was now, apparently, stable again. However, I discerned a cathartic spiritual portal to her self had been sealed shut. I was a witness to someone held captive in an elusive assemblage of convictions reinforced by a leader of a particular opinion.

Confinement became her. All the paperwork and conducted operations of her faith were handed to her. I did not hear an evolving stage of spiritual maturation taking place. She was being steered by a belief configuration she knew next to nothing about, and reading a deeper perspective on the origins and evolution of it threw her into a spin. Her identity—how she defined herself—was being intimidated.

What I perceived as an observer compelled me to pause and examine my own needs, patterns of reactions, fixations, identifications and self-definitions. What comfortable mantles did I still bundle myself up on that could be closing my consciousness? Keeping that question ever in mind is vital for me. I believe we have to get out of ourselves to know ourselves. It takes courage to take hold of your life in your own hands, burn your own inner light, and look fearlessly at the truth of your Truth. Belief systems can be barriers.

There will always be someone in your life telling you what you should or should not feel. You won’t die if you don’t listen.

I stepped out into the unfiltered sunlight. My car awaited. The sky: simply brilliant.

“Doubt is the key to knowledge.”
— Persian Proverb