We often hear about faith in the modern world. You have to have faith in yourself. Great. What does this possibly mean? Small story.
I was recently in a church in Poland, in Warsaw, and I was sitting in a pew, and a man sat down beside me and began to cry out in Polish, where is God? Where is God? Is God in the floor? Is God in the lamps? Is God in the items and the beautiful things that are displayed on the walls?
Is God in the icons? It was really a very stunning question in a sense because he had lost his faith and he was a broken individual and I tried to say to him, sir, your faith lies within. You have to trust yourself. But he began to weep, and he wept. And I felt truly sorry because I ultimately have broken life rather simplistically, truly down into these three questions that I often talk about.
Why am I here? What is my mission in life? And what happens when I leave here? What happens when I die? But in all of this, you do have to have faith.
You have to have faith in yourself and it is true that we live in a society that is trying to destroy our faith to a certain extent because everything now has become external. Be it may other people, the Internet which shows us the richest and the most beautiful and the most intelligent human beings on a daily basis, or perhaps the success stories we often hear about and then there’s just the little humble me. So how can I have faith in me ultimately so I don’t sit in a church when I’m 60 years old and I scream out, where is God? Well, I think the very first thing that I must do is I must believe that I’m here for a reason. I’ve been given me to do something with me because I am unique.
There is no one like me. There never has been, and there never will be. But being a raw, unpolished diamond means very little even to myself for that matter. I just must keep this belief that I’m somehow unique. I’m somehow special.
And the secret is the secret is the secret is is to do this without vanity because there are another 8,000,000,000 unique unpolished people just like me. Just like me. And most will never be polished for that matter. Most will not. But given that I believe in me, I can take a grinding stone, and I can start to polish away at my being.
I can learn somehow how to have faith, faith in something, faith in God, faith in me, faith in my future, faith in my family. I learned to find faith. And with this faith, I slowly begin to develop the beautiful being that I am supposed to be and all of us know this. This is nothing unique at all. I know that the challenge is me and at some point, you begin to realize that many, many, maybe most human beings want to live in the external world.
They want to develop lots of money. They want to find the most beautiful girlfriend, perhaps not that clever but beautiful, and we want all these external things. But they don’t bring me happiness, so I realized, wow, wait a moment. I must now revert back to me. Why am I here?
I must know that. And I think most people ultimately that are thoughtful find that. Then the next challenge when it comes to faith, what’s my mission? Well, come on. How in God’s name do I possibly know?
Well, you won’t. You won’t know at the beginning. But, Ralph Waldo Emerson, I’m gonna get my notebook, and I’m slowly going to begin to write to me, to write to myself. Leon, how are you doing? What’s going on?
What are you feeling? And I’m going to show this notebook to no one. It’s my private world. And with my private world, I can be honest with myself. And, ultimately, though it may take a lot of time, it took me a lot of time, I will ultimately find my true mission.
Why am I here and what am I gonna do with this life? And then we come to the last question. What happens when I leave here? Now, I have a religion and a private belief in God, but I don’t share this because I really feel that this is a solitary path. I must come to this realization myself.
And, yes, people wanna help me, people want to encourage me, but, ultimately, once again, the choice is mine. Where do I go when I leave here? And there are many options. I can be a Jew. I can be a Christian.
I can be a Muslim. I can be a Taoist. I can be a member of the Baha’i faith, and it goes on. Or I can say there’s nothing. I’m just dead when I die.
But this, I think, in all probability is not real. Pascal’s wager. Why not believe in God? Why not? So then given that I attempt to answer these three questions, find my faith, I will not be sitting in a church weeping, screaming at 60 years old, where is god?
Because I will know, like all the transcendentalists in the 19th century, ultimately found out God resides within. I am a little piece of God connected to the universe, connected to infinity. And with this powerful gift, powerful realization in mind, I can go forward and develop a powerful life and contribute to society which is my job. This is why I make money. This is why I create a family.
This is why I help my fellow human beings because we are all communal people. Right? It’s all about faith. Faith in me, faith in society, and faith in where we are going. And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary, certainly, as I develop my faith in my life, and critical thinking is great. It brings me the kind of peace that I ultimately need to develop a powerful life. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.