Faith and Doubt

Faith and Doubt

by Diane Linsley

In the book, A Sociable God, philosopher Ken Wilber identifies four

stages of spiritual development. These stages are belief, faith,

experience and adaptation.

Stage One: Belief

Each time you are introduced to a new concept, you choose whether or not to believe it. All learning begins with belief. But it shouldn't end there.

You can think of the stages of spiritual development as a pyramid with four levels. The largest number of people are at the bottom of the pyramid. These people have a set of beliefs, or a map of reality, that tells them how to interpret the world, and they are very attached to the map.

A person at this stage feels like his very existence is threatened if someone questions his beliefs. This is because he has confused the map with who he is. He has not yet experienced himself as the map maker - the one who chooses the beliefs that constitute his map of reality.

Our beliefs shape our lives. When we change our beliefs, our lives change. Can you think of a time when you decided to drop an old belief and pick up a new one? How did your life change?

Stage Two: Faith

What's the difference between belief and faith? Belief is conceptual. Faith is active. Faith is the willingness to experiment on a belief in order to prove whether or not it's true. Not all beliefs hold up under the bright light of experimentation.

The experimental stage of faith involves taking action in the physical world. Whenever you take action, you get some sort of result. This is the feedback that helps you to self-correct. I wrote about this in the article on success.

Here's an example: Maybe you believe that eating fresh fruits and vegetables will make you healthier. This belief doesn't help you unless you actually eat these foods, which is an act of faith.

In some religions, meditation is the experiment. Ken Wilber, who is a Buddhist, says that meditation is the lens that the spiritual seeker uses to look at spiritual matters the way that a scientist uses a microscope to look at physical matter.

Prayer and Bible study are the experiments for Christians. You may believe that the Bible is the word of God, but you actually have to read it if you want to have a personal experience. In the Bible, Jesus taught his disciples how do the experiment of prayer using the Lord's Prayer.

Faith and Doubt

Belief and doubt are opposites, but opposites are actually two ends of the same stick. They come as a pair. Opposites go together and define each other. They are inseparable like the two poles of a magnet. You cannot have joy without pain, up without down, life without death. When you pick up one end of the stick, you also pick up the other end.

Because of the way our bilateral brains operate, doubt arises whenever we choose to believe something. The discomfort of coexisting belief and doubt can motivate us to seek for experience. How do you know that prayer or meditation works unless you actually try it?

Personal experience strengthens your faith. The beliefs that survive the fiery furnace of faith, doubt and experimentation come out refined like pure gold.

In the process of doubting your beliefs and seeking for answers, you develop the ability to see paradoxes and opposites. When you can't see the paradoxes, you are stuck in them. When you finally see them, you transcend them and discover a new perspective that integrates the opposites.

Some people suffer from the misconception that doubt means they don't have faith. This can cause unnecessary anxiety. If they understood that doubt is just part of the process of spiritual development, they might relax. People of faith are always questioning and learning.

One of my favorite books is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Because of her painful childhood, Jane begins to ask questions at a young age. She reads books and thinks deeply. Jane's aunt doesn't approve of questions, which she interprets as rebellion. So she sends Jane away to a boarding school where the pupils are abused by the authorities. Throughout her life, Jane learns to stand up to many people, including the man she loves. Jane lives by internalized principles, not by mindless obedience to those who want to control her. This is a story of faith and courage.

People who are stuck on the level of belief are afraid of doubt. They run away from it every time it arises, so they are unable to work through it and arrive at a higher level of understanding. They are stuck in pre-rational, magical thinking.

Fear may arise with doubt - the ego's fear of being wrong. This can happen when a person is taught that doubt is bad. What's so bad about doubt? Without doubt and experimentation, there would be no modern medicine or science. Doubt is a natural part of the learning process and the development of the rational mind. Doubt causes you to ask questions. When you ask questions, you find answers.

Freedom is an essential part of this process. People who have been traumatized by controlling authority figures have a much harder time moving through these stages.

Stage Three: Experience

Experience alleviates the tension of the faith/doubt polarization. It takes belief out of the realm of theory and into reality. You can now say, "I know this from my own experience," not just "I believe this because someone else said so."

With experience, knowledge replaces faith. The ego's fear is replaced with a feeling of peace, a sense of wholeness, and an increased ability to love yourself and others.

An experience may be a sudden, profound realization. But usually it's less dramatic - like when I realize how much better my life is since I starting praying and reading the Bible daily.

Stage Four: Adaptation

After many experiences, a person eventually goes to the stage of adaptation. He now lives from the higher perspective that was previously only an idea.

The person at this stage doesn't try to force his views on others or control others out of fear. He is able to listen respectfully to other people's perspectives and express his own views rationally and intelligently. He may choose to share his experiences with others so they can see how he arrived at his conclusions.

When you reach this stage, you cannot be intimidated, controlled or manipulated by others because you have your own integrated experiences. You have knowledge, not just belief.