1
This isn’t actually Day 1. More like 15,476, which is the number of days I have been alive. That doesn’t actually seem like very many. When including hours, it seems a bit more. I have been alive for 371,424 hours, give or take. Still, it seems like billions of hours, surely millions at least. Look at me, already digressing.
This is a log of my attempt to build faith from scratch. To believe in God or Good, whatever you want to call a Higher, Universal Power that believes in me in ways I have yet to believe in myself. It sort of feels like I have been searching for faith my whole life, but it has been a structureless, wandering, confusing search. I’m not sure why now seems like a good time to start with concerted, recorded effort, other than that I want to create something for others to heal, learn, and grow from. I want to use my writing life as a way to help others, and this experiment seems like the best place to start.
It would be negative to say I have had quite a few false starts. A better way to put it is that my faith has been building over time. I have had a couple of deeply, undeniably spiritual experiences, which gave me glimmers of another plane or a different path during deeply dark times. I have read books which have led me to believe that others have faith, therefore I could be willing to consider it, too. All of that and more I hope to cover here.
But my life is not all peaches and grapes or sunshine and rainbows, as they say. I am overdue for some serious healing, well being, and faith. It is absolutely necessary, first and foremost, that I start believing in myself, and this writing is a gesture in that. For some reason, I feel like I cannot do one without the other. Somehow, I just know that I will not believe in myself if I do not start having faith in the Universe, which can be interpreted in many ways.
It can be read simply that I cannot believe in myself or the future without first believing in good or being positive. Perhaps I think I need accompaniment as I search for “success” because I do not want to do it alone, and for BLEEP'’s sake, after centuries of broken, rugged American individualism as a culture and years of trying to do everything by myself, I am okay with that. My primary goal is to help others, but I am not sure I will be strong enough for that, until I believe that I am destined for good things, that I have a talent that requires good use, that it is necessary to serve others to expand myself, that karma and love are real, and that good things belong to me as a real and spiritual being.
By cataloging this journey, I hope to help others who are in a dark place, and hoping to find some light. I like to think of faith as a campfire in a dark forest. Once you see the light, even from very far away, it’s hard to resist moving closer to it, even if it takes you a very long time in the dark. And while it’s possible to avoid it and stay in the shadows, it’s far more interesting, rewarding, and heartwarming if you draw closer to the fire.