Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Whoever was responsible for the idea of dividing self into lower and higher parts committed a serious crime against humanity. This division has given rise to the notion that the lower (ego and immature) self must be overcome while the higher (unitive and whole) self must be sought as the goal of human realization. Out of ignorance, I too clung to this notion because I believed it was this higher self that would be united with God for all eternity. It took a long time before my experiences led me to doubt this conviction and, at the same time, let in the possibility that this was not the whole truth and that there was still further to go.
If life is a path, we are barefoot and we each scatter before us the contents of two bags hanging from our shoulders. From the first bag -- sharp nails of worry, fear, regret and doubt, or from the second bag -- rose petals of hope, joy, friendship and confidence. If life is a path...we are the masters of that path.
Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man’s onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason.
~ Albert Pike, 1809-1891 ~
Over God's Throne:
LIFE minus FEAR minus DOUBT = INFINITE OPPORTUNITY
The absurd is a shadow cast over everything we do and even if we try to live life as if it has meaning as if there are reasons for doing things the absurd will linger in the back of our minds as a nagging doubt that perhaps there is no point.
All that the posture of skepticism accomplishes is to freeze the ego in an ignorantist poverty that never stretches or diversifies its resources of imagination or understanding. Any uncultured cretin can close his eyes and try to reduce the issues down to linear simplisms and say, "I am doubting, I am proving my magisterial or sovereign control over my own mind." Doubt is a useful and significant test of one's critical powers, but by itself it bears little if any significant cultural charge of enlightenment or satori; indeed it is the very opposite kind of thing.
In spite of the ancient roots of skepticism--all the way back to the radical Sextus Empiricus and beyond, to Parmenides and Zeno--"doubt" remains a constantly miscomprehended action and posture. Doubt is a state of the suspension of both belief and disbelief: many people assume that thinking has only two positions, positive and negative, and if you doubt something you are disputing its validity or positing the contradictory position. This is disputation, not doubt. Doubt per se questions the form or content of what has been asserted but it itself is a freeform state of wondering what the general parameters of the issue are and how it most rationally ought to be framed. Such particulars as most people are familiar with--position A or not-A, conservative or liberal, Christian or atheist, etc.--are never authoritative or exhaustive alternatives for a truly thinking and creative or radical mind (determined to go for fundamental principles, not their peripheral consequences or specific applications). They are "stock fallacies" or forced choices.
Doubt everything. Find your own light.
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
Doubt.
In the spiritual search doubt is beneficial, a closed mind is not. Doubt used wisely assists enlightenment; a closed mind assists ignorance.
from The "Quo Vadis?" File.
Buddhism took what I thought were the truly worthwhile things about the hardcore punk movement to their logical conclusion. The hardcores questioned society’s values, but never really questioned their own. The hardcores knew the straight world was fucked, but didn’t seem to have any idea what to do about that. Buddhism was absolutely free of the kind of bullshit I’d found in every religion I’d looked into. The object of Buddhist worship is this world itself, the reality we are living in right now. No God, no angels, no Heaven or Hell, no Savior except yourself.
To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
At last
He is healed of his self-doubt.
Now what is happening ?
He is awakening
To his souls ecstasy-sun.
Each human being can at once be a fighter and forgiver. When self-doubt tortures him, he most play the role of a fighter. And when his own ignorance humiliates him, he must play the role of a forgiver.
There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.
IT COSTS SO much to be a full human being that there are very few who have
the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price. One has to abandon
altogether the search for security and reach out to the risk of living with
both arms open. One has to embrace the world like a lover. One has to accept
pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the
cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to
total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.
When doubt cease mental action on the subject comes to an end, otherwise it is only self-recrimination.
every time you tell someone that you are going to fly and they talk about gravity, that is doubt.
In my religion, there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry, and doubt.
"I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away." -M. K. Gandhi
Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.
Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.
Again the important point to remember is that you should keep asking
yourself questions. Do not make statements. Ask questions to yourself.
The mind hates that.
Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts about reality.
