A childlike Trust

What are the conditions in which there is a descent of faith ?

The most important condition is an almost childlike trust, the candid trust of a child who is sure that it will come, who doesn't even ask himself about it; when he needs something he is sure that it is going to come. Well, it is this, this kind of trust - this indeed is the most important condition.

To aspire is indispensable. But some people aspire with such a conflict inside them between faith and abasensce of faith, trust and distrust, between the optimism which is sure of victory and a pessimism which asks itself when the catastrophe will come. Now if this is in the being, you may aspire but you don't get anything. And you say, " I aspired but didn't get anything." It is because you demolish your aspiration all the time by your lack of confidence.

........."What I need will be given to me; if I pray I shall have and answer; if I am in a difficulty and ask for help, the help will come- and not only will it come but it will manage everything." If the trust is there, spontaneous, candid, unquestionning, it works better than anything else, and the results are marvellous. It is with the contradictions and doutbts of the mind that one spoils everything, with this kind of notion which comes when one is in difficulties : "Oh, it is impossible ! I shall never manage it. And if it is going to be aggravated, if this condition I am in, which I don't want, is going to grow still worse, if I continue to slide down farther and farthe, if , if, if, if....." like that, and one builds a wall between oneself and the force one wants to receive. The psychic beign has this trust, has it woderfully, without a shadow, without an argument without a contradiction. And when it is like that, there is not a prayer which does not get and answer, no aspiration which is not realised.

Certainely a personal effort is needed to preserve one's faith, to let it grow within. Later-much later- one day, looking back, we may see that everything that happened, even what seemed to us the worst, was a Divine Grace to make us advance on the way; and then we become aware that the personal effort too was a grace. But before reaching that point, one has to advance much, to struggle much, sometimes even to suffer a great deal.

To sit down in inert passivity and say, "If I am to have faith I shall have it, the Divine will give it to me", is an attitude of laziness, of unconsciousness and almost of bad-wil.

For the inner flame to burn, one must feed it; one must watcg iver tge fure, throw into it the fuel of all the errors one wants to get rid of, all that delays the progress, all that darkens the path. If one doesn't feed the fire, it smoulders under the ashes of one's unconsciousness and inertia, and then, not years but lives, centuries will pass before one reaches the goal.

One must watch over one's faith as one watches over the birth of something infinitely precious, and protect it very carefully from everything that can impair it.

From the writings of the Mother