Positive attitude or spiritual transformation? In transformation, or transmutation, you confront the darkness or fear within you, bring the light to it, and then it becomes 'light'. For me, a positive attitude is not something I create to cover my inner feelings of struggle or insecurity. I believe it is best to actually transform the inner feeling so the spiritual light we ingest becomes our deep reality. It is the process of transmutation and turning the darkness into light. Most people create a false self that is then plastered over the inner dark self with all its guilt, hurt, resentment, fears, and desires. Then we relate superficially and materialistically. We become cut off from ourselves and from others, but don't realize it, because everyone else is doing the same thing.
Most people have felt pressure to conform their whole life, and they just want freedom to live from a place of ownership and choice, and find their own voice. True religion, however, entails surrender of the very self most people are struggling to create. Religion and religious practice can also be used as a component of that self-created life, but I would not call this spirituality, or true religion. We do need to exercise our free will, and choose to surrender to His will, and we do this with full ownership and conscious awareness, and we do it because we see His beauty with our own eyes. We know of course, God owns our soul as well as our will--for He created us. And that sits right with me.
Most people want worldly security, and religion or religious community (following the group patterns, learning the methods, acquiring the knowledge, trusting the leaders, socializing, serving) provides that for them. They feel better about themselves and the inner guilt and inadequacy is silenced and successfully suppressed. This is not transformation, however. This is not a new spiritual life. To me, this is just conformity, another way to feel secure by fitting in with a group of people.
I grew up with no religion or spirituality, but ironically it contributed to me staying open-minded about religion and the idea of God. I approached the God question rationally initially, but I also had an open and sensitive heart, so I was able to apprehend His presence in Scripture at age 17.
I realized from that moment on that most people who follow a religion are doing it in a way that actually prevents them from communing with God. They are following the dictates and patterns of a group of people and this gives a sense of security for the ego self, just like any other worldly security. You feel like you fit in and you follow the leader or the group and it becomes another worldly attachment. If you do what is taught, you feel worthy and acceptable (you successfully cover your inner inadequacy and insecurities); if you deviate, you feel guilty and wrong. Problem is, what the group or the leaders tell you is not what Baha'u'llah taught, it's only their interpretation, and it is partial at best. What you end up putting your trust in is a charismatic personality, acquired knowledge, leadership skills. Our trust should be in Baha'u'llah.
Most people only see the truth of Scriptures according to their capacity or through the filter of their personal desires and agendas. When one truly surrenders to God, life changes: there is an experience of being transported; a new life emerges--this is being born again in the Spirit, by the Spirit, and it happens in the Baha'i Faith as well as in Christianity. Of course it is a constant struggle to remain detached and spiritual, and to be transcendent and in communion with God; and as well we must struggle to obey the social and material laws...
some Baha'i Writings:
"We must strive to attain to that condition (spiritual condition in which communion with God becomes possible) by being separated from all things and from the people of the world and by turning to God alone. It will take some effort on the part of man to attain to that condition, but he must work for it, strive for it. We can attain to it by thinking and caring less for material things and more for the spiritual. The further we go from the one, the nearer we are to the other. The choice is ours.
Our spiritual perception, our inward sight must be opened, so that we can see the signs and traces of God's spirit in everything. Everything can reflect to us the light of the Spirit."
--words of 'Abdu'l-Baha reported in Baha'u'llah and the New Era
"It behoveth him who is a wayfarer in the path of God and a wanderer in His way to detach himself from all who are in the heavens and on the earth. He must renounce all save God, that perchance the portals of mercy may be unlocked before his face and the breezes of providence may waft over him. And when he hath inscribed upon his soul that which We have vouchsafed unto him of the quintessence of inner meaning and explanation, he will fathom all the secrets of these allusions, and God shall bestow upon his heart a divine tranquillity and cause him to be of them that are at peace with themselves."
--Baha’u’llah, Gems of Divine Mysteries (Javahiru’l-Asrar) (Haifa, Baha’i World Centre, 2002 edition) Pp. 25-26.
"The world is but a show, vain and empty, a mere nothing, bearing the semblance of reality. Set not your affections upon it. Break not the bond that uniteth you with your Creator, and be not of those that have erred and strayed from His ways. Verily I say, the world is like the vapor in a desert, which the thirsty dreameth to be water and striveth after it with all his might, until when he cometh unto it, he findeth it to be mere illusion. It may, moreover, be likened unto the lifeless image of the beloved whom the lover hath sought and found, in the end, after long search and to his utmost regret, to be such as cannot 'fatten nor appease his hunger.'"
--Baha'u'llah, Gleanings p. 328
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