On faith: There have been times in my life, and I do admit this with some reservation, that I have held out my hand and hoped and prayed. Nine times out of ten the hopes and prayers have simply led to the worst possible scenario. In other words what I had prayed for did not come through. But then there is that one time when by some chance or luck or fluke of nature, or God or whoever you wish to call it, has been kind to me. It is like a gamblers disease, when you are given intermittent rewards and you start to believe that this reward was given to you because you are special and worthwhile. In reality nature does not care one bit about you, it divides its rewards randomly and purposefully, based on perhaps some global principle. My experience of faith is as follows: If you want to believe in something bad enough, like the child in the Rocking horse winner, you will get your wish and dream to come true. Now this does not mean that your wish came true from some other reality outside of yourself. Rather, the wanting and needing itself determined by the intensity and force of your own will allowed you to bend reality for a moment. As soon as this happens human beings go in this denial phase, it couldn’t have been me, little pathetic me who only wished and hoped. It must have been the great powers that be, like the creator. as if the creator has nothing better to do but sit around and fulfill the demands of his little insignificant subjects day and night. That fulfills and feeds our ego, and the juice of satisfaction starts to flow through our viens and we start to believe that God is looking down on us and smiling. Maybe he is on our side, and maybe just maybe I have His approvel. This need for approvel is so strong that I can live on that one answered prayer for the rest of my life. I can die happy knowing that I am in the good books of God as evidenced by that once answered prayer. It also makes me pray for more like a child looking for even more approval and more rewards. I start asking for bigger things and when I don’t get them I realize oh I have to be unselfish and ask for other people, and when they start getting the rewards, Now I start seeing myself as this great Sufi or Guru who has access. Once again the great Juice of satisfaction starts to flow, I can see again that God must be smiling down on me. One day I realized that If I get naughty, then I get Gods attention as well. then he really has to intervene, perhaps even send an angel or two to set me straight. Ofcourse, I will obey his will eventually, but in the mean time couldnt I have some fun. And this gave me a great idea for a story.

More to follow: Later