When the time comes to enter the darkness in which we are naked and helpless and alone; in which

we see the insufficiency of our greatest strength and the hollowness of our strongest virtues; in which we have nothing of our own to rely on, and nothing in our nature to support us, and nothing in the world to guide us or give us light -- then we find out if we live by faith.

This is a description of result that is all too easily taken for method. In method, you don't think about being helpless naked and alone. Those are feelings that arise, yes, but you relate to them in practice as feelings, not facts. That is, you feel them in your body, emotions and stories, but you don't 't believe them. They are experiences, phantoms arising like rainbows or echoes. In practice, i.e., method, you open to those feelings as feelings, not with the story "this is what I am doing." you don't make a fact out of your experience.

In the same way, the feelings of insufficiency and hollowness are feelings, not facts. To make them into facts is to construct a self. Any sense of being something takes you out of the immediate experience, so method or practice here means letting go of the stories you construct about th experience as it arises, I.e., you just keep letting go, holding on to nothing. Here you are assailed by every concievable demon, and more than few that you never conceived or imagined. Okay, that is how it is. Just don't construct a story.

Descriptions such as these seem to be helpful. Perhaps they are to some. But most people use them to construct a story of what they are doing, and that is death.

Don't think about faith. Just keep opening and letting go. That is the practice of faith, yes, but in the moment, faith is the last thing in your mind.

And don't pat yourself on the back for living by faith, either. That is just another story. If you feel any sense of accomplishment or success, that means you have failed.

It's better for me not to say anything further, because you and I will just make it into a story and that is not helpful.

Go to where thinking stops, not because you feel you know, because that is just belief. Go to where thinking stops because what you feel os so intense you can't think. That's method.

Forget about results..they take care of themselves.