The path to real faith always leads through purgatory. I understand this more and more now. It is impossible to arrive at real faith without first passing through the place where everything you have learned to rely on is stripped away: certainty that you are right, control, guarantees, expectations, familiar ideas about yourself, other people, God, love, and how your life is supposed to unfold. This is why I was so struck by my mentor’s story about the road to the Church of Saint Simon the Tanner in Cairo. To reach it, you literally have to pass through one of the poorest and dirtiest districts of the city, a place where enormous amounts of Cairo’s garbage are brought. Mountains of waste, terrible filth, poverty, children living among all of it, the very bottom of human existence, something we may have seen in documentaries or imagined when hearing about the slums of India or Brazil, but something entirely different when you find yourself physically inside it. Only after passing through this discarded part of the city, through this very real purgatory, does the road begin to climb toward the church, which itself has become a symbol of faith. To me, the metaphor is so precise that it hardly needs explanation: in order to rise toward faith, we first have to pass real tests of life, through all the garbage of the material, physical world and through all the inner garbage we have spent years mistaking for ourselves. You can't be "enlightened" without going through your own darkness... Then how would you know what light is if it never met the rainbow through darkness? Those fears, attachments, resentments, expectations, our demand for guarantees, our attempts to control the future, the stories we have created about ourselves and other people, our constant need for confirmation that we are loved, that we chose correctly, that God hears us, that the path really is ours. All of this is purgatory.

The Church of Saint Simon itself is carved into an enormous rock, almost like a cave, and can hold around two thousand people. There is another incredibly beautiful symbol here: a space associated with the protection of the Virgin Mary, with the feminine archetype, becomes a kind of Womb: stone, natural, immense, sheltering. It is as though faith is preserved inside the Mother herself, inside the mountain, while governments, religions, authorities, and human structures change outside. The history of this place is connected with the Copts, one of the oldest Christian communities in Egypt. According to tradition, during the time of the caliphate they were asked to accept Islam, but the Copts refused because they wanted to preserve the faith they had chosen. The caliph then reminded them of Jesus’ words that if one has faith even as small as a mustard seed, one can tell a mountain to move and it will move. If you truly believe, he told them, then move the mountain. For three days the Coptic Christians prayed, after which the Virgin Mary appeared to them and pointed to Simon the Tanner as the man who could help demonstrate the power of their faith. Simon came to the mountain, made the sign of the cross over it three times, and according to the tradition, three times the mountain trembled and moved. The place where the church later appeared became associated with this story.

For me, it is not even so important whether this story is understood literally. What matters much more is the image itself: the mountain moves. Something that appeared immovable, something that existed long before you and beside which you seem like a tiny human figure, suddenly becomes capable of changing its position. This is where the conversation about real faith begins, because as long as everything unfolds the way I want it to, I hardly need faith at all. When the door opens immediately after I ask, it is very easy to say: “yeah... I trust life!” When someone gives me exactly the answer I wanted to hear, it is easy to believe in love. When a sign appears precisely when I ask for one, it is easy to believe in God. When the path is clear, the next step is obvious, money is available, the body is healthy, loved ones are nearby, relationships are defined, and the future is at least somewhat predictable, we can sincerely consider ourselves people of enormous faith while actually knowing almost nothing about our faith yet... The real test begins when the confirmations disappear.

This is why the Gospel story of Peter, whom Jesus calls to walk toward Him on the water, feels so close to me. Peter walks, and for a while the impossible truly becomes possible, but then he begins looking at the water, the wind, the circumstances, the physical laws, everything telling him “this! cannot! happen!” and he begins to sink. To me, this is one of the most precise metaphors for human consciousness. At some point, external reality places itself between me and what I know inside, and then it begins: what if I was wrong, what if I imagined it, what if this is simply what I want and what if it is my ego that wants it, what if I invented all these signs, what if I confused love with attachment, what if she/he is not the one, what if the path that seemed so obvious is actually leading nowhere? and so on... And when another person is involved, it becomes even more frightening: what if the person I felt so deeply never felt me in the same way? What if something that was sacred to me was merely an episode in someone else’s life? What if I believed in a love that has actually been gone for a long time?

I think almost everyone who begins to listen deeply to themselves eventually reaches this point. Especially when the inner experience begins to differ from what the external world confirms. You feel something before you can explain it, sometimes you know before the facts appear, sometimes you see movement before it has taken form in external reality, and then the mind responds almost inevitably: “What if I am simply losing my mind? What if this is my imagination? What if I see only what I want to see? What if this is not God, intuition, or truth at all, but my ego beautifully disguised?” This is an enormous examination. Can you establish truth within your own heart without relying exclusively on what is happening outside? Yet there is a very important boundary here for me: believing myself does not mean declaring everything I desire to be true. Real faith demands even greater honesty from me, because the more deeply I intend to trust my own heart, the less I can afford to confuse its voice with fear, desire, fantasy, or my need for a particular outcome.

This becomes especially severe in love, because love is one of those areas in which we are capable of building an entire universe out of hope, fear, projection, things left unsaid, and expectation. At one point we may doubt each other, and later we may begin doubting love itself. Sometimes one person begins doubting before the other, sometimes both search for evidence and proof of their own righteousness, sometimes we test love through presence, sometimes through distance, intimacy, or the absence of intimacy. And sometimes life creates a much harsher experiment and simply removes almost everything: conversations, touch, familiar meetings, the possibility of looking into someone’s eyes and checking what is there, the daily confirmation that we matter to another person. The most scary part is that it removes the hope from you... Then it leaves only time. One month... Three... Six... A year... And this is where a question appears that no beautiful philosophy can help us escape: what remains? After a year of silence, what remains? After a year in which the connection could no longer be fed through familiar contact, what remains? When the ability to continuously sustain the story we have about each other disappears, what remains in me, and what remains in the other person?

This is where I now separate very clearly two things I once mixed together. I can examine with complete honesty what remains in me. I do not need another person in order to know my own heart, I do not need their permission to feel what I feel, and I do not need their confirmation in order to acknowledge that my love existed if I know that it did. I can look at it after a year and try to remove everything that may have been feeding it: hope, expectation, fantasy about the future, sexual attraction, drama, fear of loss, the story of “someday,” the desire to be chosen, even the person themselves as much as that is humanly possible, and then look at what remains after all of this has been stripped away. This becomes an incredibly interesting experiment, because if nothing remains after those layers are removed, maybe those layers were what held the entire structure together. But sometimes, after everything has been removed, something incredibly quiet remains.... something that no longer demands, no longer screams, no longer tries to possess, no longer requires daily evidence, and does not even know how the story will end. There is only something very simple: love. My being continues loving without demanding anything. And that knowing belongs to me.

But I can no longer automatically make the next conclusion: “Therefore, another human still loves too.” This is where my territory ends. Faith in my own love does not give me the right to assign feelings to another person, especially when I can also see that the quality of their love may have changed. I can remember what existed between us, remember the intensity, the passion, the almost gravitational force that once seemed to pull us toward each other, and still be honest enough to notice that maybe this force is no longer there in the same way. Maybe love has become quieter. Maybe it has changed its form. Maybe it is no longer strong enough to move anything. Or move at all! And maybe, as painful as this possibility is, it has simply disappeared... I may continue loving, but they may not anymore... 

I can feel the connection, remember what existed between us, know that at one time I saw love in their eyes, and I may even believe that some things do not simply vanish because a year has passed. But belief cannot become an excuse to ignore what I actually see now. If the passion that once held two people in a powerful field has faded, if the urgency has disappeared, if silence no longer feels unbearable, if life has continued and the other person has learned to live without reaching toward you, then this too is information. It does not automatically tell me what they feel, but it asks me to stop relying on an old version of their love as evidence of what exists today.

There is only one way to discover what remains in them: they must eventually enter themselves and answer that question on their own. Without me, without the familiar life around them, without fear of consequences, without obligation, without trying to save anyone, without the desire to be good, without the need to meet anyone else’s expectations, and without clinging to the memory of who they once were beside me. They have to look inward and ask themselves honestly: if everything else is removed, what remains now? Not what remained a year ago. Not what was true at the height of passion. Not what they once promised, felt, feared, or wanted. What remains now? 

Maybe this is exactly why a year of silence can become a much more merciless mirror than a year of relationship. Silence removes the constant reinforcement of the bond and exposes what can survive without being fed. And sometimes the answer is difficult: maybe the love is still there but has changed so much that it no longer has the power it once had. Maybe it has become tenderness, memory, attachment, gratitude, or a quiet affection that no longer asks to become a life. Maybe the passion died while some form of love remained. And maybe the most difficult truth of all is that the love itself has disappeared.

That possibility has to remain sacred too, because otherwise “faith in love” becomes another way of refusing reality. I want to know what is true, even if the truth is that what once existed between two people no longer exists in the same way. And if something real is still there, then it should be able to survive the question rather than require protection from it. It needs to survive the test of faith - path through darkness... path through the garbage district... 

There is always so much noise inside a relationship. We react to each other, argue, reconcile, miss each other, become jealous, touch, fight, feel pleasure when a message arrives and suffer when it does not, create a future, destroy it, and create it again. Inside this enormous amount of energy, it can be incredibly difficult to hear the original signal, while silence gradually takes away everything unnecessary and leaves whatever is capable of existing without constant nourishment. And what remains is certainly not always love. Sometimes it is habit, sometimes resentment, idealization, guilt, or relief. Sometimes it becomes obvious that the story ended much earlier than we dared to admit. But sometimes love remains: very simple, almost stripped of decoration. Then the next and much more difficult question appears: what are you going to do with this truth? Because faith cannot remain a beautiful inner state forever. At some point it requires a step.

This brings me back to a very important part of my mentor’s lecture: the intensity of the tests gradually increases, while the ability to believe is first trained through seemingly insignificant things. Can you hear yourself in a tiny choice: which dress to wear today, red or white, whether to put on perfume, whether to drink tea or coffee, whether to say this word or another? Of course, life will not collapse because of the color of a dress, and the point has nothing to do with the dress itself. We are training the ability to distinguish our own “yes” from our own “no.” If I clearly hear “red” inside and then choose white out of fear, convenience, the desire to please, or simple habit, somewhere inside I record that I do not have to listen to myself. If I know one thing but say another, I teach myself that my own truth can be exchanged for comfort. If I feel “no” but say “yes,” my inner navigation system gradually stops being an authority for me. Then one day a truly enormous choice appears, no longer a dress, coffee, or a single conversation, and suddenly I want my heart to speak loudly and unmistakably even though I have spent years teaching it that its voice is optional. This is why the path of faith begins with crystalline honesty in small things, because someone who repeatedly betrays their own knowing when the stakes are low will find it very difficult to suddenly trust that knowing when their entire life is at stake.

This is where the conversation about faith stops being spiritual aesthetics, because it is very easy to say, “I trust God, I trust life, I follow my heart,” while the stakes remain low. Something entirely different begins when you may truly lose something significant: your safety, the person you love, your family, reputation, familiar life, financial stability, belonging, position, the possibility of remaining inside an understandable world, or even the possibility of not ending up alone. Then a person has to ask how deeply they actually believe what they call their truth.

At the same time, real faith does not promise me that what my ego wants will happen. This distinction is fundamental for me. “I believe” does not mean, “God is obligated to give me the outcome I want.” “I believe in love” does not mean, “This person will inevitably choose me.” “I believe in my path” does not mean, “This path will be safe, understandable, and socially approved.” Faith is much more frightening because it says: “I follow the truth even though I do not know in advance where it will lead me.” This is almost impossible to fake, because then I must be willing to discover what I desperately did not want to know, including the truth about love. The deepest act of faith in love is not endlessly insisting, “It exists,” but being willing to ask, “What remains after everything?” and allowing each person to answer independently. I answer for myself. The other person answers for themselves. There is no predetermined correct answer.

Because if I truly believe in God, then truth has to matter to me more than the outcome I desire. If love is alive, truth will not destroy it. If it has died, faith should not become an artificial life-support system for something that no longer exists. If it has changed, I want to know what it has become. If it exists only in me, I will need the courage to see and accept that. And if, after an enormous space of time and silence, it still exists in both of us, then maybe an entirely different kind of courage will be required, because loving inwardly is one thing and making that truth part of one's actual life is another. That is the water beneath our feet.

This is how I understand the tests of faith today. They are not given so that we can demonstrate spiritual power, and perhaps they are not even primarily about miracles... they reveal our own boundary: up to this point I believed, and here I became afraid. This point is sacred too. There was a very powerful moment in my mentor’s lecture when, after an especially difficult test, she saw how much fear still remained in her despite thousands of hints, signs, examples, and miracles through which life had already shown her again and again, “I am here.” And still, her heart wanted more. There came profound disappointment in herself, a feeling of being small, defenseless, helpless, frightened, ashamed, and hurt: “God, You have already shown me a thousand times that You are here. Why am I afraid again? Why can I still not believe enough?” I find this point incredibly honest, because a spiritual path does not turn someone into a person who one day stops doubting forever. We cross one boundary and discover the next. What demanded enormous faith from me yesterday becomes natural today, and then life raises the stakes and I am standing in front of the water again, asking, “Do You really want me to go there?”

Immediately after this difficult test came a very simple story about keys. They were riding in a taxi when her husband dropped the keys to their hotel. Later they stopped near a fruit stand, and my mentor, still in a state of deep disappointment in her own ability to trust, suddenly decided to make a small act of faith: “I am going to find these keys now. Either they will be lying directly in front of me, or someone will bring them to me.” She stepped onto the road and simply chose to believe. The keys were not on the ground, but she continued walking with the inner knowing that they would appear, that this was possible. About thirty seconds passed, a man approached her, held out the keys and said, “Madam, your key.” That was all. A tiny lesson immediately after an enormous one. Almost as if life were saying, “Look, let’s try again. The stakes there were too high for you, so let’s practice here. Just remember what this feels like.” I love this image because God does not ask us to move mountains every day. Sometimes He simply gives us our keys back so that the body can remember the feeling of trust. Later the stakes rise again, then become smaller again, and this is how the heart is gradually trained: one small “yes,” one small “no,” one honest conversation, one confession, one refusal to betray yourself, one choice, one door, one set of lost keys, until one day there really is a mountain in front of you and you realize that all the previous years were training. Like in the story of Nathanial: "I saw you under the fig tree"... 

I am also beginning to understand more deeply the difference between trust and faith. In Russian, the word for trust, doverie, almost carries within it the movement toward faith — do very. First I say, “I trust You.” I am still watching, observing, learning, noticing signs, sometimes asking for confirmation. Then another point arrives: faith. There are no guarantees anymore, no contract, no promise that everything will end the way I want, no map, sometimes not even a clearly visible next step, and all that remains is: “I go.” In the Hindu tradition there is the mantra Om Namah Shivaya: “God, I surrender myself into Your hands. Be completely within me, guide me, I surrender to You.” We often hear defeat in the word surrender, but this is something entirely different. It is the end of the struggle against truth. I stop bargaining with what I already know, stop demanding guarantees from life before taking the next step, stop dictating to God what the correct answer should be, stop forcing another person to feel what I want them to feel, and at the same time stop forcing myself not to feel what has genuinely remained inside me. I simply say: show me the truth, whatever it is.

This is what the prayer of faith means to me today. Not “give me what I want,” but “do not let me turn away from what is true.” This is exactly why the path to faith always passes through purgatory, because first so much has to burn away: our beautiful spiritual concepts, our ideas about our own special destiny, our need to be right, our scenarios for the future, our attempts to force reality to conform to something we decided about it long ago, and even our ideas about love. After all of that, very little remains: me, God, my heart, another person somewhere on their own path and one question: what remains? What remains in me after everything that happened, after time, distance, loss, disappointment, silence, after I stopped waiting, after I tried to let go, after life continued, after I no longer needed to prove anything to anyone? This is a question I can answer for myself.

And then comes the second question: what remains in you? That answer no longer belongs to me. One of the most mature forms of faith is allowing another person the right to discover it for themselves one day. Not giving them the answer, not putting words into their mouth, not interpreting their silence for them, not reading their soul on their behalf. We can believe in another person deeply enough to allow them to meet their own truth, even if they arrive there much later than we wanted and even if the answer is completely different from what our heart hoped for. Love without freedom gradually becomes a demand, while faith without truth becomes fantasy. I need love, freedom, and truth.

This is where all these roads finally meet: inside that mountain, after purgatory, after fear, after thousands of doubts, after asking for one more sign, after the moment when you are already beginning to sink, after the keys unexpectedly find their way back into your hands. And then you begin to understand that the power of faith is not measured by the absence of doubt. The power of faith reveals itself in our ability to pass through doubt, see it, refuse to run from it, refuse to replace truth with the answer we desire, and return once again to that pure resonance within that we recognize as our own. Again and again, until one day you no longer need proof that your heart exists. You simply hear it.... and you go.