People are always talking about keeping your faith, using your faith, building your faith, etc. So what IS faith? I've been pondering this for the past week and with the help of some of my favorite authors, I came to a new realization about this powerful force so many talk about. I wondered do many of us really understand what faith is and how to use it?

 

Sometimes to understand what something is (like yourself) it's easier to understand what you are NOT first!

 

Two of my favorite authors describe one aspect of misguided faith similarly, they just use different terminology.

 

For example, Eckhart Tolle talks about "disidentification from the mind," the idea that the voice that is constantly talking, thinking, analyzing, commenting, etc in your head is not really who you are it's just the accumulation of all your experiences, beliefs, and perceptions and it's constantly reacting. He says you are the silent presence that is witnessing this bundle of reactionary thoughts, your mind. You are the witness of the mind. He then goes on to say that true freedom starts with being aware that you are what is noticing all of this happening, then you no longer ARE your reactions, you just notice them. That alone is very liberating, and from that place you can actually start to gain control of this beast, your mind that's been making all of your choices.

 

Don Miguel Ruiz similarly describes this phenomena by describing the voice in your head as the "Storyteller." The storyteller is full of "stories" and most of these stories are lies. Lies we tell ourselves about ourself, lies we tell ourselves about others and the world. None of it's true, we don't realize the lies because we believe them to be true. Basically if you believe something, whether it is really true or not doesn't matter to your mind, as long as your mind believes something, then it is true for your mind. And as long as you think you are your mind, well, then the lies are truth for you.

 

So what is faith?

 

Well I'm currently taking a "Universal Kabbalah" class. I've been learning about the mechanics of creation and how an idea becomes manifest in the physical world. The process starts with an idea (the element of fire) and then goes down to the level of thought (the element of air) and then to the level of action (the element of water) and finally becomes manifest in the physical world (the element of earth). And what I noticed is that words exist at the level of thought. They don't exist in the level of spirit or fire or divine impulse!

 

So what I came to understand is that Faith, the most powerful tool we possess as human beings is concentrated belief that exists above the level of words. So for example, if we keep using an affirmation to change or create something in our lives, but our faith is invested in the lies of our storyteller, or the reactions of our mind. All of the faith we have is invested in stuff that goes against this new idea we are introducing, so nothing is going to change. So we all have faith all the time, ALL the time, it's just invested in false ideas, limiting ideas, misperceptions about who we are-- and we aren't even aware of it!

 

So this brings me to the idea of free will. And I see now that most people do not have free will. If you had free will you would choose to be happy, you would choose to do things that you enjoy, and not repeat destructive patterns of your past, no one would actually choose that if they had free will. So when you are identifying with your mind, believing the storyteller, you are NOT using free will, the mind is making all the choices, the storyteller is at the wheel. NOT YOU!

 

So how do you recover your free will and ability to direct your faith  if all of it is invested in ideas and concepts you picked up unconsciously through life as a result of all your experiences? How can you use the most powerful tool in your possession when you've relinquished it without even knowing it?

 

Well if most of your faith is lost to your negative ego, your mind, your storyteller you have to start somewhere. And where you start is by borrowing faith. How do you borrow faith? Well what I've learned is that the best way to borrow faith is rituals.

 

Rituals? Yeah I know, at first this was a scary word to me, but then I realized rituals are everywhere! A ritual is really any symbolic practice that A LOT of people are doing. So think of it this way if a massive amount of people in the collective believe a practice will work - that's A LOT of faith for you to borrow from. Take Feng Shui for example, I recently had a Feng Shui consultant come to my home to help me implement some of the practices, well almost immediately I started to see results! Now how did this happen? What changed? I was borrowing the faith of so many others that believed in the art of placement for thousands of years!

 

I think the most powerful rituals are the ones that use strong symbols, basically items that when you see them or experience them they represent ideas to your mind. So the communication is deeper than just with words, you have an image of a jade plant representing prosperity for example. You don't have to repeat an affirmation of prosperity, your walking by the symbolic jade plant how many times a day that's delivering a message to your subconscious, to your faith!!! Think about how advertising does this to you every day!

 

To recover faith it's important to meditate, to pray, to find silent time with your source, whatever you choose to call it. We start by borrowing faith until we finally recover the free will we lost, then we start to direct our faith towards our true dreams, our true desires. And inevitably those true desires are to serve humanity, to serve our source, to give back to the world.

 

To me, faith is that powerful thought, that certainty of belief that doesn't exist at the level of words, it's so rooted in our consciousness, so strong that we don't think it, we FEEL it. How do you feel it? Well, this brings me back to the idea of "being in the moment." For faith lives no where but in the present moment. You can't go back in time or into the future to find faith, all of your certainty, all of your belief, is right NOW. So if you can just sit back and watch your faith in action, watch how faith is turning the beliefs of your mind into your present reality, then you will see that you can also use it to create your dreams, to create your true heart's desire.