To trust in the force
that moves the universe is faith
Faith isn't blind, it's visionary.
Faith is believing that the universe
is on our side, and that the universe
knows what it's doing.
Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.
"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" is really the same thing as "A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships were built for" and "The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all". And they are all from the same point of view.
I believe that there are two types of people (along this line, anyway; there can be many different types in these two groups): Those who agree with these statements and those who do not.
Two major sub-groups on each side of the line are those who preach one philosophy and truly believe the other, and those who live the philosophy they preach. I have met many people who profess that it is better to have loved and lost, but truly believe that they would have rather never have loved. They would rather be cautious, not take the risk, not risk injury. But it is difficult to truly dive all the way in, even for the most commited to this philosophy.
The point is: don't be too hard on people who don't agree. It is just a different way to live. I believe that it is much more fullfilling and fun to drown than never to swim, but that is just for me.
The sages say . . .
Experience is stronger than belief. What you were taught when you were a young child might be true or not.
When you experience, then you know.
Believe in yourself. You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." . . . You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Faith is believing in something when common sense tells you not to.
Scientists don’t know what they are talking about when they talk about religion. Religion has nothing to do with belief, and I don’t believe it has any negative impact on people’s lives outside of intolerance. Why do I go to church? It’s like asking, why did you marry that woman? You make up reasons, but it’s probably just smell. I love the smell of candles. It’s an aesthetic thing.
The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in the flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; this is to say, of a spectral shade.
"Watching something grow is good for morale--it helps you believe in life."
Believe in yourself, believe in the cause, and believe in others ablitly to change.
Behind most spiritual practices is the belief that you have to get someplace you're not- a destination called realization or enlightenment. But realization isn't someplace else; it's the naturally occurring human state. It doesn't belong to anybody. It's who we all are. Spiritual practices also set up many pictures of what this state looks like. For example, when I described how much fear was present, people told me the fear meant that something must be wrong, because fear was an indication that I wasn't in the proper state. But fear is just what it is, and it's there too in the vastness of who we are.
I am of the opinion that one person who says the truth is more powerful than an entire humanity who believes in a lie.
Miracles seldom occur in the lives of those who do not consider them possible.
In fact every belief is an obstacle. It does not even require you realization, since you are already who you are. But without realization, who you are does not shine forth into this world. It remains in the unmanifested which is, of course, your true home. You are then like an apparently poor person who does not know he has a bank account with $100 million in it and so his wealth remains an unexpressed potential
"What are we to learn by contrast? The answer to this is; to learn what to avoid and what to seek. That part of our SELF which is deluded, the separate Self, knows this only too well. So, in line with every other truth, it was turned into a farce. The seeking now becomes not one between dream and reality but one between polarities themselves, whcih are but part of the dream. Thus the choice, the freedom of choice the Ego offers, is the choice between a dream and a dream. A rock and a hard place.
So, now the picture looks like this: we religiously avoid the Bad and seek the Good or avoid what is Good and seek the Bad as we 'avoid' and 'seek'! It does not really matter which way the pendulum swings, as long as it rmains within 'opposing forces', within polarities; this way escape is made impossible, illusion reassured. As long as we are guided by false perception, we see the cintrast as the contrast between polarities themselves and believe we must choose between poalarites.
"Whatever we fight, we shall strengthen, for the mere fact of fighting it is witness to our belief in it......Belief is but worship by degree. To fight what we worship is a contradiction in itself. Resistance of any kind achieves the opposite of its intent."
The Yogin and the Stoic--two righteous egos who achieve their very considerable results by pretending, systematically, to be somebody else. But it is not by pretending to be somebody else, even somebody supremely good and wise, that we can pass from insulated Manicheehood to Good Being.
Good Being is knowing who in fact we are; and in order to know who in fact we are, we must first know, moment by moment, who we think we are and what this bad habit of thought compels us to feel and do. A moment of clear and complete knowledge of what we think we are, but in fact are not, puts a stop for the moment, to the Manichean charade. If we renew, until they become a continuity, these moments of the knowledge of what we are not, we may find ourselves, all of a sudden, knowing who in fact we are.
Concentration, abstract thinking, spiritual exercises--systematic exclusions in the realm of thought. Asceticism and hedonism--systematic exclusions in the realms of sensation, feeling and action. But Good Being is in the knowledge of who in fact one is in relation to all experiences. So be aware--aware in every context, at all times and whatever, creditable or discreditable, pleasant or unpleasant, you may be doing or suffering. This is the only genuine yoga, the only spiritual exercise worth practicing.
The more a man knows about individual objects, the more he knows about God. Translating Spinoza's language into ours we can say: The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is--or rather Who (capital W0 in Fact (capital F) 'he" (between quotation marks) Is (capital I).
Faith is something very different from belief. Belief is the systematic taking of unanalyzed words much too seriously. Paul's words, Mohammed's words, Marx's words, Hitler's words--people take them too seriously, and what happens? What happens is the senseless ambivalence of history--sadism versus duty, or (incomparably worse) sadism as duty; devotion counterbalanced by organized paranoia; sisters of charity selflessly tending the victims of their own church’s inquisitors and crusaders. Faith, on the Contrary, can never be taken too seriously. For Faith is the empirically justified confidence in our capacity to know who in fact we are, to forget the belief intoxicated Manichee in Good Being. Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from belief.
And yes, any belief can be justified.
But that is why we call it belief, it isn't bound to proof.
When people refuse to see proof, they are think their belief helps them so, losing it will cost more then gaining it from a perhaps more truthfull story.
I can tell you it is not, but one will never see that when in doubt.
And basicly, our choices of what to believe in life, make our life the way it is now. We are shaped by the beliefs we choose to carry.
I believe in what I see, I believe in what I hear, I believe that what I'm feeling, Changes how the world appears.
The greatest superpower is the ability to make people laugh.
“Do you think so, John? Was it your God?” he asked with terrifying gentleness. “You see, that is my dilemma. Because if I was led by God to love God, step by step, as it seemed, if I accept the beauty and the rapture were real and true, then the rest of it was God’s will too, and that, gentlemen, is cause for bitterness. But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously, then I brought all of this on myself and my companions and the whole business becomes farcical, doesn’t it. The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances,” he continued with academic exactitude, each word etched on the air with acid, “is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God.”
“I think,” the Father General said, “that I could be of more help to you if I knew whether you see all this as comedy or tragedy.”
Emilio did not answer right away. So much, he was thinking, for keeping silent about what can’t be changed. So much for Latino pride. He felt sometimes like the seedhead of a dandelion, flying apart, blown to pieces in a puff of air. The humiliation was almost beyond bearing. He thought, and hoped sometimes, that it would kill him, that his heart would actually stop. Maybe this is part of the joke, he thought bleakly. He turned away from the windows to gaze across the room at the elderly man watching him quietly from the far end of the beautiful old table.
“If I knew that,” Emilio Sandoz said, coming as close as he could to the center of his soul and to the admission that shamed him, “I don’t suppose I’d need the help.”
Once, long ago, she'd allowed herself to think seriously about what human beings would do, confronted directly with a sign of God's presence in their lives. The Bible, that repository of Western wisdom, was instructive either as myth or as history, she'd decided. God was at Sinai and within weeks, people were dancing in front of a golden calf. God walked in Jerusalem and days later, folks nailed Him up and then went back to work. Faced with the Divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple-choice question: If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or (c) recognize God? A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God, Anne had decided years before, and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine.
"Many teachers will tell you to believe; then they put out your eyes of
reason and instruct you to follow only their logic. But I want you
to keep your eyes of reason open; in addition, I will open in you
another eye, the eye of wisdom."
~Paramahansa Yogananda, `Man's Eternal Quest', quoting his guru's words to him
Magic is believing in yourself. If you can do that, you can make anything happen.
The secret of making something work in your lives is first of all,
the deep desire to make it work; then the faith and belief that it
can work; then to hold that clear definite vision in your consciousness and see it working out step by step, without one thought of doubt
or disbelief.
