Faith: a precondition for transcending the mundane

DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE DIVINE!
LIVE THE DIVINE!

Talking with Angels, Dialogue 69

For the Newcreator, faith does not mean belief in God. Rather, it means “a critical but curious mind’s readiness to adopt a reality model (even if provisionally) for which there is less than absolute, empirical proof”. The author of this definition, excerpted from his essay The Dialogic Imperative, is the late Jay B. Gaskill.

Without this kind of faith, the first superpower, Transcend the Mundane, cannot be activated, because the rational mind will reject the idea of enriching the world through unconditional service, and it will refuse to acknowledge the presence of the G-field that streams into the manifest from the unmanifest through the gap in time.

Read about the manifest, the unmanifest and the G-field

Until Transcend the Mundane has been activated, the other superpowers — Enrich the World and Create the New— will be unavailable.

Click on a label to view more information

Those exploring the Newcreate way of creating the new must put logic on hold, quieten negative self-talk, silence the inner critic, set aside scepticism and proceed with playful curiosity, an experimental attitude and trusting acceptance. Proof will show up along the way, vindicating earlier faith.

Gitta Mallasz: How can I know that I join spirit and matter?

Gitta’s angel: By the fact that you recognize it afterwards.

Talking with Angels, Dialogue 32

More quotes

Faith represents an existential commitment of the heart, a way of life, a set of behaviors and emotional responses woven into every hour of everyday life — expressed through constant choices both when alone and in social situations.

Peter A. Georgescu, Faith isn’t irrational, but beliefs may be, on Huffington Post | Peter A. Georgescu is Chairman Emeritus of advertising agency network VMLY&R (formerly Young & Rubicam)

Faith is an assent to doctrines which are not substantiated by immediately available direct factual evidence. To be a matter of faith, a belief must go beyond the available evidence and the believer must be willing and ready to fill up the gaps in the evidence with an attitude of patient and trusting acceptance. Faith, taken in this sense, has two opposites, i.e., a dull unawareness of the things which are worth believing in, and doubt or perplexity. In any kind of religion some assumptions are taken on trust and accepted on the authority of scriptures or teachers.

Generally speaking, faith is, however, regarded as only a preliminary step, as a merely provisional state. In due course direct spiritual awareness will know that which faith took on trust, and longed to know: “Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.” Much time must usually elapse before the virtue of wisdom has become strong enough to support a vigorous insight into the true nature of reality. Until then quite a number of doctrinal points must be taken on faith.

Edward Conze, The Way of Wisdom: The Five Spiritual Faculties

If we are to move from relating to the world as fragmented parts to systemic wholes, we must change our basic way of thinking.

Not just what we think, but how we think. The change is:

from abstract and symbolic conception…to acute and profound observation;

from metaphorical thinking…to original and direct inquiry;

from the habit of not looking freshly…to the discipline of finely tuned investigation; and

from reliance on concepts to bring a sense of order to the world…to an open quest to see what’s really there, even if it makes us feel uncomfortable, unsure, insecure, and mystified.

To make this shift, we must move from presuming to know before we look, to looking freshly without the limitation of a concept, metaphor, theory, or history of previous experiences.

Another way to say this is: start with nothing, e.g., without an idea of what we might find.

Robert Fritz, in Reflections, The SoL Journal of Knowledge, Learning and Change, Vol. 5, Number 7 (no longer available online)

There is no true faith without the act.
There is no true act without faith.

Talking with Angels, Dialogue 30

Faith is a state of openness or trust.

To have faith is like when you trust yourself to the water. You don’t grab hold of the water when you swim, because if you do you will become stiff and tight in the water, and sink. You have to relax, and the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging, and holding on.

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight. But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.”

Alan Watts

What you may not understand is: the whole game you have been playing is also based on faith. You have had faith in the rational. We are living in a society which is a temple dedicated to the rational man.

Ram Dass, Be Here Now

I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my rational , and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason — Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

The poet John Keats, in a letter to his brothers George and Thomas | View letter (pdf)

The fruit of faith is love.

Mother Teresa

Faith has its etymological roots in the Greek pistis: trust, commitment, loyalty, engagement.

Brian Davis, cited by Peter A. Georgescu in Faith isn’t irrational, but beliefs may be, on Huffington Post | Peter A. Georgescu is Chairman Emeritus of advertising agency network VMLY&R (formerly Young & Rubicam)

Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.

Khalil Gibran

Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

Martin Luther King

Faith is a much-abused term, often derided in modern secular circles as the blind obedience to some arbitrary authority. But it has a wiser and more useful meaning: faith as a critical but curious mind’s readiness to adopt a reality model (even if provisionally) for which there is less than absolute, empirical proof. I propose that this kind of faith is the necessary adaptation by any rational rational to the challenges of life in the real world in which reality presents us with far too much, far too quickly. Events, personalities and relationships that carry embedded meaning and value are not the sorts of existents that can pass any rigid absolute-empirical-proof test. All trust relationships contain a measure of faith.

Jay B. Gaskill, The Dialogic Imperative

Sorcerers call the ability to manipulate their mental attachments ‘believing without believing’. They have perfected that art to the point where they can identify sincerely with any idea. They live it, love it, and discard it without remorse if it comes to that.

Carlos Castaneda, cited in Further Conversations with the Nagual (pdf; 117 pages), by Armando Torres

Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

The sense of finitude—the sense of the ultimate fragility of everything we care about—is at the heart of what I call secular faith. To have secular faith is to be devoted to a life that will end, to be dedicated to projects that can fail or break down….I will show how secular faith expresses itself in the ways we mourn our loved ones, make commitments, and care about a sustainable world. I call it secular faith because it is devoted to a life that is bounded by time…To be finite means primarily two things: to be dependent on others and to live in relation to death. I am finite because I will die. Likewise, the projects to which I am devoted are finite because they live only through the efforts of those who are committed to them and will cease to be if they are abandoned…I call it secular faith, since the object of devotion does not exist independently of those who believe in its importance and who keep it alive through their fidelity…Secular faith is committed to persons and projects that may be lost: to make them live on for the future. Far from being resigned to death, a secular faith seeks to postpone death and improve the conditions of life…The commitment to living on does not express an aspiration to live forever but to live longer and live better, not to overcome death but to extend the duration and improve the quality of a form of life.

Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, cited by Marty Bankson here

If I were dying, my last words would be, Have faith and pursue the unknown end.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Lili: Does everyone have an angel, an ‘inner teacher’?

Lili’s angel: No. We consist of faith — purely of faith.
To those who have faith, who believe — we are.
And faith is the force of the divine.
If you believe that I have a voice … I can speak.
If you do not believe it … I am mute.
If you believe that I am you … I become you.
Believe in the high!
You can also believe in the low.
Today devils clamor and Angels are silent.
But through your belief we descend.
For belief is the bridge.

Talking with Angels, Dialogue 23