How do we find our faith?

Have you ever noticed how things happen to us in bunches? It is as though each day, week or season has a theme. For me, the theme these past few weeks has been faith.

For one thing, I am writing a book on the principles of The Law of One. I have come to a discussion of the heart chakra, also called the green-ray energy center. Having described the kinds of energies used by the lower three chakras as being those of this everyday world, I now am bringing the reader into a discussion of the heart chakra, the beginning of the upper chakras of the energy body, which contain energies used by the inner or spiritual self.

I have been explaining that we cannot solve our earthly problems from the level of the issues themselves, which is the lower three chakras. We first must enter the heart chakra and work on our issues from the open heart’s enhanced viewpoint. Then we can move back into the lower-chakra issues and work toward problem-solving with the compassion of the heart rather than dealing with our human tendency toward self-judgment.

We can enter the heart only by faith.

For another thing, I am working on two speeches I have the privilege of being invited to offer at the “Time of Awakening” gathering on Mackinac Island over the weekend of Aug. 10 to 12. There I will speak and sing on aspects of the great shift in consciousness that is occurring at the end of this Age of Pisces, as we turn to the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. The attendees are undoubtedly focused primarily on the date of 2012 and probably have some fear and trepidation about what will occur at that time.

Again, my discussion about being fearless as regards aspects of this shift will be all about faith.

If you would like to have a motto for work in faith, I submit for your use this slogan, borrowed with apologies from the first two generations of “Star Trek”:

Faith really is the last unknown place we have to explore, long after we have seen the moon, the rings of Saturn and the deeps of intergalactic space. For faith has no earthly home. In my opinion, faith is not about anything to which we can relate. It has no objective referent. Faith is not faith IN anything, be it God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the guru, Buddha, Rama, Quan Yin or any other being or thing. Faith simply bides. Faith IS. It is a point of view. If there is any content to faith, it is the infinitely deep awareness that all is well. Hatonn, a Confederation source I channel for L/L Research, says in this message received on Feb. 3, 1981:

“Those who choose to live a life in faith must choose to leave the cliff of human knowledge and embrace the mystery. They must be willing to allow that mystery to teach them. At that point the seeker gathers itself together, enters its consciousness upon the next step, and begins its long and dusty road of seeking by leaping from the cliff into the thin mist of chaos, that chasm of unknowing which will forever separate time from eternity.”

“Yet the seeker knows that it does not know any way to proceed except to will itself to take that leap. It is a right use of will, not to corral oneself into doing anything, but to act when one feels that the time is metaphysically correct. And so, the first expression of faith for most entities is that of acting as if there was faith within the heart already.”

That “leap of faith,” a phrase coined by Søren Kierkegaard in his 19th century book “Fear and Trembling,” seems to the rational mind to be a disastrous piece of misjudgment. What could be more foolish than leaving behind the cultural and social knowledge of our day, the respected truisms of science and the opinions of our own minds, grown cynical in response to the way the world seems reliably to punish only those who are powerless while allowing privileged people to escape judgment?

Yet as the Hatonn group notes, we cannot begin learning the ways of faith until we have taken that leap into the abyss of unknowing. Many people will stay safely at the cliff’s edge. Hatonn says:

“Many entities among your people have no use for faith, any more than they have any clear perception of the truth. That is acceptable, for it is not those who are unripe that will be harvested but those whose time of ripeness has come.”

We do not need to concern ourselves, then, with helping others make that leap at this harvest-time. We can trust that they will be drawn to the abyss when they are ripe. We need only find that ripeness within ourselves and ask for the faith that inspires our will to launch us into the deeps of unknowing.

Perhaps the beginning of our voyage to faith is the realization that those truths upon which we have counted all our lives are based upon mystery. We use electricity without our science being able to explain it. Science can describe and predict its movements. Science cannot find its source.

Science finds gravity to work without exception on our planet but cannot explain its movements either. Science can predict its effects on bodies, but why it works as it does remains a mystery. The best our scientists can do is to explain that both electricity and gravity are energy fields.

Most telling is the fact that no agency can explain the nested energy fields of our mind, body and spirit complexes, which together make up each of us. We have endlessly debated humankind’s source and ending in both science and religion. However, we remain a mystery even to ourselves. Psychology and psychiatry can predict human behavior and attempt to conform behavior to desirable norms, but they cannot explain who we are or why we are here.

These questions can be addressed only by us, using our faculty of faith.

We have assets and resources that help us to choose the faith-filled way. As Hatonn says:

“The faith that is so hungered for does not rise out of nothing. It begins with very simple faiths. Even as a young entity, one early begins to have faith that the sun will rise and set, that the moon and stars shall appear and then shall disappear in the blushing dawn of day.”

In a way, this is a strong and powerful source of faith. If we see the universe as the outward manifestation of the Creator, it is a great comfort to rejoice in the regularity of the sunrise and sunset, the day and the night. Science has tried to convince us that the universe just happened, that it is random. Yet as Hatonn asks us:

“Is the balance of the infinite universe, the planets in their courses and the stars in their long, slow expressions of love, the work of a capricious Creator? It would seem unlikely. If one were to gaze upon one of your calculators, one would not mistake it for that which is random. This calculator is obviously made for a purpose, to do a certain task accurately again and again. Yet how simple is this calculator compared to the infinite accuracy of the clockwork universe in whose steadiness your scientists have such faith!”

We cannot talk ourselves into faith. Faith comes to us when we act as though we have faith. It is a paradoxical situation in which we choose by will to act faithfully, launch ourselves into the unknown with no hope of return and miraculously find our faith in mid-air.

Does it sound impossible to do so? I promise that it is easy, once you firm your nerve and jump. The secret is not to look down! Or, perhaps more aptly, not to look back. Do you remember the many times the cartoon character Road Runner ran off the edge of the cliff and ran just fine on the air until he realized that he no longer had land under his feet? He never fell until he realized that.

Similarly, when Peter saw Jesus walking on the water, coming to meet their boat, he impulsively left the boat and walked on the water to meet him. Peter was doing well until he realized rationally that he was not in a boat anymore. Then he started to sink, until Jesus reached over and helped him up.

So it is with us. The world of our everyday life will never possess faith. It will advise us to buy insurance, to hedge our bets and to keep a low profile. It is faith that urges us to stand up and be counted. Hatonn says:

“The life of faith is a life lived in the limelight. One who lives in faith stands with a light that others may see. It is a kind of public undressing of the self, metaphysically speaking, to live a life in faith. For when one who is faithful perceives that in the midst of the confusion of mundane living there is a spiritual principle which must needs be upheld in order to be faithful, one must then abandon so-called human wisdom and foolishly express the faith that appearances are deceiving and that all is truly well. The essence of faith is the simple feeling that all is well and that all will be well.”

In the face of challenging political, economic and cultural times, can all things truly be well? Words cannot explain why the answer is yes. Only our loving hearts can do that.

I open my arms and embrace your spirit. May our hearts live in faith! And may faith teach us a new paradigm of how to live in love, not only on the mountaintop of uplifting experiences but in the valley of the shadows of confusion, every single day of our short and precious lives.