When I was young the people connected with me tried to get me to follow their catholic belief system. It didn't work at all. I remember reading in third grade about Methusela living for some 900 years and thinking to myself "Does anyone really believe this stuff?" When I was a little older, I came to read Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, etc) and acquired from that, among other things, a certain contempt for the idea of faith, (though in fairness to Rand, I may have misunderstood her. She may have meant it only in regards to religion, one of the first defintions that pops up in some dictionaries). (Between those two periods I steeped myself in lots of Seth, BTW). So, I came to think of faith as something that people did when they saw themselves as not being in control, like hope.

But then I was listening to a CD lecture by a music professor who spoke of the change in music going into the 18th century as driven in part by a new "Faith in Reason". And in my mind went two 'oops!' at once: Ultimately reason lost its highest throne as the unquestionable final interpreter and arbitrator of reality, and also the idea of 'faith' needed revisiting.

Later I read in one of Barbara Brennan's books that a certain misalignment in the human energy field could lead to a condition which she called "loss of faith in life itself".


This "faith" stuff was beginning to sound like Castenedian ideas of 'Power'.

Now I have come across a stunning selection from fiction, quoted below. For some context, the first person, now much older, is revisiting a section of a park in autumn, hoping to retaste the joys that he had had there when a boy. Jarred by the many changes, he goes on to say:



From Swann's Way, (the Scott-Mancrieff translation p. 324)

...And seeing all these new elements of the spectacle, I no longer had the faith, which, applied to them, would have given them consistency,unity, life; they passed in a scattered sequence before me, at random, without reality, containing in themselves no beauty that my eyes might have endeavored, as in the old days, to extract from them and compose a picture. They were just women, in whose elegance I had no belief, and whose clothes seemed to me unimportant. But when a belief vanishes, there survives it -more and more ardently so as to cloak to absence of the power, now lost to us, of imparting reality to new phenomena- an idolatrous attachment to the old things which our belief in them once did animate, as if it was in that belief and not ourselves that the divine spark resided, and as if our present incredulity had a contingent cause -the death of the gods.

(He then goes on to gently mock himself for his attachments. For those who wish see the text and develop the context more than has been done here, http://books.google.com/books?id=-OAIm8 ... nd&f=false

or just enter "I walked on as far as the pigeon-shooting ground" in your search browser).

(By the way, the entire novel is a great study not only de-beliefing, but also in in ego detacthment. Reading it is very much like a kind of meditation... you really have to focus your mind to pull it in at all.)

So this is my question for the group, (which happily has a wide spectrum of consciousness styles):

This 'faith' stuff.... what is it? It is different from 'the will to live'. The will to live involves tenacity, whereas this faith stuff seems to be closer to something that might be called "the drive to assemble and invest with sacredness or numinosity (after Jung's use of the word... a sort of mystical importance attached to something) complex perceptual fields". Yet it doesn't seem to be quite the same as Juan Matus' (Castenda's teacher) idea of 'power' either: else why wouldn't've Casteneda simply used the word 'faith'? Or might the substitution of a word investable with mysteriousness (power) help to bypass belief systems (like mine) which would have lead the reader away at the first sign of such a word (faith)? And more, Proust implies that a person has a certain capacity to have faith, that one might lose, which is a different thing from an act of faith itself.

In my older way of thinking, faith was something applied sort of mechanically to belief systems which were inherently beyond the reach of reason and science. But this Proustian concept has it as something closer to a pre-will drive to the assemblage of meaning, while Casteneda's power seems to be something related, but different.

You can see I am puzzled.

Ideas, anyone?

Montana,

I am not being a smartass and mean this seriously. Try doing a search on the phrase "wordiness and intellection" which comes from a Zen work Hsin Hsin Ming:
On Believing in Mind (Shinjin-No-Mei) by Seng-t'san, third Chinese patriarch of Zen from which I quote one stanza from the translation by D. T. Suzuki

Wordiness and intellection--
The more with them the further astray we go;
Away therefore with wordiness and intellection,
And there is no place where we cannot pass freely.

On this search, I found this link to D. T. Suzuki's translation: http://www.mendosa.com/way3.htm and the following link to a PDF file version but do not know the translation origin but it is obviously a different one: http://www.dharmafield.org/coursehandou ... rtmind.pdf

You may find my recommendation as incomprehensible as I find the quotations that you list. However to me, what you are quoting can be used as a true example of the meaning of the adjective, turgid. But I find the Zen work as refreshing as a cool dawn breeze compared to an afternoon rain squall.

You are wanting to relate works of existentialism, fiction, Castaneda/Juan Matus with Marcel Proust thrown in as perhaps icing on the cake to the concept of faith. And all in the format of a bulletin board forum with the general theme of consciousness and specific intent of discussing MBT. Can't be done outside of the scope of an English Lit or Psychology term paper if not a master's thesis.

Now my initial suggestion was what came into my mind immediately upon reading your post. After reviewing the documents I found in my search, to have an easy way to refer you to the Zen based documents, I see that it is not unhelpful if you choose to read them, whichever matches your taste.

Faith, like religion, is outside of the My Big TOE model and conceptualization of reality. I suggest that you start with a good dictionary (seriously) http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith Then you can go on into standard reference books for more discussion if you wish. Then read some of the religious based works where faith is discussed to get that orientation as that is where the true nature of faith as I think you are meaning it is to be found.

You can spend a life time chasing your tail in the woods where you are starting to look for a path. Unless you are really and truly into wordiness and intellection that is. Then the 'journey' is probably the fun part for you, but I don't perceive you that way. I really am trying to help, but may not be being very helpful.

Ted

It seems as if people need "faith" to give life "meaning." The question of faith is a very timely question as more people do not have religious faith or are losing it for whatever reason, and I believe are finding their lives as lacking in meaning because of this perceived lack. This is one of the reasons I find Ted's work http://www.active-mysticism.com/ so important to get out to more people, to fill the void left by this perceived lack in such a useful way.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

I suppose faith will have a different meaning to each of us. Ted's links to Zen translations are always welcome, they were for the most part written in a simpler time for people to find meaning and a path. We can only try and point to our own definition of faith and hope it is useful. Faith to me began when I was young as belief that the rules given me by the church would somehow be manifested in a way I couldn't understand.

So many things were beyond my understanding then that it happened frequently and I felt my faith justified. Later in life as religion faded as a mover of the world, faith became a test or extension of my understanding. If the non physical rules worked as I projected, I would have faith things would work out in a certain way. As understanding grew, my ability to predict and have faith in my convictions also grew.

Eventually the point came that no matter how focused my intent or pure my faith, I could only predict with about 75% accuracy. I think this is the Psi Uncertainty Principle in action. Results are a bit better when you have no way to be sure things wouldn't have been that way. Uncertainty.

Faith to each of us will be different. Perhaps it should mean that if the ruleset as you understand it is followed, then results will be predictable, but beyond understanding. People using religion as their ruleset will sometimes see results that reinforce their faith. When it does not they pass it off as being for reasons too large for them to understand. Thus their faith works for them and their ego.

We should use our faith as a test of our personal grasp of the ruleset, tempered with open minded skepticism. In this way faith is a projection of the probabilities defined by our understanding. When we consistently get good results that should indicate we are on the right path. Anomalies should be watched to find the inevitable flaws in our big picture which help us grow and find new insights.

I might be off base with this interpretation of faith, but I can say that I have faith in myself. Its not religious, just based on past experience and projecting that into the future. I don't need to know the answers to know that I will keep trying until the way is a bit more clear. Confidence that you will find your way in an unsure future with no guarantees. That, to me, is the meaning of faith.

Thanks Montana for bringing this up. Ted, your Zen links are always good. Bette, I agree with you that Ted's work is transcending the conventional concept of faith. When we get closer to what faith really is, the baggage falls away and its a good thing (I think).

Have a good day all

_________________
always, John

In a case like that I would not look for words and their meanings or definitions by others. Here we are not looking for a precise definition, but for a personal meaning, since a journey or a path is a personal way of learning who we (each of us personally) are. If a word sounds foreign or superficial I would part with it for a while and get back to it, or let it appear again in my mind, when my understanding of it would come with no effort on my part. It should be no effort on your path, journey or way, otherwise it is very easy to go side ways and not even feel that we've got lost in somebody's else world. I think this is one of the opportunities to learn how we can trust our intuition. It never fails us, as long as we allow it to be free and not to be guided by anything or anybody else.

Lena

_________________
'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

Ah. I guess I unconsciously assumed that the best way to put the question is the way I arrived at it myself. Apparently not!

So consider that a child typically brings to the table a great deal of "enthusiasm" or "drive" or "ability" to erect and sustain complex perceptual systems. In the early years a child can learn effortlessly several languages at once by a near osmosis. I have known boys that, following their enthusiasm, by age 8 can tell the make model and year of any vehicle that comes within 200 yards of their seeing. (To my perception still, there are essential two or three kinds, the important thing is to avoid collisions with them.) As we age, we generally seem to lose the ability of erecting and sustaining fresh complex perceptual systems. I would love to learn fourrier analysis, for example, but there is simply not enough "voltage" left in the battery to do it, so to speak.
I think that as a population, we all tend to go in this direction. True, we tend to have belief ossification getting in the way. And one is mired in various situations etc. But something that one once had in abundance now needs to be conserved. And when we approach death through a natural old age, even the ability to sustain existing structure begins to dim. One becomes more and more detached even from his own PMR perceptions, and prides and sorrows in one's grandchilderen, even, are tempered by a sort of distance.

Too, consider that not all people of the same age have the same level of "drive" to construct complex perceptual systems. Regardless of the level of intellegence, there is the whole range of ability.

So this "drive" stuff varies both across time and across the population.

An imperfect metaphor might be to call it (dare I say it? This "Faith-Stuff"?) a kind of voltage while consciousness is the "amps".

Of course, "complex perceptual systems" are the very thing that process the ones and zeros into a percievable, operable, experiencable reality. Like your windows software making sense of the ones and zeroes that come its way.

Then, you see, this question of faith-stuff is likely fundemental to any TOEist composition that would try to include consciousness in its model: The drive to incarnate and establish a contact with any "reality", and to sustain it, seems to be something separate from, but essential to, consciousness itself. Without it, nothing happens.


Ted: Language and Math have this in common: To express complex ideas, the expression needs to be as complex as the idea itself. A sophmore learning calculus might ask why everything can't just be left to the comfortable counting numbers, and the familiar friends of addition and substraction, and we would see this for what it is. It is the same with language. If complex sentence structure is something that you prefer not to spend time on, it is perfectly alright. As Tom says, take what you can use and leave the rest. Hope you continue to feel better.

-Montana

Hi Lena,

Thanks for your feedback.
It is not the word itself that I am interested in, but in the idea that it represents: The drive to compose reality. It varies across people, time and circumstance. Understanding it better would seem to be "highly profitable". One would know how to adjust its intensity, for example, and do so according to circumstance. One would take into consideration its presence, or lack of it, in others. Perhaps there is more than one kind, etc.

I don't at all feel lost or sidetracked. :-) It seems to me a real substantive question, about a real, experiential process.

Off topic, now, but I would like to say, Lena, that your posts are among those on this board that I value the most. Your perspective on things is always like a breath of fresh air. There seems to be something in the Russian psyche, Tchaikovsky, Rand, etc, that does not hesitate to sustain a style of vision that sheds a kind of exaltation on whatever object it chooses to visit.

-Montana

This is just a great thread Montana, as I have been thinking about my own personal definition of faith (as Lena mentions) since first seeing it and putting my initial thoughts here, thank you.

You mention the energy of a child, the potential the child sees in everything, and how personal interest shapes how well the illusion is rendered for you. You didn't have the energy required (interest) for cars therefore their exact rendering, to you, is unfocused. For car buffs, cars must be rendered to a much finer detail. To me this seems a good example of the VRRE.

I've always thought that children have the same "level" of energy that adults do, it is just in condensed form until we grow into it. I want to learn Sanskrit.

My model, always under construction, is that I have faith in the nonphysical. The physical is too predictable to have to be taken "on faith" while the nonphysical is where one, or at least this one, has faith "in the system" to put what I need for growth in front of me. Therefore, faith, to me, understands deeply that I am a part of All That Is, and my trusting that the system loves me (my) back.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Thank you, Montana. You made me blush.

Lena

_________________
'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

Hi guys:

Something came to my mind:

Faith is a friend of belief which is a friend of expectation. I am trying to be happy without expecting. It is possible.

Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

I've always thought having no expectations was in of itself an expectation, so I am able to say, no it is not possible while also holding in abeyance that anything is possible, only more or less probable. Thinking it possible, having no expectation, seems much more conducive to it actually being possible, I guess, so there is that; Good job Claudio.
Love
Bette

PS: remember everyone, faith is just a word with 6.5 billion definitions (as we speak).

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Looking forward, 'Faith' almost becomes synonymous with 'hope' (optimism, positive outlook, as in 'faith in the future').
Looking back, it can be synonymous with 'belief'.
Don't look back.

Thanks Bette. Bette, it is good to think that anything is possible. We have the limitations of PMR rule-set. Why add to ourselves our own limitations? I just took a short nap and had an OBE. I was practicing duality. I was keeping sensing my breathing and some music in the background from a PMR radio. I have them easier in the weekends or holidays because I have a better state of mind and more time. If you become more active in NPMR you are going to automatically point towards that because you will see that the limits of your experience depends on how you limit yourself. Your expectations limit your NPMR experiences. You learn that expectations go against you because you add more constraints to the ones you already have.

Now continuing with my friends sequence ... expectation can also become a friend of desire ... that's something that Siddhartha Gautama (Buda) worked on.

I like Intention better than Desire.


Clau

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

You are welcome Claudio.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

These are the friends I like to hang out with:

Intention, Intent, Love, Unlimited, Clarity, Quality, Wisdom, Help, Care, Good, Learn, Teach, Humble, Open-Mind, Skepticism, Freedom, Take it easy, Happiness, Tom C., you people (in this board), all people, all beings, Unconditional Love, Experience, Explore

The ones that I try to avoid:

Fear, Ego, Desire, Expectation, Limitations, Bad, Arrogance, Careless, Hatred, Envy, Jealousy, Agression, Ignorance (specially ignore other people), Belief, Terrorism, Pain, Grief, Sadness, Drugs, Addictions, Attachments, Needs, Greed

Clau

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <