I didn’t grow up in a religious environment and the concept of faith was always foreign to me. So meeting it during my years of spiritual search, was always very strange and if you’d asked me what I think about faith, I would have said, that it plays no role in awakening. Awakening was always about a real experience you’ve got and not something you believe in.
This is true, but as long as you don’t experience constant peace and love, faith does indeed play a huge role in awakening.
Faith is the opposite of fear
Fear is the anticipation of incoming doom. Something bad is going to happen according to our ego and it secretly likes that. The ego thinks, that we have done something wrong and that we deserve to be punished for it. Sometimes, it will project this belief in guilt and punishment onto others, in its futile attempt to get rid of it. Its basic premise is „one or the other“ and if others are guilty, it’s at least not us. In truth the ego thinks, that we are guilty and this is the basic belief its whole world is based on.
So fear - the anticipation of punishment - naturally plays a big role in its perception of the world.
The Holy Spirit - our right mind - on the other hand, has a remedy for each of the ego’s believes. Fear’s counterpart in the right mind is called faith.
Faith is the belief that something good is going to happen and what proofs its validity, is that the ego will naturally think, that faith is something stupid and „blind faith“ is never justified.
Be aware, that the ego has to think that way, since faith is the Holy Spirit’s answer to fear and is threatening its very basic belief in the reality of guilt!
Faith is the acknowledgment of union
Faith goes hand in hand with forgiveness - the only real forgiveness - that ends any form of judgment. It is a gift of the Divine and very much the basics of the Holy Spirit’s thought systems that is the very opposite of what our ego’s trying to teach us.
Through the eyes of faith everything we perceive is already forgiven. Where we once saw differences, we now only see Truth and Oneness.
As long as we see differences and reasons for fear, faith has a value to us. In fact it is only necessary, as long as we belief in judgement and guilt.
Once Truth is our only experience, the need for faith is over, but until then, it’s essential to learn to trust in faith as much, as we have trusted fear our whole life.
In my last article, I wrote about hearing „The Call“ of the divine. Faith is part of this call, as it is part of Love. It’s value lies in a guiding light, that is shining on our path, so that we know how to make the right decision.
The ego will try to sell us fear as being reasonable and associate knowledge with the anticipation of punishment, arguing that it is wise to be prepared for bad things to happen.
The opposite is true - at least according to the other teacher in our mind - the Holy Spirit. Faith is indeed exchanged for knowledge, but this doesn’t make you stupid or blind, it makes you very wise instead.
Faith is an important learning tool
Faith removes limitations and makes whole. This is its function in the Atonement - the lifting of the veils of forgetfulness and removing of all judgements.
Besides that, faith is the brother of trust - the first quality of a teacher of truth as explained in the teacher manual of A Course in Miracles, as we read:
Faithfulness is the teacher of God’s trust in the Word of God to set all things right; not some, but all. Generally, his faithfulness begins by resting on just some problems, remaining carefully limited for a time. To give up all problems to one Answer is to reverse the thinking of the world entirely. And that alone is faithfulness.
So we are invited to extend our trust and faith from individual problems to all - our whole perception. This means to listen to the silent call of the Holy Spirit and hand over all our problems and indeed our whole perception of the world. This is meant in the quote above, with „to give up all problems to one Answer“. The answer is, that we never have left the loving arms of the Divine - that separation is not real, but only imaginary.
Unshaken Faith: Being deeply anchored in Truth
Faithfulness is the 9th quality we are told to develop and it sums up the previous 8, as we read:
True faithfulness, however, does not deviate. Being consistent, it is wholly honest. Being unswerving, it is full of trust. Being based on fearlessness, it is gentle. Being certain, it is joyous. And being confident, it is tolerant. Faithfulness, then, combines in itself the other attributes of God’s teachers.
In other words, we can focus on our faith alone, and develop all other qualities with it automatically.
We are speaking of unshaken faith here. The faith that tells us, that only God is real and nothing else. If your faith that only God/Truth is true is total, you don’t need faith anymore. You can leave it behind as a teaching tool then. This is not a decision you find through thinking or willpower, but will happen all by itself and is totally natural.
Faith and Trust will then be taken over by knowing that only the Truth is true - only God is real.
As we can read in the quote above, this state of being deeply anchored in Truth, means that we have now become fearless. Since fear is the opposite of faith and our faith being unshaken, fear doesn’t find a way into our lives. Fear makes no sense anymore, because nothing can happen, that would be against the will of God and since we have lost our belief in guilt, there is also no punishment necessary.
The deeper our faith that only God is real becomes, the more guilt drops away from our perception and since the whole world is made by guilt, the world as we had known it disappears too.
So as long as there is a perception of a world inside your Mind, there is the need for faith as a teaching tool.
The whole spiritual journey could be summed up, by the degree of faith in Truth we have.
I leave you with a quote by myself, that shows this path very clearly:
“God wins in the end. So why not let him win now?“
Much Love and Blessings,
Atmos 🕊
Posted from my blog https://atmos.black/the-role-of-faith-in-awakening/