Posted by Bret (63.197.53.200) on May 27, 2002 at 20:38:42:

It seems to me that one of the greatest barriers that we face as human being on the road to greater unity is our conception of Faith. There are so many defenitions. One is that faith is the belief in the unseen or unknown, such as God. The problem then arises as to whether there really is a God or whether we just believe it. Some may say that faith is its own faculty and then they will argue over whether it is a material or spiritual faculty, while some will simply say it's all in the chemistry of the body as a whole system and has no importance in and of itself.

It seems piculuar to me that we should be so divided when it is obvious that everyone, no matter what their defenition might be, is endowed with this ability. It goes along with imagination and creation and all that seperates humanity from the animal kingdom. My question then becomes, if we want to strive for perfection should we not constantly attempt to find ways of expanding what influence our defenition of faith has?

I raise this question because it seems that we get so attached to illusions that the principles get left out. You only have to look around to see how almost every person today has there own ideas about true reality and all you have to do from there is examine the spectrum of justifications they use to substantiate such beliefes to realize how chaotic people have made reality. The world, it seems, is always in order, but part of that order is our ability to percieve it to be in chaos. Why, when it is completely within our power to be totally unified in every way, do we choose illusion?

My personal beliefe is that there is only one order in the universe and that it is understood by faith in its intellectual form as it pertains to will and reason as it pertains to applicability. This one order is nature and it is governed by laws. There are laws that always remain the same, such as 2+2=4 and then there are laws that change as needed over time, but change itself is a law. Faith, regardless of definition, appears to be closely associated with change, whereas, reason, or the ability to apply unchangable principles in light of these percieved changes, seems to be the vehicle to test faith. You cannot have one without the other because faith requires applicability, but we have to imagine it is possible to even begin. Otherwise we would remain oblivious to any need to test it out. The greatest degree of faith is therefore achieved when the efforts of all are focused on testing an ultimate paradigm. Maybe we are so prone to finding fault in certain aspects of such a paradigm because it challanges our faith in a lesser form. That is why it is key in such an investigation to seperate ourselves from every paradigm we ever knew. Only then will we be able to test the applicability of anything with absolute faith. It seems to me that this has always been the quest of every human endeavor, whether art or science. We have this innate need to experience greater degrees of unity. Every art and science that has attempted anything less has failed miserably, which seems to support the theory that everything is governed by permenant laws. If it were not so than everything would have succeeded. If you jump out of a three story window in desregard of gravity you will most likely go splat, so we should spend less time in trying to decide what definition of faith is better, or what ideas, religions ect. ect. are superior and focus our faith on what will work equally for one and all to give us complete liberty and freedom from any division that continues to hinder the maximization of our full capacity as a species right now.

These are just my philosophical ramblings of course and you are free to knock them or agree with them or whatever, but I would like some feedback from everyone if you have a moment.

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