What is the value of faith?

[Diana]

Perhaps this is so for you, but for me it's definitely not "a hope that what I believe will come to pass". For me, hope is nothing but another attachment. Also, "what will come to pass" exists in a necessarily make-believe future. Combine those things and you have yet more transient desire, because that desire is the only thing that can sustain hope.

For me, one description of faith would be something like a recognition of current participation in a universal, infinite connection and continuity. This is not one's particular desires or expectations as 'hope' might engender.

I see hope as attachment also. Hope, worry, are both attached to a projected future. To be fully present is to access the field of infinite potential. Once one is present and accessing the field of infinite potential, all is possible; and then the use of will or desire can direct it. Having faith it is there is not the same as accessing it. And what is that faith: guessing/hoping, unless one has a knowingness or experience or memory of it; and then it does not fit the definition of faith.

Anyone who is creative can attest to the accessing of the field of infinite potential. When one is painting or writing, there are times when one becomes fully present and then the "magic" happens. Time disappears and things seem to just happen. This does not require faith, it requires being fully present.

I also agree with TN that faith is a loaded word. When looked at through the institutions that promote it--religious institutions--it is the opposite of what it implies. Faith becomes imprisonment. (You must have faith, believe, this particular thing or you are screwed eternally.) So faith, for me, because of centuries of focus from religions, has negative connotations and carries an energy of "blindly follow."

If we are multidimensional beings, who exist outside of time, then faith again does not apply to us. We don't need faith, we simply need to expand until we access those parts that exist more fully and actively in intelligent infinity. Or put another way, we "remember" intelligent infinity.

One more note on faith: If "all is well as is" is reached by knowingness, then that energy would be very different than "all is well as is" reached by faith. Knowingness comes from within the self; faith is putting it outside of one's self, as though there is some universal law, or God, or other separate thing that you can trust.