Perhaps this would be a good place to talk about faith for just a moment. Most people think that faith is some far out thing. Others think it is just a concept. Still others think it is an emotional thing.
Faith is a relationship with someone and a trust in them. Can you see why putting your faith in anyone (no matter how knowledgeable, how seemingly nice, or how credentialed they might be) means not putting your faith in God.
    The relationship with God, that I call faith, means looking to intuition first. It is an involvement with the inner Light. Like a little child who holds his daddy’s hand and who looks to daddy whenever he has a question or concern about anything, the soul looks inward with a silent plea or questioning.
    This involvement is not an emotional one. It is mental and spiritual. It is an attitude of looking to God, of ever checking the rightness of things, and ever wanting to be guided to do the right thing.
Perhaps the best ways to describe faith is by pointing out what it is not. What most people think of as faith is an emotional involvement with words, objects or people. It is the involvement of the ego with whatever or whoever gives it faith in itself and makes it feel good about itself.
    This involvement is emotional, physical and imaginal. For example, we get involved with some person (lover or leader) who appeals to our ego. We have an emotional attachment to them, they make us feel, and we toy with them in our imagination.
    We become sensitive to their physical presence, which stirs us to feelings. Of course, the feelings associated with being in love come to mind. It is obvious how the lover appeals to something we want for our ego.
    We are also stirred by the excitement that a speeding car represents, a soft luxurious coat, or a fancy piece of jewelry. They stand for something—power, party time, excitement, self righteousness, luxury, and so on. A person can also get excited over words or over knowledge. Just about anything that holds out a promise of glory, greatness, worship, or even the hope of a cure can make us excited and emotional. People who look to medicine to save them can become excited over the latest operation or a new experimental medicine that holds out the possibility of a cure.
    A leader or lover appeals to our ego, offering it something, and we will begin to get involved with them, and soon we even have a fantasy relationship with them.
    It’s only a small stretch to see how someone we hate also involves us with emotions and fantasy. The one we hate gives us feelings of judgment and powerful anger feelings. We judge them, and the feelings of anger or unhappiness, support our ego in its role as judge.
    Here’s a cute story that illustrates the relationship aspect of faith. A little boy was standing by the curb. A business man came along and asked: “Why are you standing here?” I’m waiting for the bus, said the boy. The business man chuckled and said, I hate to tell you, but this is not a bus stop. After a few more attempts by the businessman to dissuade him, the boy announced: I have faith that this is a bus stop.
    The business man shook his head and began to walk away.
    As he was walking away, he heard the sound of bus brakes behind him. He turned and saw a big bus stopping for the boy.
    As the boy was getting on the bus, he turned to the businessman and said: You see, Mister, the bus driver is my dad.”
    Faith is a relationship for better or worse. When we put our faith in what we know we know deep down, we are permitting the Light of Truth to enter, and we are involving ourselves with the Spirit of Truth. We yearn for it and we welcome God’s involvement in our life. In exchange for our yearning and trust, He helps us to change for the better and wordlessly guides us.
It’s not an emotional thing, it’s a deep soul yearning and turning to God. It’s an inclination of the soul. It’s obedience and a willingness to follow through with what we realize is right.
It leads to realizations and private revelations that give us more and more good reason for the way we are going. The good that we see happening all around us is the evidence of the faith we had, which was the substance of things not seen and not yet made.
   Indeed, the quiet faith does lead to a change in our physical being, evidenced by the happy sad emotion of repentance that purges us of error. We also have a quiet excitement over our discoveries, a joy, and a peace of mind that we cannot give ourselves. More often than not, real faith is trusting in a silent knowing, what we know deep down in our hearts.
   One mother will coldly and ambitiously send her child off to godless preschool or school where the child is taught and bullied by strangers and conformed to peers.
   Another mother will hear the cries of her child the first day she sends the child off to spend the day with strangers. But she will doubt her heart ache, ignore her intuition and believe and have faith in strangers and experts. Hardening her heart, she pushes the child onto the school bus anyway.
   Another mom will heed her wordless intuition and clasp her child close to her bosom. She will find a way to home school her child. This woman has faith. The still small voice, the quiet intuition is from God. This faithful mother may not know this, but what she does have is love for her child and a willingness to do what is right.
   It is said that the mind of man plans and schemes, but the Lord directs his feet. But this only for the soul that stands back from thinking, and listens to the heart. Despite the doubts, and though the whole world be arrayed against her, the faithful soul does what she knows deep down in her heart is right.
   But the wrong kind of faith—the one most of us have--is a hypnotic and emotional involvement with people, objects, words, or ideas. The ego responds to someone or something that holds our some sort of promise or appeal to it, and the response is excitement and an inclination toward that person or object. The result is an emotional response, a trauma, a physical change, and an imprinting of a memory. Emotion is the evidence of ego response.
   The response is also hypnotic. It is a rapport that develops between the object we are responding to and the ego. It is said that the Chinese characters for crisis are a combination of danger and opportunity. An ego appeal can be a promise of riches or power (opportunity), a form of gambling (danger and opportunity), a hint of a naughty affair (danger and opportunity), or a put down (danger to the bastion of the ego and perhaps a chance to prove itself), or just pain physical danger (threat of death or injury).
   The faithful soul is the one who is committed to what is right and so turned to the inner good that the external teases have no appeal.
   The faithless soul does not love what is right enough to not want to leave the door to the mind ever so slightly ajar, so as not to miss some titillating ego appeal. And when it makes its approach, the soul toys with it mentally, which already lets it in. Soon emotions and feelings begin to take hold and then the person acts on the feelings.
   The hypnosis is the hold that the appealing person or object has on the mind. Once the emotional bond and hypnosis sets in, thoughts and attitudes are transmitted through the emotional connection from one to another, and especially from the dominant stressor to the one who attention has been captured.
   Soon the hypnotized person may take on the thoughts, the mind, the attitudes, the beliefs of the tempting stressor that are projected his way. In short, the victim becomes identified with the dominant stress.
   That is why the captives of terrorists often become loyal to those that terrorized them. It’s called the Stockholm syndrome. That is why young people, who are easily appealed to with idealistic notions, can come under influence of a cult or cause to which they give their all, and from which it is almost impossible to loose them. People become identified and loyal to their pets, their team, even their drugs. The psychotic clings to what he has been converted to for life, for hope, for identity. And when he finally sees that he has been betrayed, he often clings to it in hate: going on hating it and unable to give up his grudge against it.
   Can you now understand why God commands us not to have any other gods before Him? Whatever we make too important, whatever we give ourselves to in love or hate, gains the power to rule us and we become its slave. Only God gives us freedom. Anything else can only enslave. Even if it is a mere object (we have resented or emotionally reacted to), it gains a terrible power over us even in our mind. An object cannot set you free. Even if another’s intent is not to enslave you (though often it is, because that is how they gain power over you), there is the enslavement in the mind: the obsession, the memory, the resentment.
   The only way to become free is to regret your making something too important and forgetting about your Creator. See what has happened, don’t resent your enslavement, and let go of the hate and resentment.
   The ultimate hold that things have over us stems from our own stubbornness. Something we don’t want to admit, something we still look to it for, or a resentment that keeps us trying to win, prove something, or get even.
   By standing back, we let go. Look at it this way: if something in the past keeps haunting you, there must be something that gives it a power over you. Remember, we said that the stubborn ego actually uses the memory to struggle with and hide in. The stubborn ego does not want to acknowledge dependence on God and submit to God. A complete reliance on, trust in, attachment to and loyalty to the Creator results in disinterested mental distance. But the unrepentant ego moves toward the person or object or notion that is appealing to it. Some sort of continuing desire, resentment, unforgiveness, or hope keeps the attached and enslaved. Think of it! The ego actually enslaves itself to something in order to avoid God.
   People and objects lose power over us when we stand back and no longer want their lies and no longer want anything from them. By standing back, we move closer to the Creator and farther from the creature.
   Now, getting back to whatever it is that still has a hold on you from the past. There has to be a continuing hold of some sort. Whatever it was that first enticed you to leave your first estate and venture into the world of beasts and drugs is long gone. What is it that now, at this very moment, keeps the attachment, memory and rapport alive? There has to be a present day something, involving the will--something you don’t want to admit or something you don’t want to let go of that keeps the attachment alive.
   Often it is something that we still want (power, money, respect, a happy home, or appreciation) that we just don’t want to let go of. We think back to the past where it was denied us, and we still want and resent not getting it.
   It can also be something we don’t want to admit: that mom didn’t love you, that you failed your child, that have failed in business. Not wanting to admit that this is true, you resent and struggle with the idea. But it keeps coming back to haunt you. If it suddenly became unimportant to you, it would lose energy and go away.
   Another factor is trying to make up for the loss we experienced in that moment when we think we lost respect, love, success or whatever. The memory of that moment comes to mind, we resent it, and then we are energized to strive and struggle to prove ourselves.
   The present moment factor that keeps the enslavement going is most likely a form of stubbornness: resentment (conscious stubbornness) or repression, anger, suppressed hostility (which are often unconscious), or striving to prove or obtain something.
   Another form of stubbornness is an unwillingness to admit something. As I said, it is often something like an unwillingness to admit that you hated your mom, for example. This unwillingness to admit the truth keeps you subject to lies and subject to having to serve that person in guilt. It can even keep us tied to someone after they die. We are not able to be set free because we won’t admit the truth.
   Perhaps now you can see that the soul’s unwillingness to admit that it is wrong keeps it subject to Satan. Pride’s unwillingness to admit wrong is the ultimate denial, and Satan is able to use it to enslave us. Related to this is pride’s unwillingness to give up the tinsel trappings and false hope of worldly success. The ego also clings to the hope of a cure. And when success or happiness is no longer a viable possibility, the ego clings to distractions and emotions that keep it from being bared to the Light of Truth which would devastate pride and dash illusions. The entire world is enslaved to whatever helps it deny the truth.
   Can you see why a willingness to admit wrong and be sorry in our heart is the key to getting better from whatever ails us and whatever has us in its grips?
   The principle of standing back and observing, with a sincere willingness lay down the life of pride will eventually set you free from everything. As a matter of fact, the very act of meditation combined with a willingness to admit wrong and to know the truth, regardless of the consequences, is already salvation. After this beginning, there will be a long period of seeing more and more wrongs and errors, seeing more and more subtle struggles, willfulness, denials, and little attachments to words and notions that support some sort of pridefulness. With each denial, resentment, attachment, false hope seen and let go of—one is progressively freer.
   Do you now understand what Christ meant when He said we must lay down the ego life and take up the spiritual life? Can you see what Paul meant when he said: I die daily? He meant that each day he lets go of that which maintains the ego life of pride apart from God.
   Bear in mind that resentment and judgment are the most subtle and insidious sustainers of pride. The ego life, to a large extent, consists of a secret fantasy life of judging others and resenting our luck and lot in life. Can you see how the ego uses knowledge of good and knowledge of evil to make judgments about others? Can you see how resentment can maintain a whole ego life built around some incident that we keep resenting and which sustains the pride to keep living in hate?

   Can you see how the devil himself was traumatized by his hatred of God and good, and now lives on informally hating over and over again anything good?
   Can you now see why we must not resent anyone or anything? If you do, you are likely to Can you now see how an appeal—sometimes extremely subtle, such as a little come on or a hint of meanness, can cause something to enter the mind? And then, toying with the notion, the victim can then search out more experience to find out if there is more there, to be sure about something, or to struggle with it?
   Once a suggestion enters, we often keep toying with it. If it’s negative, we try to find a way to defeat it or counter it. The victim may get so involved that he or she may spend a lifetime trying to disprove it. Often the victim is converted over to the notion, if he or she cannot find the way to completely disprove it.
   The emotionally and hypnotically and traumatically created follower or believer is a mindless slave of the cause, cult or idea. Completely converted over, through the trauma of emotional belief, the victim becomes a rabid groupie. Islamic terrorists, follower of Hitler or various causes are among this group. The fanatic can also be converted over to an otherwise true or good idea. Environmentalism, concern for animals, or a noble religion like Christianity have both reasonable and commonsensical adherents, as well as hypnotic fanatics. The fanatics give the cause a bad name.
   Once again, the faith that stems from involvement with people, objects, words, or imagination is emotional hypnotic. It is ego involvement based on emotional response to an ego appeal.
   The true faith in God is unemotional. It is based on awareness, whereby the soul stands back from experience and observes calmly and neutrally from a little distance. In the Light of Truth, the soul sees the fatal appeal and shrinks from it without reacting, without assenting or rejecting. It remains distant and impervious.
   Standing in the Light, the souls sees in the Light. Remember, the analogy I gave earlier about how love is not looking into each others eyes, but together both looking at the sunset.
   A little child will not be afraid to investigate a noise in the dark if he is holding his daddy’s hand and together they get a flashlight and go to look.
   When the soul locates the inner light (which it now knows as conscience or intuition), loves that light, and wants to remain aware in the Light, will then view things without being disturbed by them or being sucked into them. Aloof, wondering in the light, not tempted to get involved or sucked in, the soul is safe. The light reveals deception, and the soul does not follow.
   The ego which avoids the shaming Light (because it is unwilling to be humbled) is forced to deal with and grapple with things on its own. Being an ego, it simply cannot help but deal with things in an egotistical way. It worries, analyzes, decides, and falls into error. And because it is subjective, it looks at everything for a mindset of what will preserve or promote pride. It simply cannot see that the lying support or the offer that’s true good to be true is in fact a lie and a deception. It errors, falls in love and falls in hate. And it suffers from an ever deepening and enslaving involvement with people, objects, words, knowledge and substances.

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