The Power of Faith - How to Lead a More Fulfilling Life

"Faith is a quality endowed with a most potent creative power", said Helen P. Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy.

You can read the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews to see what faith can do: it can show us the origin of this world we live in, it can put us on a harmonious relationship with God, it made Enoch escape death, man's most dreadful enemy, it saved Noah and a remnant of humanity from complete extinction, it gave Abraham a child through a barren woman, from whom innumerable descendants sprang, it saved Joseph and his brothers and their families from famine, it enabled Moses to form a new nation from the descendants of 12 brothers, it gave the Israelites courage to successfully invade Canaan, the land promised to them, it raised the dead to life, etc.

Faith is indeed powerful. It was by faith that we came into this world. Our parents believed that by their sexual union we would be born and they were right. We too produce our children by faith.

Faith is most necessary in leading a more fulfilling life. How is this done, how does the power of faith help us to lead a more fulfilling life?

Everyone Has Faith

There is no human being who has no faith. Atheists and agnostics are not exempted from this statement. They too have faith.

Faith is simply sure and certain knowledge of realities that are not visible to our physical eyes and reason, like knowledge of our worth, our talents, and our capacities. And everybody has this knowledge. The little child did not see itself coming out from the womb of its mother but it has faith that this or that woman is its mother. The atheist has faith that his ideas are correct though nobody can see these ideas in his head. So also with the agnostics, they too have faith in their learning.

I remember a famous correspondence between Fr. John Catoir and avowed agnostic Carl Sagan which lasted for more than 2 years. In this exchange of letters Fr. Catoir was insisting that Carl had no faith. In his explanation Fr. Catoir said that this man was unable to make the leap of faith. This is not true. Carl had faith. He had faith that the letter he wrote would reach Fr. Catoir, even if he did not see the priest opening his letter. Perhaps it is more true to say that Carl had no faith in the God portrayed by the priest, because the image of this God was foreign to the expectations of Carl of what God should be.

Faith Is Powerful

Faith enables us to live normal lives. By faith we know that tomorrow there is another day, although we never see the turning of the earth on its axis. It is by faith that we recognize our parents, our older brothers and sisters, our nationality, our community. It is by faith that we go to school believing that there we will learn reading, writing, arithmetic and the complexities of these three basic skills. It is by faith that we choose our work, our partner in life, our residences, our travels, our recreations.

Faith Leads Us to Lead a More Fulfilling Life

By a more fulfilling life is meant a life that is free of disturbing stress, that is more and more productive, in harmony with family members, relatives, and others. It is a life that enriches others and you know that this is so. It is one that feels and displays compassion for others, a source of encouragement for others, provides meaning to one's life and the lives of others, encouraging them to go on with life.

A more fulfilling life is one where a healthy ego or self-image is being developed, balanced in diet and exercise with self-discipline and self-control, productive, a life that makes you inventive and creative, bringing joy to others, and taking more and more control of your life.

A more fulfilling life is one where failures are looked upon not as a reflection of our incapacity but as reflection of our creativity to know the right way of doing things, as experiences for learning and growth.

It is a life of humility in success because you know by faith that it is not you who has accomplished the success but the Spirit in you.

Such is a more fulfilling life. And it is the power of faith that leads us to this kind of life.

It is faith in a being who is the origin of all that we see, one who loves us so much as to bring us to this existence or series of life, one who sustains us everyday with all the things around us. It is basically this faith which leads us to a more fulfilling life because by this we know where we came from, we know where we are going to and we know the way how to get there.

Maybe an example of such a more fulfilling life produced by the power of faith will bring home my point.

The example I refer to is George Washington Carver (1864-1943) who was born a slave and later exchanged for a racehorse as an infant. He met many difficulties in life, even getting out of slavery, going into school, teaching and doing research. But he enriched our lives by providing crops as alternative to the production of cotton which depleted the soil, inventing 145 products made from the lowly peanuts, and more than a 100 more from sweet potato, uplifting the Negro race. He achieved fame and was given many awards even many years after his death.

At the end of it all Carver said that God guided his research. He was criticized for making this statement. But it was his faith in himself and God which make his life more fulfilling both for himself and others. He said on many occasions that his faith in Jesus was the only way by which he could effectively do his research in science.

I want to end this article by quoting a passage written by an anonymous author which encapsulates what I have written here:
"Believe in yourself and in your plan, Say not - I cannot - I can, The prizes of life we fail to win, Because we doubt the power within...". Never doubt the power within. It is that which leads you to a more fulfilling life.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

How to Find the Beauty of Life in Nature

"We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts", said William Hazlitt. And so to find the beauty of life in nature we need another pair of eyes, one that is better than our pair of physical eyes.

The Eyes of Poetry

Poets have better eyes than us when it comes to seeing beauty of life in nature. They see more than most of us can see. We see a flower, they see a whole world unfolding before their eyes. We see a pile of garbage the poets see lush vegetation. We see a tree, the poets see a person praying all day. We see daffodils, the poets see stars.

We need to borrow their eyes to see beauty in nature. We do this by reading their poems. We read Joyce Kilmer's "Tree", Wordsworth's "Daffodils", John Keats' "Endymion", etc. As we read these poems a whole new world opens before our eyes, the world as seen by these seers of nature. They lead us to the hidden beauty of nature.

The Eyes of Science

Science is another key to discovering the beauty of life in nature. In science we realize the immensity, the diversity of nature. We discover plants and other organisms that never die by themselves. They continue to live unless destroyed by man or by a major disaster. Bamboos, banyan trees, water spinach are immortal plants. We discover plants that continue to have green leaves until they die like some species of pepper.

Science tells us that the ground teems with life and everywhere life is being multiplied in countless ways. Life is just superabundant when we look at nature.

One time as I was traveling I was struck by the fact that vegetation abounds everywhere and life is taking on different forms in all places.

If we have a microscope we can peer into the beautiful symmetry of the cells and their different parts, beauty that is not seen by our naked eyes.

We use the eyes of science in finding the beauty of life in nature by reading articles on nature such as we find in magazines like National Geographic Magazine.

The Eyes of Faith

These eyes of faith refer to those eyes which are given to us by the Owner of nature. We have been endowed with these eyes though we may not be aware of it because of the culture around us, a culture which pushes us to acknowledge only what is visible to our physical eyes. There is more to life than can be seen by our bodily eyes or reason. Reality that is hidden to our bodily eyes may be fully revealed to us through the eyes of faith. Faith is the sure or certain knowledge of invisible reality. Those of us who have faith know for certain that God is real. How do we cultivate the eyes of faith to find the beauty of life in nature?

1. Live with nature. Live in a rural area if this is possible. If you cannot live in a field but have been forced by circumstances to live in the upper floor of a condominium, bring at least a pot of plant into your room.

2. Listen to nature. Listen to the noise or music of the crickets, of the frogs, of the wind, of the typhoon, of the rain, of the thunder, of the swaying of leaves, etc.

3. Talk with nature. Experiments have shown that plants grow better when a human person speaks with them regularly. Nature has a way of conversing with you if you carry on a conversation with it. Most of us think that plants and animals cannot understand what we say to them. They may not be able to understand the words but they certainly understand the attitude with which those words are spoken.

4. Cultivate nature. Plant a vegetable. When I was young I planted eggplants. I observed them. I talked with them. I knew what happens from the seed of an eggplant to an old eggplant tree. Today I am fascinated by the banyan tree whose seeds I find almost anywhere I go. I notice that these seeds have intelligence all their own. When I put two seeds on the branch of a tree one of them would fall down. No matter how carefully I put the two seeds, only one would remain on the branch of a tree to grow there.

5. Rest with nature. If possible take a vacation with nature. Bring a tent and simple provisions to last for a few days and rest in a secluded forested area. I like to rest in our farm where I can commune once again with my old time friends, the trees, the fish, the birds, the plants. Nature is restorative, reinvigorating. If you cannot do this go to a park planted with trees. Or have some days in a beach.

6. Walk with nature. Go out in the woods and walk some distance into a forest. There you will find life in all its richness. When I did this I was surprised by the size of the trees in the forest. I never thought such huge trees existed.

7. Read the book LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: SAVING OUR CHILDREN FROM NATURE-DEFICIT DISORDER by Richard Louv. You will learn here the necessity of being connected with nature. Nature is as necessary to our health and well-being as the food we eat.

8. Pray with nature. Follow the example of Jesus who prayed in a garden, in a desert, in a mountain. Faith grows best with prayer because in prayer we talk to the Invisible One. This Invisible source of all that is visible makes our faith grow. As our faith grows we see more of the beauty of life in nature.

The eyes of poetry, the eyes of science, and the eyes of faith enable us to discover the beauty of life in nature. Let us use these eyes in addition to the physical eyes we have.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Connecting With Spirits - How to Connect With the Supernatural

When I was a boy our family radio was stolen. After days of investigating who the thief was, he or she was not identified. Somebody suggested that we use the Ouija board to help us identify the thief. Sure enough the Ouija board spelled out the name of the thief. She was our neighbor. But the neighbor denied that she was the thief.

Connecting With Spirits Through the Ouija Board

Ouija board is a way of connecting with spirits. When we used the Ouija board on that occasion to identify the thief, we invoked the spirit of Jose Rizal, the Philippine national hero who was executed for treason against the Spanish government in Manila. On other occasions we would invoke the spirit of the glass. We used a drinking glass rather than a planchette to point to the letters in the alphabet and numbers.

The Ouija board game is so popular that there are warnings from well-informed persons of the dangers of using this method to contact the spirits. Most of the warning comes from evangelical Christians. Psychologists on the other hand say that the movement of pointing to the letters of the alphabet and numbers is done by the subconscious mind of those participating in this game.

My opinion is that using the Ouija board to connect with the spirits is dangerous. While playing this game it is possible that some evil spirits will possess the participants and force them to do involuntary actions. There have been reports where this possession of spirits occurred.

To Connect With Spirits Unlearn

If you want to really connect with spirits and the supernatural in a safe way you need first to unlearn some things, especially if you have been educated through the Western system of education.

In the Western system of education we were taught that the world is composed of living and non-living things. We learned this in our high school biology and chemistry. This idea goes back to Aristotle who was instrumental in classifying the many plants and animals around us. Many of us memorized the phyla and families of these plants and animals.

We have to unlearn this idea of dividing things into living and non-living. The truth is that all things are living, even the dust we step on our way to work. Some primitive people, like the Mangyans of Mindoro, Philippines, instinctively know this truth that all things, even the stones, are living. They have not gone through this Western type of education.

All things are living because there is a spirit in all of them or, to put it in another way, all things are in spirit. There is no way something or somebody cannot be in spirit and yet exist. Just as matter occupies space or is in space, so also anything, whether matter or energy or anything else, is in spirit.

A person trained in Aristotelian logic may insist: But if you do not distinguish between living and non-living things, then what do you call the person who dies? Is he still living when you know that he is already dead, non-living?

My answer to that is that the person has stopped breathing, his body parts have ceased to function but he is still living. He has gone to another mode of living, and his body has gone into another mode of living because the body is still there although we call it a corpse.

Another idea we have to unlearn is the division of beings into natural and supernatural. We were taught in our religion classes that natural beings are the beings we can perceive with our senses and our reason. Supernatural beings are those divine and angelic beings, the spirits whom we cannot perceive by our senses and reason alone.

This division is misleading because we think that supernatural beings are above us in space and in ability. The prefix “super” literally means “above” in the original Latin. It makes us imagine that they are up there in the heavens and they can do more, much more than what we can do.

Experience tells us that the so-called supernatural world, the spirit world, is just around us, not just above us. We are in it and it is in us. As Jesus said, The kingdom of God is within you.

Having gotten rid of these two ideas of the division of things into living and non-living, and the division of beings into natural and supernatural, we now know that all things are living, are infused with spirit, and that we are living in a supernatural world and the spirits are living in our natural world. The so-called natural and supernatural worlds intermingle. There is really no need to distinguish them.

Spirits Are Always in Contact With Us

Having learned this truth and having been convinced of this reality, we now know that the spirits are always in contact with us. The analogy I can think of to illustrate this point is the analogy of the electromagnetic waves.

Electromagnetic waves are all around us and go through us. They are the medium of radio and TV waves. Without the radio or TV receiver we would not know their existence by our five senses. But a live radio or TV functions because of these electromagnetic waves.

So also the spirits are all around us. It is we who fail to acknowledge their presence because of our upbringing. Because they are all around us we can connect with them anytime as long as we go on the spiritual mode. Just like we can connect with the radio station anytime as long as our receiver is on the same frequency as that of the radio station. But contacting the spirits is not like contacting our neighbors through our speech or bodies. Spirits do not have mouths or bodies. But they have intelligence, thoughts. We contact them by giving them our thoughts. We project to them our thoughts and they project to us their thoughts.

How We Connect With the Spirits

In the beginning of living in the spirit, burning incense, periods of deep meditation, chanting a mantra may help us in invoking the palpable action of the spirits upon us. But as we progress in our spiritual living communication with the spirits become habitual and simply natural and normal.

We communicate with Spirit God, the spirit angels or messengers, the spirits of persons dead or alive, the spirits of animals, of plants, of minerals, of earth elements. We do this simply by passing to them our thoughts, our ideas. Then they answer us by passing to us their thoughts, their ideas.

How do you know you are really communicating with the spirits and not just imagining that you are communicating with them? You know because you are in a spiritual mode, meaning you are on the same level or frequency with them. Just like you know that the radio is connected to the station because its receiver is on the same frequency as that of the radio station and sound is being produced from your radio.

All this is done by faith. Just as we see things through our body with our eyes, so also we see things through our spirit by our faith. Faith is the spiritual vision. Faith is the knob we turn to tune in to the spirit world. By faith we listen to what the spirits are telling us. Just as we were born normally with eyes to see, so also we exist as spirits normally equipped with faith to see spiritual things. The more we use this faculty or ability of faith, the more useful it is for us.

First, we think of the spirit we wish to contact. Then, we communicate with him our thought by just telling him our idea through our mind. Then we pause and listen in our mind for the idea from the spirit. The idea from the spirit will come. That is how simple it is. But we do this by faith and in faith.

There is no need to use the Ouija board to connect with spirits, with the supernatural. We have faith. We simply use it.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

How to Start Your Spiritual Journey

Welcome aboard on a spiritual journey! You may be wondering what a spiritual journey is. Well, it is the most exciting of all journeys and it is better than all other journeys combined. I hope to tell you here how you can start your spiritual journey. But first let us know what a spiritual journey is.

A spiritual journey can be known by comparing it with other kinds of journeys. Let us compare it with physical and mental journeys.

Physical, Mental and Spiritual Journeys Compared

In a physical journey we have a physical destination. It does not matter how near or how far that destination is. There is a place, a physical destination where a journey will end. It may be the next town, or the next country, a city halfway around the globe, or the next planet, or even a far away star. No matter what it is, there is a physical destination.

In a mental journey there is also a destination. Our mind will come to dwell on something. It might be the ideas of wise men who lived centuries before us, like Socrates or Aristotle. Our mind will travel to the time when they had these ideas. It is a destination in time, back to the time of the men and women who produced the ideas that we want to dwell on.

In a physical journey we need to have a physical means to get to our destination. It may be our feet, a bicycle, a car, a train, a boat or an airplane, or a rocket plane or a combination of any of these. We include also the food while we are in this or that kind of transportation.

In a mental journey we need also to have mental means to get to our mental destination. This usually consists of our brain, our mind, our imagination, our emotions, the books around us, the men and women who knew the men whose ideas we want our mind to come to.

Furthermore in a physical and mental journey we need to have a purpose why we want to get there, even if it is just to satisfy our curiosity, just to see the place or feel the feelings of those men involved in a story or drama.

And when we embark upon a journey for the first time we need to have a guide, either a person from whom we can ask ideas about our destination and the means to get there, or one who will go with us like a tourist guide, or at least a map or written direction where to start, what transportation to take, the sign or signs that tell us we shall have reached our destination.

If you want to start your spiritual journey you need to know these: your destination, the means to get there, the purpose why you want to get there, a guide to help you get there. These are the elements of a journey and they are all present in a physical, mental, or spiritual journey.

The destination in a spiritual journey is the world of the spirits, and ultimately the Original Spirit himself. If the destination of a physical journey is a place, that of a mental journey ideas in time, the destination of a spiritual journey is a spiritual one, the world of the spirits and ultimately the Original Spirit from whom all came from.

The means to get to the world of the spirits and the Original Spirit consists of spiritual means. These are basically faith, hope and love that work in solitary prayer.

The purpose of a spiritual journey can also be curiosity, but more than this, it is to enjoy life to the fullest possible that we can attain.

The guide on a spiritual journey may be a spiritual person who himself has undertaken this journey or the written guides left by spiritual persons, like the Bible for Christians, the Qur’an for Muslims, the Trepitaka of Buddhism, or the Bhagavad Gita of the Hindus.

Are You Ready to Undertake a Spiritual Journey?

After learning something about the elements of this journey you need to ascertain whether you are ready to undertake this journey on your own. Children do not usually undertake a physical journey on their own. They need adults to accompany them. A certain level of maturity is needed to undertake even just a physical journey on one’s own.

So also you need to have a certain spiritual maturity in order to undertake the spiritual journey on your own. How do you know you have this maturity? In a physical journey usually the age and the educational background of a person are considered. In a spiritual journey, your spiritual age and knowledge of spiritual things are also to be considered. How do you know you have reached this spiritual age since it is not measured by years, unlike in physical age? You will know that you have reached this spiritual age if you have fallen in love with your God, just as in normal life falling in love with someone is an indication that you have reached a certain physical degree of maturity.

The Greatest of All Journeys

And why do I say that you are undergoing the greatest of all journeys when you start on a spiritual journey? It is because in a spiritual journey you are going to a place which is no place at all but a presence in all the places in the universe and you are going to a time which is not a time but an eternity which includes all time, from past to present to future. For the spirit is not bound by space and time, and you are going to that place of the spirit who transcends space and time. Briefly put, in a spiritual journey you are going to all places and to all times. This cannot be done in a physical journey because you only have one body. As a body you can be present only at one place in one time. But with the spirit you can be present to all places at the same time. An analogy may help clarify this if you have ridden a plane.

When you ride in a plane you begin by being present in the airport. When your plane goes up the air you leave the airport but you begin to look at the place surrounding the airport. Now you begin to see more places at once, not just the airport, a single place. By your vision you are present to all these places below you at the same time. So also by spirit you can be present to all of creation when you go beyond them.

Starting This Journey

And how do you start this journey? Assuming that you have fallen in love with the Original Spirit in whatever manifestation he has revealed himself to you, you take his personal guide or the written guides left by spiritual men and women of all ages. Each person will take a different kind according to his preference.

In my case my guides were the Christian Bible and the written works of Juan de Yepes Alvarez, a spiritual man who lived in the 16th century.

May I share with you the prescription of this man as you begin this journey. He said that if you want to reach your spiritual destination in a very short time you need to take these steps: 1. Desire to have pleasure in nothing; 2. Desire to possess nothing; 3. Desire to be nothing, and 4. Desire to know nothing.

If you have an acquaintance with Buddhism these prescriptions of Juan de Yepes Alvarez are like those in Buddhism, where we are urged not to desire anything because desire is the cause of suffering.

The most practical advice I can give you as you start your spiritual journey is to desire above all to reach and be united with the Original Spirit and to desire nothing that may hinder you in reaching this goal. Do not desire material goods, physical pleasure, mental enjoyment or any kind of pleasure if this will hinder you in reaching your goal, union with the Original Spirit.

Bon voyage on your spiritual journey.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritdev for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.