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So I was thining about the type of faith it's required to have to literally be like Jesus.. Then I came across the idea that there are many types of faith, in multiple religions.. each type of faith is a bit different.. There is faith in your fellow man.. Faith in ideals, ideas and in goodness in general.. There of course is the opposite type of faith.. which is in Evil.. dictators, unholymen.. the idea of survival of the fittest.. For example that cute lamb dies to a Lion.. The laws of nature and the circle of life! I think Taoism is mostly about that circle of life.. Finding and sensing the way in everything.. and is a stable for good ethics.. But I've never heard of a Taoist that can perform miracles. But one would assume that miracles too have a root in the Tao.. or that the Tao is the miracle itself..!! So what do you guys think of faith in anywhere it can be applied.. and specfically being a Taoist and what role faith plays in your life..?

Believing vs. Knowing There are things that we know and there are things that we believe. The two are not the same. In my observation, we treat believing as knowing in proxy, i.e. if we believe enough then belief becomes like knowledge to us. Belief and knowledge become fungible, interchangeable. This is quite comforting. It soothes pain, gives stability, provides continuity and makes life much better. This is a good thing. But despite its goodness, believing is not he same as knowing. I think this is important to remember.

The words that follow are an ongrowing process in me. Understanding comes, I see a little more, more understanding comes, the process continues. What I have learned may be the secret of the universe. But I will make no such claims. I will call this, "The Keys to the Kingdom" and leave it at that. Before we begin there is something you need to accept about yourself. It is a very esoteric, intangible concept that you hear in all the major religions. It is simply this... You create your reality. The world as it is to you at this moment in your life is exactly the way you made it, or where you have not actively been involved in its making you allowed it to change to the way it is or continue the way it was. You either chose to change it to what it is, or you chose not to change it, leaving it as it was. The world will be some combination of these two, mirrored back to you. A personal example, something I just realized tonight, is in order. I was struggling with something on my dad's laptop. This is the computer I use, although it is technically. I got so frustrated I put my head in my hands, signed, and said my life sucks. I felt, in that moment, every other moment I have ever felt frustrated and unhappy in my life. I felt low. While I do not get depressed as I used to, I got pretty close to as low as I can get now. Then I realized something, some more pieces came to me tonight as I was watching Gregg Braden's, "The Silence of Miracles." I highly recommend this video. In any case I realized, felt even, what he had been saying about what he calls, "The 5th modality of prayer." I created, in that moment, the sucky life I have, until now, always felt I had. I basically reinforced a life where I am miserable, where I struggle through things - an unsatisfying life of constant frustration! Now I realize, in order to break this pattern I have to feel as I felt on good days, for me the most recent was during a very long bike ride when I crossed paths with a beautiful girl who gave me the most dazzling smile I have ever in my life received. I felt that smile inside me, it stuck with me, even thinking about it now just makes everything lighter! When I started my whole spiritual journey, away from my faith and towards something, other, well I learned initially about creating mental movies in Maxwell Maltz's, "Psycho-Cybernetics." Then I learned about affirmations in Jack Canfield's work. Then I discovered the root of the power of change as being intention. Intention, guided by mindset, driven by belief, is where it all starts folks. You will read this also in Wayne Dyer and many other books. As I am learning about the path of Magick I am certain I will find that it is the driving force behind that sort of work. In fact I think rituals and all the dressings we apply are not necessary in the end. It ultimately comes down to simple intention. Ritual helps to focus the mind, center on belief, probably more than I intend to look into at this moment. I choose instead to get down to brass tacks and K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple Stupid. So today what may be the last, but it certainly the next, piece, clicked into place. It's about feeling as if it has already happened. I wrote this, may put it in my signature. I have titled it, "Truth": "If you say you don't want it, Then you will receive it. If you ask for it or demand it, You will never get it. If you choose it, It will come slowly. But if you feel it, As if it already exists, As if it is real and true, Then it will manifest." I was at the stage where I had learned not to state what I don't want, but instead state what I do want. I had moved slightly past this to simply stating what I choose. But I believe this is the next, final and highest level. It goes beyond asking, demanding and even choosing. Now we involve feeling. I'm pretty sure if this is combined with a mental movie, so that you are feeling what you want to accomplish and seeing it accomplished in your mind's eye at the same time, you can do pretty much anything. Of course you have to believe in yourself and the process. I can, in a sense, give you a set of wings here. But you can't use them to fly anywhere unless you believe you can fly. My goal in sharing this is to open up this subject to development, discussion, and experimentation. To fine tune this method, to sharpen it's edge, until it is a surgical and precise instrument of desired change. You may be surprised to know that whatever your faith, you can use this method. For example, for Christians this method is called prayer. This is the true definition and practice of prayer. This may be called magick for a magician. I'm not sure what a Buddhist or Yogi would call it. I don't need a label for it myself, it is simply a tool, built from a variety of sources, which is proving to be more and more valuable, to me, every day. So, the process, simply explained, using, once again, a personal example. This example I am about to share is what I plan to do for myself. I may adjust it and change it, but the goal is the same. I want to gain control of my dreams and astral project. I will probably focus on just one of these. What I am going to do is to write a script for a mental movie, for say astral projection, where I see myself leave the body, go away somewhere, and return. During these stages I will feel, everything I have read others feel, everything I think I would feel, I will inundate this script, coat it, with positive feelings. The driving force behind this script is my desire and intention to astral project. I have had trouble remembering leaving my body and being away in the past. I have, actually, only one memory away from the body, and that was of talking to a man on a park bench. Or that is what I thought I remembered. Most of the time I would just do what Bruce Moen refers to as a "click out." I would usually feel myself slamming into my body (very strange sensation) so I knew I was away, but I would retain no other memory of my experiences. So for me if I went into this thinking about what I want, I would emphasize that I don't, at this moment, have it. This is what Mr. Bradon points out. It's another trap, the first for most being in stating what you don't want, which puts a lot of energy, in this case negative energy, into whatever it is you don't want, causing that to manifest. This is the other side of the coin then. You put all this energy into what you do what, but you are, in the processes, emphasizing your lack of it, which at the very least will delay what you want from happening but may mostly just undermine it. So instead you have to think only positively about what it is you wish to accomplish, feeling as if you already have it, and this leaves no negative energy in the equation to screw things up. Now if you're like me you're probably saying, "but that's lying!" Think about this a moment (I did.) If you create your reality, if you are ultimately responsible for your experience of the world, then how could you be lying? If you chose to create your current experience, then you can choose to create another experience, and in the process of creating an experience you make it true. This is hard to explain, I will try to clarify it later. Essentially it is not about you lying, it is about you creating. You created the current truth, so you can create another. If you are really struggling with this then use a memory of a time when something happened, or do as I intend to do and create a possible future memory when what you want has happened. Make sure whatever you do, that you are not thinking of terms of, "I don't want this" or "I do want that" but instead are simply experiencing the joys of whatever it is you are seeking to manifest. And, to make this harder, do so without attachment to any outcome. Remember there may be other determining forces in what I call the "Mechanisms of the Universe" that, however well you set your intention and pray, decide that whatever it is you are trying to manifest should not be granted to you at this time. That's OK. You can pray as much as you like. The wheels move slowly, but they do move. Understand that you will receive whatever it is you wish to manifest, at the right moment in your life for you to have it. Other forces, some call him God, are in control of that, seeing everything in the big picture. So you have to remember to start by changing your mindset, how you view your life and the world around you. You have to work on yourself inside. There is a lifetime of inner work for us all to do in ourselves. Eventually you will be unattached to the world, its outcomes. When bad things happen you realize that they don't really affect you at all. You are able to forgive, to let go, to free yourself. Then, when you pray, whether or not you get what you prayed for, you will not be discouraged if whatever it is you prayed about does not happen. You will continue to pray, finding a happiness within yourself that does not depend on exterior circumstances. Well there is a lot more to inner work part of this. As I am in that process even now I don't know enough to say more about it. Hopefully I have clearly shown you the bare-bones process of true prayer. How to create something you want in your life or the lives of others. Understand that prayers unselfishly directed towards others probably have more power than prayers directed towards yourself, unless you are praying for needed inner changes to improve yourself. This information is very important. If Bradon is correct, we may have had it twice in the past and lost it. So save this thread. Better yet, if you are more experienced in these matters than I, post here and improve it. Namaste! - DreamBliss