Home | Community | Message Board
You are not signed in.
Sign In New Account
Forum Index Search Posts Trusted Vendors Highlights Galleries FAQ User List Chat Store Random Growery

Original Seeds Store
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.

General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
Threaded Mode Threaded  Previous topic Previous  View all topics Index  Next topic Next 

Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   MagicBag.co Certified Organic All-In-One Grow Bags by Magic Bag   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
Faith vs Belief
    #2850378 -

I just wanted to put this out there and get some feed back...

Ok in my mind these are two different things. Belief is an opinion, its what you think is right, but you dont really know... and Faith in my opinion, is not a belief, not even a fact, its a state of being. In the faith state your beliefs might achieve more of a quality of rightness/trueness but they are still subjective in their nature, they may feel objective, but you cant really know, but they feel true to you atleast. In the faith state though you have let go, given yourself up and its not something you can decide to do. You can decide to try (maybe) but when it happens...it happens by "grace" of god, the one, the whole, the tao...whatever. It happens when it must and not before.

In the last few years, in my personal exploration..i had done alot of reading about quantum theory, cosmology, all that crap, philosophies of all kinds, and religions especially eastern. I had formed a personal life/religious philosophy out of all this and my other experiences and that is what i believed, thats how i thought it was, i didnt think i had it all, or even all right, but for the most part i believed thats how things were.

After my first shroom trip while coming down i had a brief moment that i can only describe as a very small and shallow kensho moment..in that moment everything i had thought to be, wasnt just a thought, or a belief anymore..it was now fact (to me atleast). It took on some knew level of trueness till that moment i hadnt known was possible. It kinda suprised me, i was sure before that all that was what i did indeed believe, but now here i was faced with the realization thats how it actually was (generally speaking, and before i had just believed thats how it was. This moment i would call faith, or atleast a taste of the faith state.

Several months later i had another moment, non drug related, that happened shortly after i had begun meditating regularly. I have described this moment in detail in other posts so i wont do it here. Go look at the strangest non drug experience thread if u want the details. Anyways in this moment one of the things that happpend is a physical sensation swept over me, tingly kind of, and in that instant i knew...i knew everything. Couldnt begin to articulate it, but i knew it...at the very least i was convinced i knew it. I persisted very strongly in that state for the next few weeks, minus the tinglyness and the holy shit! feeling i had when it first hit me.

I had zero fear...zero doubt, was the most content and happy i have ever been in my entire life, all because in one moment i had forgotten myself..or realized my true nature. I let myself go (completely on accident) i surrendered to "it". I didnt choose to do it, hell i dont think i could have stopped it. Thats what i think faith is...its a state of being like being in love..its tangible almost, not an opinion, or a fact, or a belief, its a state of being.

I think the truely enlightened are those that persist in this state. And i wonder about christains and other people who claim to have "faith". I have no doubt they have belief...but faith, im more skeptical of. At best i acknowledge that the experience isnt all that uncommon, but to "HAVE" it as if they were persisting in that state...i cant help but highly doubt (in most cases), and in my personal opinion i think most likely they are mistaking belief for faith, or a moment of faith for "having faith".

So anyways those are my thoughts on faith vs belief and remember im just stating an opinion here, not claiming any of this to be some objective truth if such a thing exists..just my own lil subjective take on things. A very hypocritical one at that since i really believe that it is wrong to make any judgements of anykind, ofcourse thats paradox since that itself is a judgement. Or maybe its just all semantics...maybe thats all we have left to argue.

Sincerely,
That which is, and has no choice but to be.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
what is Faith & Belief [Re: ZenGecko]
    #2850402 -

the special times (epiphanies) that you mentioned, in which you were connected with no-fear etc. do have a little to do with your faith and with your belief in that you got to these states *under your own steam*.

the faith or belief (premise etc) is like the background force which you can use to power your way to some direction (like an inboard jet engine).

we refer to it as faith and belief, because there is *no time at that moment to analyse it*, instead you use the strongly organized mentation of it, conduct etc., for expedience - to achieve something of value, under your own steam. (like buying batteries charged by someone else or earlier by yourself - these batteries can power a radio or computer as needed)

at a more leisurely time the faith or belief can be effectively dismantled and re-mantled at your convenience, but when packaged up and installed, faith is a useful commodity, in that it helps us to be well behaved and effective human instruments.

Those two special states you described are among accessible experiences, and if sought, they become more and more accessible.

They are like faith only in that you do not need to ratiocinate or rationalize them at the time you are in contact otherwise they are poles apart.

I speculate that enlightened ones have easy access to higher states of mind, and regularly dismantle and remantle their faith based upon insights from the higher consciousness experiences. I do not belive there is any permanent abiding in the infinite for humans, since we do need to get up and eat etc.

Edited by redgreenvines (07/02/04 07:10 AM)

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: what is Faith & Belief [Re: redgreenvines]
    #2850471 -

Umm...ok...but what im saying is that faith is not the moment or the realization/insight itself, it is the state of being at the moment, and that a belief is just a thought or an opinion, not so much an actual state of being.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: what is Faith & Belief [Re: ZenGecko]
    #2850519 -

yeah you could say that the belief is the idea part of the whole scheme,
and the faith part is the pressurized moment or propulsion, the investment in the belief, which powers the little guy to get something done.

meantime the cosmic experience is when the little guy re-connects with the big guy, and after that a few things can get fixed up in the belief department... etc.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Faith vs Belief [Re: ZenGecko]
    #2850631 -

"give us this day our daily faith,
but deliver us from our beliefs"

(attributed to alan watts)


--------------------
old enough to know better
not old enough to care

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Faith vs Belief [Re: ZenGecko]
    #2850657 -

"Faith is an openness and willingness to accept the truth, whenever it shall appear and whatever it may be. Belief, on the other hand, is a ferverent hope that one already knows the truth."

Alan Watts


--------------------


:poison: Dark Triangles - New Psychedelic Techno Single - Listen on Soundcloud :poison:
Gyroscope full album available SoundCloud or MySpace

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Faith vs Belief [Re: Ped]
    #2851096 -

  :thumbup:

Watts knew what he was talking about :wink:


--------------------
Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Faith vs Belief [Re: trendal]
    #2851498 -

watts knew how to be empty and how to talk

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Faith vs Belief [Re: redgreenvines]
    #2851940 -

watts knew how to be empty and how to talk

Watts knew how to empty a bottle of Jack Daniels...


--------------------



The proof is in the pudding.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   MagicBag.co Certified Organic All-In-One Grow Bags by Magic Bag   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder

General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
Threaded Mode Threaded  Previous topic Previous  View all topics Index  Next topic Next 

Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* The Unprovable Nature of Faith and Belief
( 1 2 all )		 DoctorJ 3,003 33 08/11/03 07:13 AM
by fireworks_god
* faith Huehuecoyotl 2,027 14 07/05/04 03:47 AM
by Hooty
* faith
( 1 2 3 all )		 Senor_Doobie 3,464 40 10/17/03 11:56 AM
by Phluck
* The difference between Faith and Blind Faith.
( 1 2 all )		 JacquesCousteau 5,545 38 03/20/05 05:24 PM
by gettinjiggywithit
* When does a belief become a delusion?
( 1 2 all )		 MOTH 3,796 29 09/15/04 05:21 AM
by redgreenvines
* Faith.
( 1 2 3 4 all )		 Phluck 5,191 63 01/03/03 04:42 AM
by Phluck
* Adopting Beliefs
( 1 2 all )		 Swami 2,776 22 03/13/05 03:06 PM
by egghead1
* beliefs
( 1 2 all )		 mr crisper 3,595 21 03/23/02 09:06 PM
by cHeMiCaLoRaNgE

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: Middleman, DividedQuantum
1,163 topic views. 1 members, 0 guests and 0 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2026 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.031 seconds spending 0.008 seconds on 16 queries.