Faith/Fear?
One might say that they have no faith. This is quite hard for me to believe. I do not fully believe that anyone can really live without faith of some type. I assume it would be possible to live in fear constantly, but I am getting ahead of myself here.
I believe that when any choice or obstacle is encountered, there is always a hidden choice that many might just take passively. To me, there always seems to be the choice of either faith or fear. One may choose to live their life in the fear that the worst things that they can imagine might happen, or they could CHOOSE to have faith that the outcome will be positive.
Jumping back, there is a possibility that one could live completely in fear and have no faith. Honestly, I can not see how someone could not live without a sliver of faith within them. Nothing would ever be accomplished. Would this even be considered living?
Generally, I believe that there are no positives when making decisions on the basis of fear. There is one, not positive, but "upside" if you will. This is the fact that when you live in fear, if anything negative happens, you will not be surprised and your ego will not be "hurt". This however will only dig your negatively charged ego deeper into the depths of "hell". Your negative bias will be validated, thus making it stronger. (ego=counterproductive. That's a topic for another day.)
Conversely, if you make decisions based on faith, your ego could possibly be shattered. For one that might hold his ego dear, this could be too much of a gamble. Although the ego is at stake, there is much more to be gained through the practice(?) of faith. When there is faith behind an action, I believe that a positive bias is used and the likelihood of a positive outcome is MUCH greater.
This concept of faith/fear kind of runs into the concept of the psychological term: self fulfilling prophecy. I had always thought this theory was complete(90%) bullshit upon first learning about it. Quite interesting.
Before I came to the conclusion that every decision I made had a sort of 'faith' attached to it, I believed that I have little to no faith in my life. After I made this observation, I noticed that along with having faith, there was a large amount of fear within me too. This fear is what hinders me from being more self actualized. I need to eliminate this fear.
Any ideas greatly appreciated.
I believe that when any choice or obstacle is encountered, there is always a hidden choice that many might just take passively. To me, there always seems to be the choice of either faith or fear. One may choose to live their life in the fear that the worst things that they can imagine might happen, or they could CHOOSE to have faith that the outcome will be positive.
Jumping back, there is a possibility that one could live completely in fear and have no faith. Honestly, I can not see how someone could not live without a sliver of faith within them. Nothing would ever be accomplished. Would this even be considered living?
Generally, I believe that there are no positives when making decisions on the basis of fear. There is one, not positive, but "upside" if you will. This is the fact that when you live in fear, if anything negative happens, you will not be surprised and your ego will not be "hurt". This however will only dig your negatively charged ego deeper into the depths of "hell". Your negative bias will be validated, thus making it stronger. (ego=counterproductive. That's a topic for another day.)
Conversely, if you make decisions based on faith, your ego could possibly be shattered. For one that might hold his ego dear, this could be too much of a gamble. Although the ego is at stake, there is much more to be gained through the practice(?) of faith. When there is faith behind an action, I believe that a positive bias is used and the likelihood of a positive outcome is MUCH greater.
This concept of faith/fear kind of runs into the concept of the psychological term: self fulfilling prophecy. I had always thought this theory was complete(90%) bullshit upon first learning about it. Quite interesting.
Before I came to the conclusion that every decision I made had a sort of 'faith' attached to it, I believed that I have little to no faith in my life. After I made this observation, I noticed that along with having faith, there was a large amount of fear within me too. This fear is what hinders me from being more self actualized. I need to eliminate this fear.
Any ideas greatly appreciated.
Posted at
4:51 PM
5 Comments:
I agree completely. And also, along with the impossibility of anyone living completely without faith, no one can live without fear either. What I mean isn't that fear is necessary to live, but just that fear is something that all people have a very hard time getting rid of, whether they like it or not.
This sort of goes along with the whole neale donald walsch thing. Thinking about it now, his book really was about being a self-fulfilling prohet. Like, he said that faith and fear---or rather, love and fear---were opposites. And in order to have happiness in life, you must have faith that you are happy.
I think about this a lot. The only way something negative can happen is if you can foresee it happening.
Like getting a bad grade on a paper. I can work so hard on a paper that I say to myself, there's no way I'm gonna get less than a 100 on this. But this is a bad example because I know that even if my work is perfect, the grader might not think so; so i know that there's SOME way that my grade could be lower than a 100. Which would explain why I am able to accept less-than-perfect grades on papers, and why I am given less-than-perfect grades.
I have faith that if I eat a healthy breakfast, I won't feel sick later. So lets say I did eat a healthy breakfast today. That doesn't mean that I won't feel sick later, it just means that if I do feel sick later, I am absolutely SURE that it's not because of what I ate for breakfast.
My roommate has faith that she can leave 4 minutes before class starts and get there on time. (I usually leave like 10-15mins to the hr.) So if she has that much faith, then she will get to class on time every time. Maybe her faith is due to lots of experience having only 4 mins to get to class; maybe it's due to knowledge of her walking pace vs. distance to class. Either way, if ever she IS late for class, then she'll be convinced that it's because the professor's watch is wrong.
I guess what I'm saying is that even if you do have complete faith, I don't believe that your ego can be shattered in any way. You say that "when there is faith behind an action, the likelihood of a positive outcome is much greater." I say that if there is COMPLETE faith behind an action, the likelihood of a positive outcome is 100%. For me, I only have complete faith when I'm unaware of any alternatives to a positive outcome. Ignorance is bliss, eh?
"I guess what I'm saying is that even if you do have complete faith, I don't believe that your ego can be shattered in any way."
My only response to that is, that which does not exist cannot be shattered. I am on the starting steps of disbanding my ego, so taking that into consideration, I do feel that my ego is hurt when the outcome is not a positive one.
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"I say that if there is COMPLETE faith behind an action, the likelihood of a positive outcome is 100%."
So lets say you are going to the bank to deposit some money into your savings. Would you have complete faith that this action would be a positive one? You know that depositing this money is the right thing to do for you, therefore it is positive right? But let's say a car ends up hitting you on the way to the bank. You are dead. Is this a positive outcome?
Granted, you died due to an outside source, but I cannot see this being a positive outcome. Many times, you might have a positive intent but the outcome is negative due to reasons that are outside your control. Thoughts?
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"...no one can live without fear either."
Are you so sure about that? I see it being possible to live without fear. Once your ego has ceased to exist and no more attachments are held, what is there to even lose? Fear stems from the idea that you might lose something that you are attached to. If no attachments are present, then what?
PS: Keep in mind throughout that I really have no idea what I am talking about. :P No, seriously.
hmmm the whole depositing $ thing.
That's an interesting twist.
But in this case, you'd have faith that the increase of money in your account is a positive thing, not the act of depositing money. So in this situation, the depositing money can't be considered negative because it wasn't even deposited at all.
I never thought about the whole dying thing though. I guess we all have faith that we're all going to die sometime. so we always have less-than-complete faith that outcomes will be wholly positive, because we know that there's that chance of getting hit by a car and dying.
I still think that in reality, everyone has some fear in him or her though. Doesn't everyone have attachments?? Even if you train yourself to not fear the loss of what you have, you still have the memories of losing things in the past. And you still can reason that undesired things happen. I think the only way to live without fear is to predict that anything negative that happens to you will actually be positive.
--Whoa, I just re-read what I wrote. I have no idea what I'm talking about either. ;-)
I don't see how you can attach a positive or negative connotation to dieing in an accident while trying to make a deposit, unless you are seeing that deposit as a lost opportunity to "enjoy" the money. Even then, that would be on an individual basis. If that were to happen to me, I honestly don't think I'd regret not spending the money.
I don't really see the positive or negative aspect of the death, in the sense that the event was out of your control. The negative aspect seems to impart a sense of regret, which to me is external to this event.
I don't see the complete elimination of fear as a positive. What keeps you from becoming reckless? What will contain your id?
I'll quote a friend:
You see, I don't think fearlessness is admirable. Cockroaches are fearless. That's why they get stepped on when they blindly and stupidly run towards you. Well, except for me, because I'm too scared to step on them.
Moshe Dayan's daughter, Yael, once said, "My father had no fears at all. In that he differed greatly from me. But he could not be called a courageous man because he had no fear to overcome."
For the record, I don't really see the aspect of dying as a negative outcome. I was really just having a hard time coming up with a good scenario.
Also, I don't believe reckless == fearless, for that matter I don't believe reckless ~ fearless. I don't see fearlessness being any type of "vice" in any sense of the word. Cockroaches lack the capacity to become fearful.
Overthinking this, possibly I am not looking for an absence of fear, but an acceptance of fear? A realization of its illusion?
This topic is a mess. Thanks for all the feedback Alyssa and P.
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