What is faith? That’s a really good question! I was raised an atheist and was taught life and all that happened was solely the result of my own efforts – meaning all failure was my fault and all success came from my efforts.

Whew! This is at the heart of American culture. Just do it. No fear.

Even the New Agers believe if it happened to you it is because you were thinking it. The ultimate guilt trip. This means, I can have no bad thoughts or they will manifest like the devil itself… and it will be all my fault.

I know for a fact the New Agers are wrong, because with the amount of pain and tough issues I have had to process so far in my life, I should have been able to blow up the world by now.

What is certainty but the refuge of those whose faith is not strong enough to entertain doubt ~ Robert Brault

Yes, we do plan our life before we get here. Michael Newton’s book Journey of the Souls and Jane Roberts’ The Oversoul Seven Trilogy are good sources of information on this subject. However, once we are here, we can decide to abandon the original plan. Or we can trust we made a good plan with our guides before we got here and were in another dimension. In a life between lives, we, our guides and the council had a bigger and better perspective than the perspective we have once we have incarnated in a body filled with desires, ego, and personality issues.

So, I feel that faith means:

1. Faith in our self to get through the life we set up for ourselves – with all of the challenges and growth built into it, along with the fun parts.

2. Faith that something (if not someone) higher, bigger than us exists and that we can connect with that energy to get  different perspectives and different kinds of help (more than just our teeny tiny brain, as Einstein noted, we cannot possibly solve problems with the same brain that created them).

What does ‘having faith’ look like? For me lots of vomiting and crying at times! It is not a graceful process for me, when a large leap of faith is required. At these times, along with meditation, it is simply one foot in front of the other… sometimes tackling the day minute by minute. It is walking blind through a fire, feeling the heat, sure I am going to die at any second… and not so happy when I don’t!

For smaller issues of faith, when there is often quicker confirmation via small miracles, my practice of faith is quite graceful. But no point in writing about those, since they are easy wins. And often my ego kicks in with these, as if to say, “Look how good I am at faith that I can conjure up these miraculous outcomes.”

Faith makes the discords of the present the harmonies of the future ~ Robert Collyer

No, it is those big, no-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel experiences that leave me puking and covered in mud. At the end there is no doubt in my mind that the miraculous resolution was not of my own doing – other than I did not jump out of the boat or run headfirst into the fire. And that in and of itself is a miracle too.

So, faith is really the ability to be ‘not-graceful.’ The willingness to be scared sh*tless. Able and ready to cry and vent so that one does not blow up, or get cancer, because of holding in all the feelings. Letting the feelings pummel you into a new level of surrender you did not think was possible, and the softness that comes when we let go of something we didn’t even know we were hanging on to.

Faith is a warrior’s journey. Become like water? Not so easy when we live in a culture that worships hardcore.

About The Author: Nonna lives in Southern California, and is a professor of psychology and a teacher of psychic development, energy work and meditation, who has recently finished her PhD. She has been a counselor for both humans and animals for thirty years, removing energy blocks through her expertise in the spiritual arts. She also has numerous years of study and practice with classic psychological therapeutic models, family work, twelve-step processes, nutritional and body/mind/spirit healing, complementary, alternative, and quantum medicine. Nonna is brilliant at unearthing the gems in every client’s soul and polishing them to a fine finish. To release your own soul’s sparkle, contact Nonna at PsychicAccess.com.