Belief, Hope, Faith & Trust - by Ronnie Carroll

I came into a bit of money about a year ago. I immediately put the bulk of it into savings and decided to go on a shopping spree with the rest of it. At last, I'd be able to walk through a store and get anything and everything I wanted. After spending several hours going first to one place and then another, and walking up and down aisles to the point of exhaustion, I ended up spending a grand total of 57 cents on a couple of skeins of embroidery floss. But, I learned something very valuable from the experience.

Even though I was far from exceeding my budget, I still couldn't spend past my comfort level of spending. Without regard to prices, I felt uncomfortable picking something off a display and putting it in my shopping cart simply because I wanted it at the moment. I had never spent recklessly or wantonly in my life, having been too accustomed to always operating within a budget - within limitation. It wouldn't have mattered if I'd had $50 or $500,000, I still set my limitation and confined myself within it.

From that, I learned that it doesn't matter how wealthy or poor a person is -- all that matters is how wealthy or poor he feels.

Feeling is experiencing. It's what you experience, and only what you experience that becomes your reality. As long as we choose to experience poverty, we'll remain poor. So, what good is money - wealth - if you don't experience it? What good is money if you don't use it? What good is money if you can't trust spending it?

Trust had been an issue with me for a long time, but it had nothing to do with trusting money. It had everything to do with trusting God and for years I had considered myself a spiritually wealthy woman. But, had I been?

What good is money if you can't trust it? What good is God if you can't trust Him? If a person can't truly trust God, then the most he can do is believe in God. But, belief is nothing more than an indication of a lack of experience. Belief is a process of thinking or feeling that something other or better or greater exists than what you are experiencing right here, right now.

Because experience is your only reality, then once you've experienced something, it becomes part of who you are. So, once you have experienced God and have become God - to the extent that you have experienced God, then simple belief in God is no longer necessary. You no longer have to believe because you know - because you ARE. As you experience God, things such as belief, faith, and hope become meaningless; all of them reflecting a grasping for, or reaching towards that which you do not feel or experience. When you say, "I believe," or "I have hope," or "I have faith'" that things will work out, you're dwelling in a state or condition of emptiness - of non-acceptance for what IS. You are denying the NOW and placing your state of being - your expectation of existence in what is to come. When you say that you trust that God will provide or resolve, you are blinding yourself to seeing that God already IS. God can only BE - right HERE, right NOW, for here and now-- what you are experiencing right now, is your only reality. Trust, hope, belief, and faith point towards the future; wherever God isn't.

So, when you place your energy in hope, faith, belief, and trust, you are acknowledging all that isn't. Since the only reality is what IS, and since God is all that IS, then hope, faith, belief, and trust serve only a false reality; they exist to serve ego.

It's ironic, isn't it? Fully embracing and accepting the moment means saying "I'm without faith. I'm faithless. I'm without hope. I'm hopeless. I'm without trust. I'm without belief." All this goes entirely against what we're taught as being the greatest God-like qualities and what we strive to achieve all our lives.

(c) Ronnie Carroll
10/12/2008

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