Leaps and Bridges of Faith? of the Need & Risks of Belief (WYS005)
⁘ Created: 2025-12-13 ⁘ Updated: 2026-04-05
Faith — no different from a deep question — is a portal. Do not believe — look into it, enter, and see what you discover. Faith in doctrines is moot as walking against a door frame. No, enter those candle-lit portals of faith — and peek beyond!
In our final questions: 1. What is faith — and what sorts of faith do you deal with in your life? 2. What are the shortcomings and pitfalls of faith? 3. What are beneficial applications of faith — serving you toward your fulfillment?
"Candle-lit portals of faith." A line a friend dropped in the season's spirit, and that put me contemplating. A million questions were born, but not the sorts of questions that you desperately seek answers for. The sorts of questions that bring you places. So whatever that candlelit portals of faith brings you, go there, be there, see what comes. But it does bring us to a couple of more serious questions.
What is faith, what it's context, what it's function, and what it's meaning — what you say? So there's the sort of faith that takes for its object doctrines, philosophical formulations, ideas. Something for you to grasp on to, to give some context for your life, but often so very disconnected from living reality. I think we're all better off growing out of that.
Then we have the often necessary initial leaps of faith. Just follow along, see where it goes, and what unfolds. If you don't engage, if you subject it all to your intellect from the get-go, you may never get anywhere at all beyond your limited frame of conceptions. So in there, faith is very much like a bridge, as a bridge of transition into real living insights.
Then do we use this faith to make decisions in our lives — what should be accepted, what should be rejected, how things should be? Yes, faith may serve us with bearings in the general right direction, but when matters of faith are still disconnected from living direct insight, then perhaps it's better that we do not hand over the wheel to faith alone — but rather we steer together, faith and your authentic self, navigating the complex ways of life.
Then to the meaning of faith as a whole. Whatever that it may be for you, but let us not build these castles in the clouds, investing all of our hopes, even our identities in them. For when this house of cards collapses in face of reality, we face categorical collapse ourselves.
Then to recap these musings into three more concrete questions for you. One, what is faith and what sorts of faith do you deal with in your life? Two, what are the shortcomings and pitfalls of faith? When does faith become a negative force in your life?
And three, what are beneficial applications of faith? How and where does faith serve you in your quest for authentic fulfillment in life? Beyond those candlelit portals of faith that take you on lofty and profound journeys into any which realm of your awareness.
So let's hear it folks. Poetic musings, philosophical ponderings, real life experience. What You Say — on matters of faith?