Changing Belief Structures:  Help My Little Faith

Belief is the key.  Not what you believe ‘God’ is capable of doing.  Not what you believe MIGHT be possible.  Not what you dearly HOPE will happen more than anything in the world.  Not what you WANT to happen.  The question, the key, is simple: WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS ACTUALLY GOING TO HAPPEN?  Not on the surface, in your intellect, in your thoughts – what do you believe in your BONES?  In your GUT?  What scenario are you (at this moment) finding inescapable?  Can’t flush away?

WHAT IS THAT BELIEF?

How do you believe it will happen?  Not how you hope or pray will happen, what do you TRULY BELIEVE, right now, will occur?  Because THAT is what is in the process of UNFOLDING.  THAT is what you are watching.  Want to see what you believe?  Just open your EYES and LOOK.

Thy will be done.  Always.

But, sometimes we don’t want this - so, our most fervent question becomes “How can I change this belief?”  How do we strip away what we currently believe, this freaking paradigm we have spent a lifetime acclimating to and learning the prevailing rules or patterns of?  How do we just DROP it? 

“God, help my little faith” is the only thing that comes to mind.  “Have mercy on me, a sinner…” missing the mark, not seeing clearly.  God help my little faith.  God help my little faith.

We have the building motivation to make this change, to cast our belief in another direction, but we find our mind too weak to cast it, and watch in dismay as it falls into old patterns and habits and action.

42 Mark 9:14-29
¹⁴And when he came to his disciples, he saw a large crowd with them and the scribes debating with them.
¹⁵And immediately, all the people saw him and were greatly surprised, and they ran to greet him.
¹⁶And he asked the scribes, What do you debate with them?
¹⁷One of the multitude answered saying, Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit of dumbness.
¹⁸And whenever it seizes him, it troubles him; and he foams and gnashes his teeth and faints. And I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.
¹⁹Jesus answered and said to him, Faithless generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I preach to you? Bring him to me.
²⁰And they brought the boy to Jesus; and when the spirit seized him, it immediately troubled him; and he fell on the ground, gasping and foaming.
²¹So Jesus asked his father, How long has he been like this? He said to him, From his childhood.
²²And many times, it has thrown him into the fire and into the water to destroy him; but whatever you can do, help me and have mercy on me.
²³Jesus said to him, If you can believe, everything is possible to him who believes.
²⁴And immediately, the father of the boy cried out weeping and said, I do believe, help my little faith.
²⁵When Jesus saw that people were running and gathering about him, he rebuked the unclean spirit and said to it, Deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again.
²⁶And the epileptic cried out violently and was tortured, and the spirit went out; then the boy became as if dead, so that many said, He is dead.
²⁷Then Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up.
²⁸When Jesus entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could we not cast it out?
²⁹He said to them, This kind cannot be cast out with anything except by fasting and prayer.

What was Jesus pointing to here?  He didn’t have time to fast or pray before he cast out this boy’s trouble.  I’m sure Jesus’ disciples prayed all the time, and at least fasted periodically and went without food, as was the custom.  So, why couldn’t they help and Jesus could? And why was Jesus’ answer to the disciples these two activities they no doubt participated in at least somewhat periodically?

First, to me it points to an ongoing process of arighting his world.  When Jesus said of the bread at the last supper ‘this is my body’ and of the wine ‘this is my blood’, one of the deeper things he was subtly pointing to was  his awareness that ‘he’, the body they called Jesus, was ONE with everything in the world.  Jesus saw NO separation, he and the bread were one.  And as such, with the awareness of this unity, a whole new dichotomy steps forward out of the shadows.  The Pharisees weren’t these “other guys’ following Jesus around and arguing with him and trying to trap him.  They were his projections.  If they did not fit into his world, if they weren’t an example of something within his own internal world, then they would not have appeared in his world.  They were pieces of his psyche, not unlike this twelve disciples were also pieces of Jesus’ makeup, projected approximations of the 12 facets he held within, not unlike the zodiac signs.

So, when Jesus said prayer and fasting were necessary, these were things he had already been ‘working on’ within himself, uprooting the untrue root that allowed this to exist in his world, and give him the power to change it.

Prayer is nothing but direct and fervent communication with the Higher One, and fasting is not only a reduced intake of food (that is it’s grossest and most material form) but it is ALSO an Abstinence IN GENERAL of what was OF THE WORLD.  Removing yourself from the worldly perspective.  That is another, higher form of fasting.

So, is this part of changing this belief?  I wondered.

HOW DO WE CHANGE BELIEFS?  I asked, and got a one word answer:  “Erase.”

I asked how was I supposed to ‘erase’ these thoughts and got, “Focus.  Show yourself.  Pay attention.  It’s all there, hidden beneath your erroneous assumptions.”

HUH?

Please help my little faith.  Please help my little faith, I asked.  So, how do I do away with this world? The answer came: When you show yourself a new one.

Jesus said “It is finished” when he rose above that which he had projected and was in fact still spinning in that opposite pattern, and he used that pattern as a springboard.  He stopped making any effort to hide from those after him.  He knew Judas as his own self, and knew he would give him over, and he did.  He stopped trying to stay alive.  He used it as a springboard to show that even what was commonly called death would not kill him.  He transcended every condition he had sown, all he had brought forward in his world and in doing so, he had finished.  He healed all in his world that was sick.  He forgave all in his world that needed forgiving.  He found abundance in lack and fed the multitudes.  He told his environment how it should be, quieting storms and walking on water.  He removed the illusion of every limitation.  That was the parable of his life, of those special 3 years spent bringing forward the things he had collected throughout the ages.

But what happens when things are too far out of our paradigm?  How do we cure the situation?  When someone is sick or has cancer, there IS a remote chance that their body could rally and they be healed, that something COULD HAPPEN.  And so, sometimes when we pray, with this thought that there was a way that fit into our paradigm that could POSSIBLY happen, it greases the way for the miracle to come?

But what happens when someone has lost an arm or leg?   Or someone is born with Downs Syndrome?  There is NOTHING in our paradigm that could make allowances for the healing of such things – NOTHING but a miracle.  Could the grease to slip past this sticky spot be our utter belief that miracles DO happen, that they are real and not uncommon?  If we can see this, can we open the door to it in our paradigm and therefore allow these healings to take place?  So the amputee grows a new arm or leg, or the spinal cord injury rejoins, or the Downs syndrome re-sorts it chromosomes? 

Is THAT the problem?  Do we really believe in healing?  DO we really believe in miracles, or do we believe “god helps the man who helps himself”?  Do we believe that out of the box can HAPPEN and are accessible?  It doesn’t look like it, as all who can afford it have healthcare, and medical insurance.  If we REALLY BELIEVED, if it were our true CORE BELIEF, would we have it?

Is that what we need?

Is the birth of all miracles the wordless knowing that “this will be”?

How can we pull this belief in miracles, BIG miracles, into our life?

We must begin to see there are NO BIG OR LITTLE MIRACLES, that all miracles are the same – they only seem harder because of our lack of BELIEF.  Our current paradigm is not set up to incorporate what we are asking for.  And this is what we must change.  We must place a footing, and entrance, so that it might exist.  And this is the true meaning and purpose of ‘faith’. 

So focus with me.  Pay attention.  Show yourself a new world, and there will be one.  Start where you are at, reaching for what you know you can touch.  Bit by bit, our reach extends until nothing is impossible to us because we will have finally located our faith and to our delight, it’s as big as a mustard seed.

Lookout mountains.  Inch by inch, step by step, we come. :-)

I offer you these thoughts for your consideration.