Faith

I’m sure some of you have seen this email circulating on the internet. My dear friend, blues guitar master Gary Cogdell of St. Georges, DE. forwarded this email to me this morning. The magic of this message prompted me to share it with you…

“This is 'Faith'. This dog was born on Christmas Eve in the year 2002. He was born with 3 legs - 2 healthy hind legs and 1 abnormal front leg which had to be amputated. He of course could not walk when he was born. Even his mother did not want him. His first owner also did not think that he could survive and he was thinking of 'putting him to sleep'. But then, his present owner, Jude Stringfellow, met him and wanted to take care of him. She became determined to teach and train this little dog to walk by himself. She named him 'Faith'. In the beginning, she put Faith on a surfboard to let him feel the movement. Later she used peanut butter on a spoon as a lure and reward for him for standing up and jumping around. Even the other dog at home encouraged him to walk. Amazingly, only after 6 months, like a miracle, Faith learned to balance on his hind legs and to jump to move forward. After further training in the snow, he could now walk like a human being. Faith loves to walk around now. No matter where he goes, he attracts people to him. He is fast becoming famous on the international scene and has appeared on various newspapers and TV shows. There is now a book entitled 'With a Little Faith' being published about him. He was even considered to appear in one of Harry Potter movies. His present owner Jude Stringfellow has given up her teaching post and plans to take him around the world to preach that “even without a perfect body, one can have a perfect soul." In life there are always undesirable things, so in order to feel better you just need to look at life from another direction. I hope this message will bring fresh new ways of thinking to everyone and that everyone will appreciate and be thankful for each beautiful day. Faith is the continual demonstration of the strength and wonder of life.”

Sometimes we give up before we get to where we are going. We cannot see that our progress is 99% complete and the physical manifestation of our goal is right around the corner. We are human beings that possess a prefrontal cortex. This gives us the ability to reason about what we have learned from our environment. We don’t just instinctually react, we think about what our next actions are and in what sequence they will occur. We can mentally manipulate time and create imagined scenarios. God has given us the power to co-create our world! Yet, Faith doesn’t have a prefrontal cortex and was not born with the understanding that objects which are not being actively perceived still remain in existence. Technically this is referred to as object permanence. Amidst this inability to have active cognition that recognizes the permanence of objects, Faith learned to walk on two legs. Unlike Faith, we humans sometimes listen too much to those who tell us we cannot do what we dream about or have what we want. Our belief in what others say and do determines the course of our lives. Faith’s owner took baby steps with Faith. She didn’t overwhelm Faith with too much learning too quickly. She started with the skateboard and peanut butter lure and used what Faith desired to motivate the dog to get up on it’s hind legs and walk upright. To make sure Faith would continue to walk she challenged the dog even further by teaching it to walk in the snow. She didn’t give up on Faith; she reinforced a positive by overcoming a negative.

If a dog can walk on two legs, why can’t we achieve our goals when we have the ability to think and reason? Make a date with yourself each day to empty the garbage and stress of the world out of your mind and clear your thoughts through meditation. Use your prefrontal cortex to visualize the end result of your goals through prayer. Feel the joy of accomplishing those goals by giving the best service you can. Calvin Coolidge once said, “Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” Faith has proven this!

For more info: Download my free Wilmington Spirituality Examiner toolbar. “Life is a gift. Be thankful for it and it will be replete with abundance. Encourage others to express creativity, release negativity and embrace pro-activity." Dean A. Banks, MCIWD, DD can be reached at webproducer@hotmail.com or banksnet.com. Download my free eBook on Articles 1-10 here.

What do you value in life?

Yesterday I mentioned that when you focus on the negative emotions of worry, doubt and fear, you are embracing problems and not the solutions of those problems. When you embrace a positive solution to a problem you are being pro-active. When you embrace problems as “the way it is” you are being negative. But why do make these choices? It is because of what you value in life. I have included a link to a survey here for you to reveal to yourself exactly what your values are. Take the survey, send it to me, copy it to a text editor and I will reveal the overall results in a future article for everyone taking the survey. No names will be taken, just overall results.

What are values? They are a relative worth, merit, or importance you place on issues, events, situations and people in your life. Examples of positive values are cleanliness, freedom, education and/or community service, while negative values are cruelty, crime, blasphemy and/or just looking out for number one. Our survey will help you to determine what values are important to you. Do you express worry, doubt and fear in reaction to daily events in life or do you express confidence, certainty and faith?

Worry comes from a lack of confidence in what is going to happen next. If you embrace this lack of confidence it broadcasts this into your environment and you find issues, events, situations and people to help you support your assertions through the Law of Attraction. If you firmly believe you are a skeptic, you will find issues, events, situations and people to support you assertions because you not only believe in your convictions, but you emotionalize them with every encounter of those convictions. If you embrace uncertainty you enter into the realm of doubt. Finally, fear settles into your belief system and supporting evidence will abound. But remember FEAR’s acronym; False Evidence Appearing Real. The evidence that appears to support your feelings is based on the thoughts you have focused on and have manifested to create your current situation. You are caught in, what appears to be, and endless loop.

Fortunately, we don’t have to believe and emotionalize this endless loop. When you open your mind to other ways of manifesting your desired results and daily practice these ways, confidence in their results becomes apparent. As you make more and more advances you develop certainty in creating pro-active results. Finally, your confidence and certainty develops into faith. What is faith? Trust in something that cannot be proven through conventional means, i.e. our sensory world is what the modern dictionaries tell us. The original word for faith was the Greek word pistis, which means trust. Trust in the power of co-creation that God has given us. It was translated into the Latin word fides and its essential meaning was changed into requiring proof or evidence based on our senses.

In the New Testament, Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It is a result of the confidence and certainty that you have the power to create your world daily. The evidence of this is not seen immediately, but you KNOW it is there. In James 2:20, he says, “But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” If your faith, or trust in God’s laws is genuine, then it will manifest evidence that supports the goodness of God. If you manifest heartache, poverty and grief, are you truly trusting in God? Are you manifesting all that is wrong in your life? Find out what your values are and make an ongoing assessment of your progress toward creating the life that you want by instilling positive values that are life-giving. Daily practice of prayer, meditation and service will help you attain your deepest desires.

For more info: Download my free Wilmington Spirituality Examiner toolbar. “Life is a gift. Be thankful for it and it will be replete with abundance. Encourage others to express creativity, release negativity and embrace pro-activity." Dean A. Banks, MCIWD, DD can be reached at webproducer@hotmail.com or banksnet.com.