Faith Is Like Swimming
Faith is like swimming—you trust in the immaterial to support the material
The spiritual dimension, or as I refer to it—the universe, is a very mysterious place of miracles and unseen powers. It can be hard for people to trust in that which isn’t completely logical. Faith in the immaterial doesn’t come easy for some but, then again, sometimes it’s just as hard to place faith in the material. In this article, I humbly share that fear and disbelief and encourage you to jump in and swim on your own.
Can you believe it? I never learned to swim. My mom took me to lessons plenty of times. But for some reason, every time I went, an instructor would hold me flat on the surface of the pool, let go, and watch with astonishment as my legs began to fall under carrying the rest of my body with it. I was a living, breathing Titanic.
Like a lot of things, I just couldn’t get what seemed to come so naturally for other people. This was to become the story of my life.
I try to stay away from deep water now because it does scare me a bit. Let’s be honest, if there is any healthy fear that I should have that would be one that qualifies. Any fear that literally preserves my life is a good one in my book.
But, it really sucks having to live with the knowledge that, yet again, I don’t measure up to the standards everyone else takes for granted. It’s embarrassing.
Really Learning To Swim
I think that the reason that failing to learn to swim (even float) was such an issue for me was that I just couldn’t trust the process. When we learn to swim we have to trust in that which isn’t the least bit logical—that a giant container of liquid will support our solid bodies.
In the same way, to be able to swim effortlessly through the currents of life and find next-level success, we have to trust in something that at the surface level seems illogical. That is, that we can tap the immaterial—the spiritual—to bring measurable, physical results to our lives. The unseen can impact the seen.
I get that we trust what we see. I’ve obviously heard the saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” I understand that the observable is logical.
But any successful person I know of understands that there is more to the universe than just this dimension. I even think quite a few successful atheists, although they might not readily acknowledge God, will admit that there is something more to life than the physical if they examine themselves honestly enough.
“You reap what you sow” has a visible expression but is also a spiritual truth. When we sow love we reap love. When we sow joy we reap joy. When we pursue something with expectant faith it responds to us. Whatever we send out on the waters comes back to us. When we give it comes back to us multiplied.
When we tackle life with real intention, faith, Law of Attraction—whatever you want to call it—things happen. More and more people, even traditionally secular ones, are starting to get this. We can ping the spiritual universe and we get a response back.
These are spiritual principles and, like floating on water, they take a certain trust at face value before we can experience them.
Those really successful people out there—the ones for whom everything comes so easy—they trust these principles with an understanding that they are repeatable EVERY single time.
Napoleon Hill, that great interviewer of the twentieth century’s ultra-successful said in his book, You Can Work Your Own Miracles,
“The only safe plan for the advancement of one’s own welfare and the protection of others, is that of keeping the mind so busy broadcasting positive thoughts that no time is left for sending out negative thoughts, for it is as true as night follows day, that whatever thoughts one sends out will come back greatly multiplied, to bless or to curse.”
Again, in his international best-seller, Think and Grow Rich, Mr. Hill states,
“…the ether in which this little earth floats, in which we move and have our being, is a form of energy moving at an inconceivably high rate of vibration, and that the ether is filled with a form of universal power which ADAPTS itself to the nature of the thoughts we hold in our minds; and INFLUENCES us, in natural ways, to transmute our thoughts into their physical equivalent.”
All this from a man commissioned by Andrew Carnegie, one of the wealthiest men alive at this time, to study hundreds of the most successful men in order to learn the secrets of their success. The results are emphatically emphasized over and again in his work that the highly successful knew that there was a dimension beyond that which could be perceived by the five senses.
His overwhelming conclusion, again not merely of his own opinion but derived from the careful research of dozens upon dozens of the world’s elite, was that there is an “out-there” that can be experienced just as readily as the “here-and-now.” And this other dimension is experienced with thought, with faith, and with intention.
What Mr. Hill discovered was that despite the illogical nature of trusting the unseen, to do so is to elevate man’s ability to create. But to do so requires a certain amount of trust.
Take Away
It’s not so difficult to trust that water will carry you—it’s not so difficult to believe that there is more to this life than meets the eye either.
Some of you learned to swim because someone who loves you decided there was no better way for you to learn to swim than to throw you in the water.
If you haven’t yet tested the spiritual waters I’m here today to be the one who gives you that shove. Don’t flap around and try to reach for anything tangible to grab on to you. There is nothing to save yourself from. There is only freedom.
It might be awkward at first. You might even feel a little shame at yourself for letting go of the logic you have known forever. But test it.
When you finally trust it you will swim.
Aaron Force is a blogger from Seattle, Washington. He writes to educate others about the nature of an expanded consciousness to evolve humanity. Aaron unexpectedly experienced his own profound awakening and ego transcendence in 2015 and soon understood that the qualities of his own experience (a greater expansion and evolution in his life) could be applied to mankind collectively.