Harry Potter and the Twelve Powers: Faith

 

Today we start a series on the 12 powers and we will include a character from the Harry Potter book series to make things a bit more interesting.

 

Most of you know of my love of all things Harry Potter. And Charles Fillmore’s 12 Powers are a very important part of our love of Unity and our souls growth.

 

Today we will look at the power of Faith; did you place Ron Weasley with Faith?

 

 

 

The twelve powers, as suggested by Jesus and discerned by Charles Fillmore, are basic, primal spiritual gifts or abilities that everyone possesses.  We don’t acquire these Powers; we already have them. We use our Twelve Powers all the time, according to our understanding of them.

 

The Twelve Powers are: Faith, Love, Strength, Wisdom, Power, Imagination, Understanding, Will, Order, Enthusiasm (Zeal), Release (Renunciation), Life.

 

 

According to the Rev. Dr. David Williamson:

 

Our suffering, frustration, sense of failure, and world disorder come mostly from our misuse or imbalance in the use of our Powers. Constructive, enlightened understanding and use of our Powers leads to salvation.  The word salvation comes from the Latin salvus which means healing or wholeness.  Salvation or being saved means the state of healing or wholeness that comes about by allowing the Christ consciousness to call forth and direct our Powers, as Jesus called forth and commissioned his disciples to carry forth his.

 

 

 

Faith is a spiritual power, but it is not confined to religion. We use our Faith power whenever we give mental attention to something.

 

In Matt. 9:29, “According to your faith be it done to you.”

 

Faith enables us to look past appearance of lack, limitation, or difficulty. With faith, we can take hold of a divine idea and believe in it even though we do not yet see any physical evidence of it.

 

It goes beyond thinking to knowing with ones whole being the Truth of the unseen.

 

Have you ever thought, “Oh, if only I had more faith!”  You already have all the faith you will ever need.  The issue is not how much faith you have, but where your faith is invested. We all have faith on many different levels and in many different ways, but its most perfect expression is found within our spiritual nature. It is that deep inner knowing that the good you desire is already yours.

 

The Buddha said it this way, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.”

This is good news and bad news, because what this means is that we usually get exactly what we believe in, what we have faith in.

The ancient text called the Upanishads addresses this area of belief and faith with the analogy of a ball being batted back and forth.

It states that we human beings, given our basic belief in separation, are batted by two seeming forces within: one, the upward drive to evolve into the spiritual awakened beings that we are, aware of our oneness with all life, and as such, the ability to see ourselves and others as one powerful and infinite Mind; the other, the fierce downward thrust of our past conditioning as separate, self-oriented, physical creatures, at the mercy of all kinds of outer forces.

Charles Fillmore said that “Faith is the perceiving power of the mind.”  Faith is inner-sight, or insight.  It is our ability to look, to perceive, with our mind, to give our mental attention to something. Faith is our ability to draw our good from the invisible to the visible realm.

 

What are you placing your faith in? The outer world?  Some other person or thing? Money maybe?

This is an important question to be asking yourself.

 

Peter is the disciple of Faith, not because he was always faithful, but because he wasn’t, not at first.  Peter chose to deepen his power of Faith.  He grew in his ability to perceive and to believe. When Peter recognized the truth of who Jesus was, he was opened to the possibility of who he, Peter, was.  That they were both sons of God, as we are all children of God. It could be said that Peter had the ultimate a-ha moment, a glimpse of the higher realization of truth.

We’ve all had them, those moments of seeing behind the veil, of sensing the truth of who we are, and the truth of our existence. Many of those moments are subtle, almost constant, and often undiscerned and unheeded. Occasionally, the calls are quite dramatic–sudden, powerful, life-changing experiences that literally pick us up and point us toward our destiny. A crisis, loss of job, breakup of a relationship, disillusionment with life, etc. We could call them wake up calls from God.

Heb. 11:1 states; “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” 

 

Are you familiar with the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?  Indiana Jones was on a search for the holy grail, the most sacred of Christian artifacts.  He was literally within arms reach of the prize when his father, on the quest with him, was mortally wounded.  Only water from the well of life, found with the grail, could save him.

 

To make the last step of his journey, he had to cross a bottomless chasm.  There was no visible bridge.  But the instructions, although cryptic, were clear that all that was needed was a step of faith.  Not a leap, not a bound, just a step.  So, Indie took a deep breath, visibly shaking, and stepped into the chasm.  As if by magic, a bridge appeared before him and he could walk safely to the cave that held the grail. What we see once he’s on the bridge, however, is that it has been there all along.  He needed to be willing to step out onto it before it could be seen. He needed to change his perspective before the miracle became visible.

 

The bridge had always been there.  But until someone had the faith to take that first step, it had remained invisible.

 

If you have eyes to see and ears to hear.

 

 

So where does Harry Potter and Ron Weasley fit in with the Power of Faith?

 

One of six children in a family of wizards, Ron is the youngest boy. Although fiercely loyal to Harry, Ron does have his moments of human jealousy and anger, just as our faith might waver.  Like Peter, Ron represents faith because he grew into his ability to perceive and believe.  Ron has faith that things will work out, even when appearances say otherwise.

 

Read Sorcerer’s Stone, pages 281 – 284.

Ron had faith that his sacrifice would not be in vain, that the universe was on his side.

 

He set himself up against the history of his brothers who had successful, & in the case of the twins, interesting examples before him at Hogwarts.   Yet he also believed in himself as he chose who he would be at school. Throughout the 7 books you could see him coming into his own wisdom and courage.

 

Marianne Williamson teaches that, To trust in the force that moves the universe is faith.  Faith isn’t blind, it’s visionary. Faith is believing that the universe is on our side, and that the universe knows what it’s doing. Faith is a psychological awareness of an unfolding force for good, constantly at work in all dimensions.

 

Like Indie stepping into the chasm, Ron was willing to step onto the chessboard, taking his place in the game, and ultimately saving his friends

 

(For those of you who haven’t read the book, he was only injured and lived to be Harry’s best friend in all the books.)

 

 

Ron’s faith was evident throughout the book series. You will see his attraction to Hermione grow through the books too, and I believe he had faith that they would eventually be together.

 

I won’t say much more in case you wish to read the books yourselves. Worth the read!

 

 

So, we see, Faith isn’t blind, it’s visionary. We need to check ourselves, have we connected to our inner Higher Self?  Have we unlocked that vault of faith available to us if we just let it unfold?

 

How do we do that? Here are some steps suggested by Rev. Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann in her book, ‘Your God Given Potential’:

 

1. Receptivity – listen, learn, & grow in understanding of spiritual truths and being receptive to God-ideas.
2. Assent –  go beyond receptivity till you are willing to agree with the spiritual truths for further, deeper investigation.
3. Belief – the mental acknowledgement of Truth that is an outgrowth of these first 2 steps. It is the ability to believe intellectually, if not yet wholly, in the goodness of God.
4. Trust –  Step from the intellectual acceptance of Truth ideas to the spiritual realization of them. Deepen your trust and reinforce it with understanding until you have a faith that is the basis for action.
5. Faith –  Believe in the divine potential that is the Christ; understanding that it inspires you to action.
6. Conviction – When you have conquered all doubts, fears, and even the temptation to judge by your senses, you reach a point of spiritual conviction.
7. Realization –  you no longer have faith you are the Christ expression of faith.

 

 

“According to your faith be it done to you” (Matt. 9:29).