“Faith is a powerful faculty; I have no explanation for why this is so, rather, I have direct experience of its impact on my own life and thought. Though I do not believe ideas I consider nonsensical… such as those propounded in The Secret… and I am generally deeply skeptical of explanations and descriptions of faith… it is clear to me that we have access to faculties that are entirely beyond description or explanation. Faith, as I imagine it, is one of these.

To imagine a future somehow begins to invoke something resembling it, however unlikely or irrational this idea may seem. I have, many times, experienced the imagining of a future for myself which I later found myself within. Again, I have neither explanation or description of why. I am simply aware that the imagining of a future, like the scents of a flower attracting pollinators, has some relationship with its realization. Which I will assert will both resemble and differ from such imaginings.

So I say faith, like vision, is a faculty native to human beings. I consider the topic intrinsically mysterious, and by this I mean, that to hold it within awareness we must be willing to admit this mystery… something beyond explanation. Something which, perhaps, may highlight features of our humanity that border, if not intrude upon, the domain of the divine. And our relationships with it.

Yet this is not to say that all faith is self-justifying; quite the opposite. While I have some relative trust in my ideas here, it is, at the same time, entirely clear to me that faith can also be delusional. And this point is pivotal.

Yet this is not a curse; rather, it calls us to a unique practice of discernment… between those forms of imaginal faith which are authentic, and lead us toward desirable destinies… and those that mimic this authenticity… while actually functioning as some kind of projection of the psyche.”

— an anonymous informant