Choosing Faith over Failure - My Path to Enlightenment

My path to Enlightenment began with a simple choice. To choose faith over failure.

My path to enlightenment

Step 1. Choose Faith

First you must believe that God has created a way for you to escape suffering. A narrow path to Spiritual Perfection. Without faith one cannot find unity.

Step 2. Faith without works is dead

The path to perfection is the pursuit of spiritual perfection. Make all your deeds good deeds.

Step 3. Eliminate Suffering

Hear no Evil, See no Evil, Speak no evil. Remove all evil from your eyes and ears, and from utterance. The first step to overcome suffering is to remove the evil.

No one can define evil for you, but we all start with do no harm to others. This is the essence of the 10 commandments, and the other various laws and rituals.

Have faith in the law that says do no harm to others. Observe your life and stop just living it. You are an audience of one in your own play. Watch the play to find the suffering, then overcome it.

Step 4. Judge only yourself

If it is sin for you then you should not do it. In this there is no need to judge anyone other than yourself.

Man's own democratically choosen laws will suffice as judge between morality, perversion and violence. If the divine is "in" us we should be able to create devine boundaries.

Allow for God's judgment against the law if you disagree with your brothers. God will suffice as judge against our differences.

Step 5. Devine boundaries

Create devine boundaries that prevent you from returning to failure. Friends, Family and Faith, but most important is Faith. The pursuit of perfection is a race, don't stop running until you can walk without stumbling.

Step 6. Bathe yourself with Light

Surround yourself with scriptures, books that enjoin love with reason, music that promotes the light, and watch only tv programs that you find family friendly.

Step 7. Listen to the voice of Love and Reason

The Holy Spirit is a whisper to those who never consciously hear. But those that listen to the voice of Love and Reason will be bathed in Light.

Step 8. Baptized into the Light

By faith know that what is broken within you will be made perfect.

This is the promise of God, if you pursue perfection you will find it. Knock and the door will be opened. The door to Spiritual Perfection is Open.

Walk through the open door into the realm of purification and unification. The dwelling place of Love and Reason. Live in the world of Love and Reason, and abandon all suffering.

Step 9. Your faith tested

Do you believe the Holy Spirit is speaking to you? Do you hear a voice within you that always seems to desire better for you than you want for yourself?

Step 10. If you can hear the voice of Love and Reason

If you can hear the Holy Spirit you are connected with the Light. If you follow Love and Reason, the Holy Spirit will well up within you and fill you with wonder, knowledge and blissful confusion, Nirvana for the beginner. Esoteric tounges for the advanced.

Step 11. The road home, Faith over Failure

Choose faith over failure. God has promised unity for those who run towards perfection. Perseverance and patience as you run towards and await Unity.

For some step 3 through 11 will be a slow process of success and failure as you struggle to overcome suffering. This doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit has forsaken you, rather the Father is teaching you how to overcome suffering.

Continue to run until you find Nirvana, Spiritual Unity. You will understand it once you find it.

Step 12. Full Enlightenment

Some could be awakened by one thread on ATS. For others it is a process that starts with a bang, but gradually builds up to true enlightenment.

Full Enlightenment is the moment where sin looses it's grip on you. The moment where you are no longer the cause of your own suffering.

The predestined outcome for those who choose faith over failure is devine unification. A rebirth, not into law but into the Spirit of Love and Reason. Which is far more conducive to Peace and the end of suffering.

a reply to: Isurrender73

Or, you ask the Lord to forgive your sins upon your deathbed, accepting Jesus Christmas as your Savior and skip all the rest.

The catch is you must be Christian and have sinned.

Your title is catching to a spirit that we good people thrive for. The biggest problem we have personally these days and also in the past is that when too much evil abounds, being good or good itself becomes lost and useless. We as humans, ones that are not mentally defective that is, do have a choice during childhood to either do good and be good and fight the natural instinct in us to do evil. Those that past the test are few and those that don't end up looking for some ones else teachings of enlightenment such as a false and worthless teachings of someones own creation of their religion.
It seems to me, which I'm sure by your writings if they are coming from your heart after your own enlightenment of looking at your surrounding world and then looking at yours, you began to understand, take care of yourself for no one else will when it comes to "self enlightenment". Go to Apple Valley in California at night time. Perhaps your true answer lies within the night sky above you, and yes, that sky does talk to you. Ask for wisdom and hear clearly what it has to tell you. Wisdom told me to listen to the elderly that are wise and learn from them and their teachings.

a reply to: Isurrender73

1) Believe that Jesus paid for our sins. He bought us from carnal slavery. Until you believe, there is no potential for Spiritual enlightenment.

2) Study the Bible under the direction of a learned Pastor and confess your sins when needed to God the Father (1 John 1:9). You can't grow unless you can rebound from spells of carnality.

3) Apply the principles of the Bible to your life as you are tested until you either die or are resurrected. It isn't until death that you are released from the influence of the flesh (sin nature).

There is no working your way to heaven. Salvation is a gift, but its your spiritual maturity that requires work. Anything else, and you'll just be chasing your tail.

Honestly, it sounds exactly like an Alcoholics-Anonymous (AA) 12-steps meeting.


1) We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2) Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3) Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4) Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5) Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6) Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7) Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8) Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9) Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10) Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11) Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12) Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Sorry, but I'm seeing a lot of holes in your steps

How is one to believe the Christian faith is the true faith when compared to any other? Or when compared to contrary evidence that suggests it isn't true?

originally posted by: WakeUpBeer
How is one to believe the Christian faith is the true faith when compared to any other? Or when compared to contrary evidence that suggests it isn't true?

[sarcasm] Weren't you reading? It's clearly explained in step one [/sarcasm]

Step 1. Choose Faith

First you must believe that God has created a way for you to escape suffering. A narrow path to Spiritual Perfection. Without faith one cannot find unity.

In order to believe the christian faith is the true faith over all other faiths you must "Choose faith" and believe that God has created a way for you to escape suffering. A narrow path to Spiritual Perfection.

Thus, Christianity is the one true faith

originally posted by: WakeUpBeer
How is one to believe the Christian faith is the true faith when compared to any other? Or when compared to contrary evidence that suggests it isn't true?

Aside from using the word "god" as a proper noun, there's really not much in the OP that makes it exclusively Christian. It's good advice for those who want a blanket template upon which to rest their troubles.

I wish more Christians spoke this way.

originally posted by: WakeUpBeer
How is one to believe the Christian faith is the true faith when compared to any other? Or when compared to contrary evidence that suggests it isn't true?

Didn't you notice the catch? Hear no Evil, See no Evil, Speak no evil.


An old book that has been poorly translated and revised, paraphrased, and contrived countless times is supposed to explicitly determine what that evil is even when it is contradicting.


Yeah..I know it is confusing.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

There is no working your way to heaven. Salvation is a gift, but its your spiritual maturity that requires work. Anything else, and you'll just be chasing your tail.

Said gift can be taken away without Works of the spirit...

Why do you think Jesus said to a certain people "I never knew you"?

a reply to: Akragon

Said gift can not be taken away as it is a promise from God to those who believe.

The life of a born again believer is two fold.
1) Salvation by faith. Non-meritorious.
2) Edification of the spirit by works of righteousness. Meritorious.

Why do you think Jesus said to a certain people "I never knew you"? 

Because they worked with no faith.

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest
a reply to: Isurrender73

It isn't until death that you are released from the influence of the flesh (sin nature).

For you that will likely be a true statement.

For me I just ignore the sinful nature because I have matured above suffering.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

None of which Jesus taught...

What ye did to the least of my brothers you have done to me...

Faith alone just isn't enough my friend... one can believe in HIM all they want to, yet words without action is nothing

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

Because they worked with no faith.

Wrong....

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.


Maybe they just did such things because Jesus was a nice guy... right?

originally posted by: Ghost147

originally posted by: WakeUpBeer
How is one to believe the Christian faith is the true faith when compared to any other? Or when compared to contrary evidence that suggests it isn't true?

[sarcasm] Weren't you reading? It's clearly explained in step one [/sarcasm]

Step 1. Choose Faith

First you must believe that God has created a way for you to escape suffering. A narrow path to Spiritual Perfection. Without faith one cannot find unity.

In order to believe the christian faith is the true faith over all other faiths you must "Choose faith" and believe that God has created a way for you to escape suffering. A narrow path to Spiritual Perfection.

Thus, Christianity is the one true faith

What am I?

I believe the Egyptian texts, Zoaster, Mohammed, Plato, Siddhartha Gautama, the Vedas, the OT and NT, along with various other sacred texts all teach the same truth that I laid out in the OP.

What am I?

I'll even go as far to say that one can become Nietzsche's Overman if they were to follow the steps above.

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest
a reply to: Akragon

Said gift can not be taken away as it is a promise from God to those who believe.

The life of a born again believer is two fold.
1) Salvation by faith. Non-meritorious.
2) Edification of the spirit by works of righteousness. Meritorious.

Why do you think Jesus said to a certain people "I never knew you"? 

Because they worked with no faith.

And you do realize that Faith in the Perfect Holy Spirit was STEP 1?

a reply to: Isurrender73

Faith in Christ, not the Holy Spirit. They are not the same.

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest
a reply to: Isurrender73

Faith in Christ, not the Holy Spirit. They are not the same.

Not to you, but I happen to disagree.

I believe that "Christ" is the Holy Spirit.

If they are 2 spirits or 1, both of them are perfect and both teach the same message of overcoming the sinful nature.

Christ only speaks what his father tells him, and in these last days God speaks to us through his son.

a reply to: Akragon

Matt 25:31-46 is specifically about those who are present when Jesus returns to end the Tribulation (disclosed in Matt 24). In those 7 years, the circumstances will require that you either believe in Christ and help your fellow believers to survive, or you take the Mark of the Beast and hunt down Christians like wild game.

The rules are still the same; salvation by faith and maturity by righteous works.

Please keep the passage in its context.

a reply to: Isurrender73

The NT does not identify Christ as the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was given to Jesus when He was baptized. They are separated entities in union.