Faith(Charles E.J. Moulton) "To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray."

Oscar Hammerstein II,
"The Sound of Music"

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The image of the Family Von Trapp on stage at the Salzburg Folk Music Festival is a poignant one. They were patriots singing publically in spite of persecution. Knowing that fascism literally pushed them against the wall to join the enemy made them wonder how they could escape with their souls intact. Christopher Plummer, Julie Andrews and seven child actors starred in the five time Oscar winning Hollywood hit that took the world by storm back in 1965. The most famous image from the movie is the one of them all on stage together.Together is the key word. Families should stick together.

I met the actual Von Trapp family in 1997 at a reception at the American Embassy residence in Vienna. The real Maria Von Trapp was a charming lady not unlike Julie herself in the movie, although I met her when she was older. Their tolerance of the Broadway hit came from knowing that the father, Captain Von Trapp, by no means was as strict as portrayed in the musical, but that the story of their escape from the Nazi regime was a tale worth telling.

Singing their songs on stage knowing that the Nazis were in the audience waiting to take the father away in order to work for the Nazi regime against his will is a frightening prospect. The Von Trapp family actually managed to escape over the Alps to Switzerland and fly to America instead of becoming a part of terror. Their success as the singing family brought them enough money to open one of America's finest hotels. The Von Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont is a 2600 acre land with a mountain panorama very much like Austria. So the family actually managed to create a life for themselves like the one they enjoyed in Europe. You can book a double room for 250 dollars a night, if you have the money. None of that would have happened had they not believed in what they did.

The family was driven from their home but somehow found their way into creating a new reality.

How does that work? How do some people march through terror and still end up living their dream?

If you believe quantum physics, what we believe creates what happens to us. What your electrons entangle with will fabricate the outcome. Yes. Electrons entangle with whatever or whoever they choose and these electrons stay entangled, connected forever, so it is your choice what you emotionally bond with. If someone threatens you, if you get emotionally involved with that person he or she has the power over you. If you stay neutral, the person has no power over you. This has repercussions. What thoughts of feelings inside you do you bond with? Let the aggressive thoughts just dissolve.

The positive power of what we believe is like light. It lights up the darkness. A lit match can light up a stadium. Atoms are energy. Matter is an illusion. So you literally dictate the particles into creating what you believe. But you can only do that if you've healed your past. If you're carrying too much spiritual garbage in you, there's no way you can break into completely new territory.

"Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start."
Maria's words on the hilltop are simple. Just as simple as the family's songtext of the note "Ti" being a drink with jam and bread. But simplicity isn't lack of intelligence. Like innocence has nothing to do with virginity or lack of sex. Simplicity is a fireplace. Honesty. Openness. Love. Friendship. Beauty. Care.

"It is time, Dr. Jones, once and for all for you to decide what you believe."

Julian Glover's words in "Indiana Jones & the Last Crucade" are equally poignant because he is the villain who forces Indiana to go through the challenges to find the holy grail. The psychological manipulation I went through in the 80s had me in the grasp of a mean friend who blurted out words that harmed me. But ultimately they were just mirror images of things I went through in previous lives and sent me into a spiritual awakening. So what we have to ask ourselves is: are the challenging people in our lives merely actors showing us stop signs where not to go? Do they test our faith?

It's all about faith. It's what kept the family Von Trapp going and ultimately had them win. Joseph Campbell writes in "The Hero's Journey" that the 12 step process of a story is a mirror image of own lives. We all have our mentors, our villains, our tricksters and our allies. Sometimes our partners are also our threshold guardians. If we are strong enough to persevere such relationships, we will win gloriously. If we chicken out, our next relationship will present us with the same issue. The important people we meet are very close in character, which proves to me that the universe wants me to face the conflicts with ease and faith. My childhood presented me with contradicting wills that split my loyalty and created cataclysm inside me. But it was mine alone to solve.

Faith. What is it? Trust. What is trust? Peace of mind. What is peace of mind? Happiness untied to outer circumstance.

We humans tend to need outer proof for what we believe. Tieing it to some thing or situation that to us proves to us that it is all true. That's what relics are all about. We keep parts of the cross and say: "See? He did die on the cross!" We write 400 page books trying to prove, successfully, that the Shroud of Turin was a photography of the resurrection. We keep a cup that we know from the 1st century A.D. and store it in a shrine and say it's the holy grail. In Ethiopia, millions of people believe that they own the Ark of the Covenant where Moses kept his 10 commandments. Heck, that is what even OCD is about. We want to prove it.

The reality is that quantum physics alone proves that everything is energy. There are 800 out of body experiences in the U.S. alone daily. People do astral projections for fun on a daily basis. The CIA and FBI work with telepathy and clairvoyance professionally. Clive Baxter proved that plants can feel in the 1960s. We need not tie our eternal souls to any event in history. It is okay to do so. But basically we have so much proof that we are eternal souls that we need not search for evidence.

It all amounts to one thing: faith.

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