Tovah, thank you for drawing those analogies. Let me counter with this.

One arm does many different actions. It does not mean because I can do many different actions with one arm that I must have different arms. In the same way,

So, perhaps, I am not a multi-dimensional being. Perhaps, am just one being, and that being is capable of many different things and has different sides to it. So, perhaps, there is no higher self and lower self. Perhaps it is just one self, capable of much.

Next, are you talking about faith in oneself? You have already said that Buddhism does not believe in gods. Are you talking about faith in the future? And, if so, are you not talking about confidence?

Ah, just reread your previous comment. You're talking about faith in oneself. Why do you think I do not believe in myself? Have you read my about section? I have had those type of comments every day for most of my life. That's just about my writing. Also, until a few years ago, I heard every day how beautiful I was. In my late 30s, I had 20 or 30 or 40 people come up to me every single day telling me I was a stunning beautiful woman. I have been admired for my taste in clothing, in having a good eye, for being an excellent dancer, for my intellect (gifted), for being extraordinarily capable in many different areas. I have even been told that nobody survives what I did - that they're dead by the age of 25, and I'm 72.

One cannot hear that sort of thing day in, day out for a life time without having some sort of belief in oneself.

Having a belief in others, in fate, is quite another things, though. One learns, when one has lived long enough, that people can be viciously jealous, horrendously evil, that a tsunami can come out of nowhere and wipe out a 100,000 people. One has no control over the events and people that arrive.

The law of attraction only works in prosperous countries, and then only for some people. It often amuses me that those people who will tell you that your thoughts will draw your reality to you have not had sufficiently varied life experience to know that one's thoughts do nothing of the kind.

My Buddhist brother-in-law was so convinced that it was his positive thoughts that were responsible for his success that when he got cancer, he absolutely believed that it would go away. Two weeks before he died, when he was in hospital because he felt so sick and was in so much pain, he asked the doctor when the pain and sickness were going away.

The doctor was a bit bemused and said it wasn't going to go away - that this was it. My brother in law then asked how long he had. The doctor said about two weeks.

My sister said that my brother in law's face went into absolute shock. He could not believe it. It hit him hard. He had avoided all negative thought. He only believed...

My brother-in-law was an absolute prick. He could not believe that there was 'something wrong with me.' It was all in my head he said.

Sometimes things are not just in one's head. They are real. They are separate from oneself, and there is wisdom in knowing the difference.

For all his spirituality, he confessed to my sister that he felt very bad about all those chemicals he made that flowed into the sea (He made cleaning chemicals for a living.) He was excessively proud of his successful business. Yet, he scorned me for living without harming the environment.

We had arguments because I do not believe in influencing other people for my own benefit. He explained that if he did not influence other people, then he would not have any sales. And so it went. He could not see his own hypocrisy.

If you were living in Africa, and a lion came running at you, you would soon learn that no amount of faith was going to rescue you from being that lion's next meal. And that is why I say that many beliefs only work in a certain environments. Once those beliefs are out of that environment, they don't hold up.

So, without wasting more of your time, Tovah, I must thank you for your concern. I believe what I believe because that is where my experiences and my studying and my reading has led me. I have also studied many different religions, forms of spiritualities, etc.

There are those who call me a medium, a shaman, and according to my astrology chart, I was born with full knowledge of spirituality and psychology, and I need no further learning in those things.

There are so many different belief systems. I cannot believe in any of them. My faith is based on what I see with my eyes, in what is apparent because of empirical/material evidence. Only science has never led me astray, and so I will continue to believe in that.

My very best to you.