The expectations we impose on the emerging now are decorated with our ideas about the future and shape our experience of life.

The three parts of the perspective -- memory, intellect and will -- each have a corresponding discipline by which they can be cleared of distortion. This is an idea from medieval patristic theology. Memory is cleared by hope. Intellect is cleared by faith. Will is cleared by love. 

The distortions that clutter the intellect tend to pertain to the future. Ideally, the intellect would be constantly occupied with the now, but when it's cluttered with particles of fear or insecurity or distracting desire it goes out of tune. Reality is always right now, but the now seems to emerge from somewhere. Now. Now. Now. That somewhere is the future. 

A cluttered intellect is more concerned with the future than with the now that emerges from it, because the clutter consists of harsh or happy ideas of what the future might hold. The expectations we impose on the emerging now are decorated with our ideas about the future and shape our experience of life. If the intellect is cluttered with negativity like self hate, self doubt, or fear for example, it will stamp each new experience with these characteristics as it comes through. This puts a negative hue on every experience we accumulate. 

That's no way to live.

Even worse is that it happens unconsciously. It's just there having its effect. It's amazingly subtle and works slowly, over time. Unchecked it will lead to bad decisions, painful situations, repeated patterns of abuse, neglect, complacency. It can perpetuate addiction or simply result in a general immobility in life which creates basic dissatisfaction. It can only be stopped on purpose and even then it takes a long time to truly make the adjustment. 

Enter faith. 

Faith is a tool for altering the intellect so that it no longer accumulates distorted versions of the emerging now, but the emerging now as it really is. Faith is doing. Faith is a sense of adventure. It means the willingness to experience the now as it is. The only way to do that is to return to the now and directly face any pain, fear or insecurity that lives there so that it doesn't create distortion. That's what clutter and distortion of the intellect really are, after all -- the difficult feelings that we leave unaddressed. They prevent us from seeing things as they really are.

A cluttered intellect will get stuck in the future, mired in some harsh or happy fantasy, leaving you ineffective. Faith is like a shout from the now, a message from your full self, calling out to the partial self in which you have become trapped. It says something like "Hey! There's more to you than that fear you're feeling! Come back and see for yourself!"  

The key is belief in the possibility of another quality of experience, belief in transformation through practice, and remembering your strengths. It's more than just thinking positively. Positive thinking has its place, but it can easily slip into denial or fantasy. Applying faith means experiencing what is really going on for you, in truth, here and now, and from that position of clear honest appraisal, determining to evolve out of weakness into strength, out of distortion into clarity, out of aimlessness into vision. Your full self, your whole self begins to emerge and lead the way. You address your entire perspective, the whole of your inner condition, not just some particular situation. (Although particular situations do provide clues for the work you need to do, they tend to be symptoms, effects of the distortions of intellect that can no doubt be found all across your experience if you look for them.)

Applying faith means you recognize the need to return to reality, to what is, to what you can say for sure, even if that means saying "I have no idea what's going on here." Applying faith means you detach from this or that feared or desired outcome, do your very best, and allow your situation to unfold. You proceed without an idea to rely on recognizing that you just can't know the outcome. 

This makes you more effective in coping with exigency, and it allows for unforeseen or extraordinary possibility. You stand there willing, ready to work with whatever turns out, diligently present in the now. If there is fear or distracting desire, you remember that you cannot know the future, so any notion of it is false. You recognize that the impulse to flee the now is just a reaction to difficult feelings that live there. If you stay and meet those feelings, you get your power back. You become effective on your own behalf. 

Ever forward.