Faith is Your Key to Success. Part 2: You are made of the same stuff as Stars and are meant to Shine
In Part 1 on Faith, we talked about how faith sustains us in all conditions. In Part 2, we are exploring why we feel this mutual connection to this infinite intelligence.
So if we cannot see this source, spirit, God or higher power, why do the vast majority of us agree that it is here?
Keyboard commandos shouting at each other on Facebook, counter protestors yelling at each other with megaphones, politically charged vitriol everywhere. Americans can’t agree on anything nowadays, yet a December 2023 Pew Research Center study titled Spirituality Among Americans[i], shows that
“88% of Americans believe in God, higher power or spirit.”
88%
WHAAAAT???
This is amazing!!
When I read this, I was blown away and absolutely ecstatic. There is finally something we all agree on!! Well almost all of us. Reading this was cause for celebration and worthy of a section in my upcoming book, The Light in the Mirror.
We are surrounded by seemingly challenging times and so much negativity, yet people are retaining their faith in a higher power or source of life greater than ourselves. Take a moment to close your eyes and thank the great universal source of life and love for uniting all of us together in faith. You can feel that connection to spirit and each other as we are united in our faith.
The Pew Research study also showed that over
“70% of U.S. adults can be considered ‘spiritual’ in some way, because they think of themselves as spiritual people or say spirituality is very important in their lives.”
And the research also found that
“83% of all U.S. adults believe people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body.”
Now religious participation is way down, which is not surprising, but that light within us that is connected to the great light of life continues to shine in the darkness. We each individually feel that connection or at least believe it is there for us to access.
We have faith.
This faith is not religion or the belief in a specific religion, although for many it can be. We are strictly talking here about faith in a higher power that is greater than us and the research shows that almost all of us feel it or have faith in its existence beyond ourselves.
So if faith in a higher power is what unites us, it is not surprising that the official motto of the United States is “In God We Trust.” It is the one thing that unites us and the vast majority of Americans can agree on.
How and when did this become our national motto?
The origin of “In God we Trust” is first seen in the U.S. as the motto of Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania militia in 1743, however it was not for 120 years later in 1863 that it made its way on to the two cent coin. Two years later, “On March 3, 1865, the U.S. Congress passed a bill, which Abraham Lincoln subsequently signed as the last act of Congress prior to his assassination, that allowed the Mint Director to place “In God We Trust” on all gold and silver coins.”[ii]
It is a little eerie that the last act of Congress signed by Lincoln before his death was related to what became our official motto and invoked the spirit of the infinite. It was meant at that time to serve as a uniting force during and after the Civil War.
So we are united in something we cannot see, feel or touch in the physical world, yet it is the force that allows us to see clearly, feel deeply and touches our hearts and minds.
How is this possible?
How is it that we are united by something unproven but about which so many of us are certain?
It is possible because we are all united by our composition, by what we are made off. We share the same origin and our made of the same elements that propel the universe forward and always have. Living an extraordinary life is no more difficult than recognizing that you are made of the same stuff as stars.
In Gandhi’s words,
My own experience has led me to the knowledge that the fullest life is impossible without an immovable belief in a Living Law in obedience to which the whole universe moves. A man without that faith is like a drop thrown out of the ocean bound to perish. Every drop in the ocean shares its majesty and has the honor of giving us the ozone of life. [iii]
The ocean, the ozone, the dirt, the trees, the animals, the stars and our bodies are all made of the same thing. We are all made of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium and iron. We are all made of stars, which is why we believe in a higher power greater than ourselves. We feel the infinite because that is what we are made of the infinite.
We are made of stars and are meant to shine.
This is not some metaphysical conjecture.
The elements of your body come directly from the star that imploded to make earth. You feel a connection to the universe because you are the universe.
Carl Sagan, a famous American astronomer and host of the famous Cosmos TV series, said it so simply and so perfectly,
The Nitrogen in our DNA,
The Calcium in our teeth,
The Iron in our blood,
The Carbon in our apple pies
Were made in the interiors of collapsing starts.
WE ARE MADE OF STARSTUFF.
Our bodies are made of star stuff.
There are pieces of star within us all.
Someone from NASA’s Chandra Observatory, located at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, posted on X (Twitter),
“The oxygen & carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars. Much of the iron in your body was forged during supernova explosions that occurred long ago & far away. And the hydrogen in your body, present in every molecule of water, came from the Big Bang.”[iv]
Here is a little more detail in a great infographic produced by retired British doctor turned blogger, Grant Hutchinson, based on the book Nature’s Building Blocks by UK science writer and Cambridge professor John Emsley.[v]
Why all this explanation about our composition?
Because it is imperative for us to see what we are made of and why it unites us in our belief in our universal source.
You did not just show up from the uniting of two people, or perhaps implantation of a fertilized egg. You came from the universe. Every element of your body came from beyond our current physical world.
That is why we feel this amazing connection to a higher power.
That is why 88% of Americans believe in God, a higher power or a spiritual force.
We are all connected by that force which reverberates within us. We feel it within the cells of our body. We remember it.
You are made of the same stuff as stars and you are meant to shine.
You are meant to be expansive, abundant, and growing like the universe.
When I was young, maybe 4 or 5 and for years later in life, I remember having a recurring dream. It was where I was in space and floating closely next to a massive orb, which was a planet or star and what I felt was an overwhelmingly powerful pulsing the moment before an enormous explosion or implosion. It was as though the world was ending.
As a kid, I thought this dream was a nightmare, but yet it wasn’t. It was a feeling of colossal power and I never saw the moment of the anticipated explosion yet it was just about to occur. I was in that moment right before. It was like the moment before an impact.
Over time, the dream and feeling was less frequent but did occasionally appear as I grew older and into adulthood. The feeling and image has never gone away completely. It was the most recurring and vivid dream I have ever had. As soon as I think of that dream, I feel that overwhelming, anticipatory, scary and powerful pulsating feeling.
I was talking with a deeply gifted energy healer and spiritual friend, Reverand Jessica Lewis, a couple of years ago. I don’t think I had ever told anyone about this dream and the feeling, but I told her that day. She said that it was likely a creation dream at the cellular level. My body and mind remembering how they came to be.
Knowing what we now know about the composition of our bodies, that dream makes much more sense. It wasn’t fear of destruction; it was the bursting of a star into creation of new forms. You have probably had similar mysteries that tie you to the infinite and demonstrate your connection to the universe. We can brush these off as premonitions, dreams or fleeting thoughts, but our faith shows us that they are our connection to the higher power that is within us all.
This can be overwhelming and seem distant, but it can also be a reassurance that we are all united, connected and all in this together.
Our faith in the universal source and ourselves as a part of that higher power can ground us in faith and unite us for mutual greatness.
Faith can take us to new heights and show us our true nature. Faith can heal physical wounds as we saw in Part 1, but it can also heal our emotional wounds.
We have to believe in that which is beyond our power and not be limited by that which we can see. Rather it is incumbent upon us to close our eyes and see our infinite capabilities, to go beyond the limitations of modern life.
We can achieve almost anything we can conceive of with the power of faith in the source of all light.
In the next article on Faith, we will discuss reaching into the infinite to heal us and allow us to thrive as our true selves.
Visit benparvey.com to download our Habitually Inspired HabiTracker, get inspired and learn more ways to Thrive in 2025.
[i] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spirituality-among-americans/
[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust#cite_note-:52-27
[iii] H, 25–4–36, 84.
[iv] https://twitter.com/chandraxray/status/1402663497541029896
[v] https://oikofuge.com/we-are-stardust/
