Faith is not a requirement. You do not need faith to have access to Me. Faith is something that comes after experience. It is not a forerunner of it.

I am saying that you do not have to believe in Me before you know Me.

You may need innocence, however. If lack of innocence consists of preconceived ideas, then innocence is required, not faith. The trouble with preconceived ideas is that they make you vulnerable to controlling My entrance into your life — and so you miss it. When you predict Me a certain way, in a certain costume of your design, or you predict My entrance through a certain door, you may look in the wrong place or for a presumptive God and miss Me right here as I am.

If you have not become deeply intimate with Me as yet, you have been directing your vision of My entrance. You have been trying to direct the show. You have put boundaries around Me. You have sorted Me out. "God is this way, not that." And so you have asserted what you will see.

See Me, and not your prediction of Me.

But no matter what barriers you and the world put up, you will know Me. You have known Me. Only adherence to other principles keeps you from grasping Me right now. I am within your grasp right now.

This moment you are getting a glimpse of Me or a wisp of My thought or a hint of My voice. You are getting something of Me. Your awareness is opening to the possibility of Me. A long-forgotten song is stirring in you, and your memory of this song is just below the surface. My song is welling up in you and will rise to the top. You can almost hum it now.

Innocence does not predict. Innocence is openness to what is right before you. Lack of innocence is openness to certain restricted predicted avenues and closedness to others. Lack of innocence presumes knowledge and won't be swayed from its picture of it.

Be willing to be innocent, and that will do you very well. Be willing to let more in. Be willing to let in what comes. Do not be a cop directing traffic. Do not put up stop signs. Wave Me through.

Faith is pure openness. Faith is not conviction. Conviction is not much. Convictions change. Faith is much more than something you convince yourself of. Faith is not a decision. Faith is seeing or knowing or hearing on a deep deep level. Deep levels are simple.

Return to simplicity. Leave off complication.

Faith is not something to learn. All the study in the world does not bring it to you. It comes unbidden. You allow it, just as you allow Me. You come across faith with your own eyes, and then you accept it. You see what you have seen. You do not need to buy faith on trust.

Faith is more like a menu at a restaurant where you have eaten before. You tasted a certain meal, and it was good, and you want to have it again. You remember it, yet you cannot quite conjure the taste until the delicacy is in your mouth once again. That is faith. Faith is recognition.

Faith is right now. Our reciprocal love is Our faith.

The question is not of gaining or losing faith. It is a question of having Me right now, stirring your heart.