Faith is essential to your spiritual progress (and your progress as a human being). If you are going to believe another word I say then you need to embrace some level of faith. Many of you will already have it; others of you might be teetering on the edge of cynicism and uncertainty. So let us get straight down to it. Let’s test your faith.

I presume that you want to believe in spirituality, that you feel it calling you and that you would like to incorporate it into your life. So here is a test for your faith, to try to show you that a little faith goes a long way, and that if you choose to believe, then all kinds of incredible spiritual happenings can come your way.

So for this week only, I want you to have faith. For a full seven days I want you to make huge efforts to believe in your own innate spirituality and in your connection to the divine. I know that you might need a little bit of proof, just something small. So I want you to ask for it. Yes, that’s right, just go ahead and ask for it. Ask out loud or don’t make a sound. You can choose to pray, or meditate or just ask in your head. But make sure you do ask. Then I want you to believe that your faith will be proven correct, and in the next seven days I believe that it will. Simple.

So how do you know when your faith has been proven? Well honey, I cannot tell you that, only you will know. It is entirely up to you to believe it when you see it. It is likely that a little sign or message from your higher self and the heavens above, will confirm your faith. You may see or hear something meaningful to you; you might turn the radio on only to hear George Michael wailing out ‘you gotta have faith, faith, faith.’ You may open a book to find a picture that resonates with you, or a car number plate in front of you may near enough spell out the word ‘faith’ or believe or something particular to you. You may have a conversation with a friend or a stranger that triggers something in you and you will know that this is your sign.

If nothing specific happens straight away, keep on waiting and carry on believing. It is likely that your sign will come when you are not really expecting it. Spirit tends to like the element of surprise; divine beings have a penchant for cosmic jokes and dramatic gestures! Try not to double guess what it is that you will see, hear or feel, because it is unlikely that you can imagine what your ‘sign’ will be. Just trust that a sign will come, and that you will know it when it happens. It really is true that you’ll know it when it comes.
I want you to enjoy this challenge, and I want you to really truly believe. I hope this will show you how your own personal faith can bring about minor miracles in your life. All you need to do is to be open and willing to accept these signs and mini miracles when they show up.

Enjoy this little experiment because it will make the reading of this book all the more meaningful. It will show you how on the simplest levels, having a little faith can bring about your personal belief in spiritual living. To help elaborate and demonstrate I have tried this test and it worked for me. My own seven-day faith test has opened up a whole new series of events in my life that is still ongoing. I love it! I renewed my faith and my spirituality came back in with a roar! Everything else that you read in this book now stems from this roar.
Since undertaking this test of faith and looking for a sign, my life has catapulted into a whole new spiritual sphere. So in what way did this happen? Well firstly I will start with the small things that happened. The first sign occurred when I asked two friends, Hannah and Shireece to join me on the seven-day test of faith. I asked them individually, and when I asked them, they both said how funny it was because Shireece had chosen that very morning to have faith and for her faith to be proven. Hannah’s timely noncoincidence was that earlier that very day she had caught herself singing and dancing to a cheesy dance track called ‘I believe’.

Within a day of me proposing this seven-day task to test our faith, Hannah went on to have a whole catalog of signs and messages occur. As for me, on the second day of the task I was randomly thinking about how pleasant it would be to have a feather float toward me. Then later as I went out into my garden, a perfect fluffy white feather did just that. When I went to collect it, it was no longer there. How mysterious! It just disappeared into thin air. As I returned to the house there was another one by the back door, so I collected that one instead as ‘proof’ of my little experiment. Feathers are definitely something you should look out for in your seven-day test of faith. Also flowers, animals and the appearance of other natural phenomena such as leaves, petals and shells can all be taken as significant signs if they find their way to you, or show up where they are not expected. For example a butterfly trailing you down the street when you live in New York, or opening your back door to find petals or a shell awaiting you, could all be valid signs from the powers that be.
Perhaps your favorite bird will follow you twittering its song or it’s presence will appear for you repeatedly and in a number of ways, such as an overheard conversation, or a picture on the back of a bus.

Of course your sign need not be one that is a natural phenomena. You could pass by a billboard that is emblazoned with a few words that fit your life perfectly. Signs and messages will crop up in objects, in images, in songs, on television, the newspaper and in your dreams. And you will know your sign when it appears. Just trust it and go with it. The outstanding sign I had during the seven days test of faith, and continually since then, is the occurrence of the number 22 and 222 in my life. Interestingly when I was writing my first book I constantly saw the numbers 111 everywhere. It seems I have moved up a number! Whenever I happen to glance at a clock it is 2.22. More exciting than this is when I glance at the timer on the microwave and it is precisely 2.22 minutes left, or as happened recently a car pulled out in front of me with a personalized number plate reading 222. Or my change in the shop, or the cost of my goods comes to £2.22. Or I pick up a random document at work and the number 222 is stamped on it, or a letter is dated 22nd of February. All of these and more have happened to me in just one week. When I investigated the spiritual meaning of 222 I found that it meant to ‘have faith’. How very apt.

Following the influx of 222’s in my life, things appeared to take a turn for the worse, to the point that I was feeling a distinct lack of faith. I was having a ‘why, God, why????’ kind of week. Things had been going horribly wrong, I was strung out, stressed and tired. My chicken was ill and then it died, then the first of my two car crashes occurred, leaving me sobbing and hysterical on the Junction 22 turn-off on the motorway. Aha! Junction 22. Even through my hysteria I could see the funny side of it. As I said before, they love a cosmic joke.

When this crash occurred I had been driving to work, and I allowed myself to do something I had not allowed myself in a very long time. I had started to think negative thoughts. I had started to worry about all the, what ifs…? I have not done that for a good few years. But I did it then. And within a few minutes – BANG, the car felt like it had exploded. In that second I knew it was a wake up call. And when I saw where the crash occurred I could not help but giggle through my sobs. To add insult to injury, I noted a sign to my left, which stated that roadwork started on the 22nd of that month. I called my friend, who later reported that the phone call was received at 8.22. When I told another friend about this strange occurrence, she left my house, only to find herself stuck behind a number 22 bus that was clogging up her route! Though she soon understood the message and called me to report back! That number is still happily haunting me, but I understand it now, I get what it means. I hope the universe gets that I get it, because what with the whiplash, I have had enough of lousy stuff for a little while.

It is true that the 22’s have coincided with things going drastically wrong in my life. But I don’t see this as a reflection of the number itself. Rather the number has become a shining beacon of hope, letting me know that I am on the right path. In spite of the occasional negative thought, the shock and upset of the crash and the resulting painful neck, the 222s remind me that all is well. With this in mind the assault of 222 continues…since writing all this, a young lady I met offered to do me a numerology report. It was returned to me swiftly and my life path number is… yep, you guessed it, 22. Some people might be entirely freaked out by this, or even fear that the number 22 was causing the troubles in their lives. I do not believe this to be the case. The 22 for me is a constant reminder of what I have achieved, where I am going and the fact that my life, whilst somewhat chaotic, is well and truly going in the right direction. The number 22 is a thread pulling me through all the difficulties and reminding me of my own faith. It is a sign, it is a symbol, and given the quantity and quality of its crazy appearances it is a powerful guiding light.

To add a little more to my 22 stories, I have just returned from my trip to Glastonbury. I went there to help restore my mojo after the two car crashes (2 car crashes is a little sign too of course!). Whilst I was there, of course my guiding number 22 showed up at the most opportune times. The house right opposite my bed and breakfast guesthouse was number 22. The bar I discovered that was suitable for a lone female with a laptop was adorned with a larger than life number 22 on the door. The stone I chose at a jeweler for my wedding ring resonated at 22.The metal that I chose was also found to resonate at number 2. Which of course means that the resonation of my wedding ring is 222!

My story of 2’s is a jolly good example of how innocuous signs and symbols can find their way through and light your path to help to lead you out of the darkness. As you can see, when you ask for signs, you get them in bundles, all you need do is sit back and have faith so that you recognize and appreciate them when they happen, which they will. I hope you have an amazing experience on your seven-day test of faith; and I am sure that this experience will snowball into bigger and even more meaningful events as your life spirals into
a more spiritual way of being.

I hope that within your week something has happened that you know in your heart to be true and totally personal to you. If you do not feel that you are sure, then all I can ask you to do is try again and just be determined to have faith and to believe it when you see it. Maybe rope a friend in to do the seven-day test of faith with you so that you can compare notes, and so that you can notice signs for each other if they are whizzing over your head. Sometimes other people can see a blazing sign that we have ignored, misunderstood, blocked out of our mind, or logically tried to explain away.

This experiment will help you to open up to the divine energy and spiritual significance that can come out of mundane everyday life. It will set you off on a path of other non-coincidences and amazing little occurrences, and as your faith grows so will you. Slowly your intuition and natural psychic knowledge will assert itself. You will begin to live in tune with your soul, as a multi-dimensional being rather than simply as a three-dimensional human being. Think of your spirituality as the fourth dimension, and the fifth and the sixth!

This is an extract from The High Heeled Guide to Spiritual Living by Alice Grist published by O-Books. Find out more about Alice here.