The Struggle With Faith

From chapter 76 of the Tao Te Ching (circa 400 BCE, China)

…The living are soft and flexible.

When we die, we become hard and stiff;

The dead are rigid, unmoving.

The greenery - grasses, plants and trees

Growing are tender and supple,

Dead are dry and brittle.

…A tree that won’t bend

Easily breaks in storms.

The hard and strong will fail,

The open-hearted prevail.

I want to talk about faith. To be honest, I’m afraid to use that word because it’s been co-opted too often twisted into a sickening pretense. I’m afraid because faith is too big of an issue for little me to step into. And mostly I’m afraid that maybe I don’t have any real faith. 

So, here I go.

Faith is difficult. We’ve lost so much faith in what we used to have faith in. That’s both heartbreaking and wonderfully freeing. I see the tsunami of anger flowing through the world today as primarily an expression of both our heartbreak and freedom as faith in old things crumbles. It’s difficult to summon faith while we swim in anger.

Sometimes I think it’s best not to have faith in anything. It’s a world of lies, pretense and manipulation. Nothing can be trusted, everything is meaningless. Once, on a bus through central Minneapolis, I sat in the very back seat. Scrawled with a finger in the dust on the window: “Grave = Why bother?”

This is the classic philosophy of nihilism, from the root, “empty”: the world is empty of meaning. I so want to dive into that state of mind. But every teacher I admire - the Buddhist masters, the shamans, even the Christians say don’t go there. The Sufi poet Rumi says, “Don’t sink to the bottom like a fish going to sleep for the winter.” So, I think, Nihilism = not the solution. Nietzsche, (“God is dead”) one of the fathers of nihilism, said it was actually an important passageway in human development. So, maybe we are all, right now, in this passageway together. I don’t know.

Then I think, well life may not be meaningless, but at least I can stand firmly in a place of utter, total mistrust. Everyone has a hidden agenda, and at least I won’t fall for that. That takes me into the classical stance of skepticism and cynicism. I don’t use these terms as insults – they are philosophical positions, wisdom lineages from ancient Greece (Phyrro and Diogenes). Both philosophies have at their core a practice of “standing apart” from the world, of relying on one’s own judgment rather than accepting without question the story being told. There’s power in that, in trusting myself, and only myself.

But mostly there’s a sense of safety in that, of standing apart. But if I’m standing apart in overall mistrust because I’m afraid of the grief that comes with trying to have faith in something, then I’m just standing aside from intimacy with life. I really don’t want to waste this entire incarnation living in a cold, walled fortress.

I want to have faith in life. I want some warmth and beauty out of this incarnation. Not the uncountable twisted, thin forms of passing warmth and fake beauty my culture tosses my way, but real warmth and beauty, real awe. John O’ Donohue, the Irish poet-mystic, calls this the "longing of divine urgency.” 

The mystical traditions throughout the world tell us we have two urges: the small urge toward repeating our fears, and the other toward inconceivable awe and love. We can follow either. Your longing for the divine is matched only by the Divine's longing for you.

Taking a breath now…

The old definition of faith is something along the lines of “unshakable loyalty to an unprovable story.” In that definition, the marker of real faith is unbending rigidity. A faithful person is steadfast, immovable, uncompromising. In that old definition, to be faithful means to harden yourself against the world of flux and change, make an enemy of whatever carries change. However, since life is always in flux, the old definition means we harden ourselves against the life force itself.

It's helpful to draw a distinction between belief and faith. Belief is a mental activity, of making a mental commitment to a story or set of teachings. Faith is not intellectual; it is a sensory experience. People leave religions when those systems only offer belief but not a full-bodied faith which carries us into intimacy with life. When religions become enemy factories, they no longer offer faith.

It can be said that much shamanic healing involves, in one way or another, restoring someone’s intimacy with life. The healing involves locating and clearing the places in the body or energy field where the trust in life has been blocked. Then new energy (blessing) is poured to that place. Then the person takes on practices that change old habits that were standing on the mistrust of life.

Here’s the thing: faith is supposed to be difficult. When we became sentient, we entered an agreement to wrestle with life rather than blindly eat, shit, acquire, reproduce, and die. Real faith always, always, always, has some struggle in it, because real faith is always growing or shifting, like all other alive things. The tulips buried in the dark ground right now in early spring need to struggle to send the first green shoot up. They don’t know if there’s a rock on top that will stop that shoot from reaching the light. Struggle comes first, then results – and results are not guaranteed. Discomfort is part of the price of admission to faith, for being alive and sentient.

So, I propose we replace the old definition of faith (“unshakable loyalty to the unprovable”) with, “Faith is my clumsy dance between the smallness of things and the largeness of things, and my exploration of the wonder in no guarantees.”

And, I suggest we replace the word “belief” with “awareness.” Belief is mental, but awareness is embodied – it is an act of opening to the life force. We can argue over beliefs because arguing is a mental game too, just like belief. But it‘s really impossible to argue over awareness.

Here are two very simple but potent ways I have been taught to work with awareness (one taught by humans, the other taught by the spirits). Both require you to first take some time, slow down, breathe a bit, enter into an open state.

First: Merely ask yourself: “What am I aware of right now?” This is a classic mindfulness meditation approach, opening to one awareness after another, letting them float by, withdrawing any judgement from whatever arises, with no need to fix anything. Withdrawing judgment is the key. Just be a witness. As soon as we enter judgement, we exit the realm of faith. To let go of judgement, let go of any and all story that is attached to whatever arises. That is so easy to type, but it’s a lifelong task. If all you do in this life is work to train the mind in this way, it puts you in the top percentile of sentient beings. If you are unfamiliar with the work of Byron Katie, check out her Four Liberating Questions.

Second: Sit or stand (preferably outside), close your eyes, and explore what you are aware of around you in the physical world (rather than inside you – emotions and thoughts – which is the focus of the first practice). Move your awareness outward, more and more and more, in ever-widening circles. For example: I am aware of my heart beating, aware of my breath moving, my organs working. Give this time. Then I am aware of roots under the earth, the tulips under the earth and the decomposers at work in the soil.. I am aware that they are there right now. Give this some time. I am aware of sparrows’ wings flapping. I am aware that the neighborhood hawk is swooshing somewhere, unseen. And that dog that howls so mournfully every day at 10 am, for three minutes only. Someone rolling trash cans to the curb. Slight wind. The angle of sunlight. People riding a bus on a nearby street. The Mississippi river, a mile east of me. Satellites orbiting. Moons, planets, galaxies. Try to hold the entire picture of all that you became aware of - awareness of the totality of all this life going on all at once, right now, around you. Hold this awareness as long as you can. When thoughts or emotions intervene, (“Damn- did I leave the stove on?”) let them go, as in the first practice, let go of the emotions, let go of all stories connected to any of the images, and return to holding the totality of life happening around you right now, all in movement, all in flux, ever-shifting.

The master teachers say these practices should be done for at least ten years before asking, “why am I doing this?” But if you do these practices for even a little while, you may find that you have stepped into the present moment - otherwise known as the eternal dance of life. The outward expansion of awareness takes you out of the smaller, rational mind, into what can be called the bigger mind, the primal mind, the mind that always touches the real world, the “spacious silence” that is, in every spiritual tradition, linked with pure Spirit. The present moment and faith are married, and it is right here where all power resides. The Celtic tradition calls this, “The music of this moment – the finest music ever made.” Creation is never in the past, never in the future, and never afraid. As is faith.