Faith

Spiritual motivation can sometimes feel like a temporary energy boost that kicks in for a period of time and then fades away. Perhaps we have an intuition of truth or an experience of calm, or a feeling of love for the universe, which inspires practice, devotion, or action, but then fades, leaving us without any insight for a long time. Or we have an understanding about how short life is and why that means that we must be strenuously devoted to our spiritual practice, but within a few days we go back to our usual mundane habits and routines. The demands of life have an inherent ability to outlast us and our surges of spiritual interest. And this is to say nothing of those acute crises and setbacks that test the very foundations of our resolve, spiritual or not.

To make substantial spiritual progress is something that inevitably takes many years, most likely decades or the entirety of a lifetime—or according to some cosmologies, even multiple human lifetimes. This is because of the recalcitrance of our human nature which has evolved from the animal nature, which itself is constituted of the same ingredients as the rock, soil, and water of the earth; the Divine force is powerful, but still must work on timescales that are commensurate with the challenges of the condition. Surges of the will provide one power source for bridging the gap. At other times we are able to rely fully on God’s will which provides the needed strength and direction. But the full periods of light and guidance, and even those periods of our own strong will, last much shorter than we would like. There are inevitably long stretches where help, strength and energy seem nowhere to be found. To get through these times with our aspiration intact, we need to develop a solid faith. Faith will see us through the difficult times and the doldrums alike; it will propel us slowly then quickly towards the realization when we will finally see the fruits of our endeavor that have been promised.

But what exactly is faith? If faith means nothing more than holding an idea obstinately even when it is at odds with our rational observation, then it has no place sharing space with truth and realism on any list of virtues. Such a conception of “faith” would seem to be decimated by the success of science, which is why the idea of faith seems problematic in this age: it is pitted unjustly against “reason”, which appears to be the winner. We are taught that the scientific age and its attendant progress came about because man stopped taking things on faith—because we decided to use our minds to see what is really true. According to this story, man broke free of arbitrary authorities that told us things about reality that could not be proven. Once we stopped having faith in invisible things and used our minds critically to look at physical world, we discovered vast realms of knowledge, leading to powers and technologies which have transformed the world into something that was previously unimaginable. This shows the power of looking at the evidence as opposed to faith—or so the argument goes. The implication is that faith in God is not as justified as trust and belief reason, in technology and physical science. Belief in God in general can only proceed by faith; it doesn’t have any concrete evidence to support it in the same way the laws of physics do.

The definition of faith I propose here would have no part of rigidly denying reality, nor blindly following a bureaucratic priesthood that mindlessly applies textual arguments. A deeper principle of faith bases itself not on mere ideas, unverifiable texts, or hearsay, but rather on one’s deepest experiences and intuitions. I view faith as a process of conditioning the outer being to rely on the highest truth known by the highest or deepest part of the inner being, even in the midst of conditions that may be variance from from that highest perceived truth. If you once intuited or felt the presence of God, but at a later time feel doubt and fear during a dark night of the soul, faith would be about holding on to that conviction that you had earlier in whatever way that is possible. It would seem that perhaps this sort of faith could run out eventually, in the same way that will power runs out; here we would need to be sustained on the conviction of what we once saw. But did we not say earlier that the whole point of faith is that our normal will and conviction runs out? This is true as a purely logical point, but in practice, faith can continually replenish itself as it wells from deep within us. Faith works because it is tapping into a part of us that is already there even if we can’t always see it.

Notice that this notion of holding on to one’s highest truth doesn’t necessarily need to be about God. In fact, everyone has some form of faith, even the most ardent atheist among us. Everyone sustains themselves on their deepest source of strength during hard times, whether that be the idea of family, faith in oneself, or another form of idealism like patriotism. It is healthiest for an individual to have faith in what he or she actually has faith in rather than be forced to have faith in God when there is no intuition for it in the being. But here we are discussing a spiritual path that leads to God, so the type of faith we are discussing in particular is faith in God. And this faith in God is faith that God is everything that we know him to be—a being of absolute perfection and Goodness. We have faith that he us leading us and all of creation towards the destiny that he chose for us. We have faith that things happen for a deeper purpose, even though we can’t see it.

The complexity of our nature is a double edged sword—it means that even when some parts of our being are behaving well, they can be disrupted by recalcitrant parts; these are situations where we often need faith, where the body is sick but the mind is clear, or where the mind is confused even though the emotions are buoyant. But the complexity of our nature also means that there are many different ways that we can invoke and store faith to assist us in gaining harmony and balance. First, faith could be stored in the mind. A strong intellectual conviction in the necessity, existence, and benevolence of God is one of the most helpful things to hold on to. We often use our rational minds to overcome the fears and emotions of the more primitive parts of our minds, as anyone who has ever overcome nerves to take action to go to a job interview, do a presentation, or overcome a phobia can attest. In the same way, someone who is facing uncertainty and emotional turbulence may rely on the rational knowledge that knows that God is protecting them to keep going. Intellectual conviction in the nature of God can go a long way towards allowing us to hold onto faith, which is why understanding and overcoming rational doubts about God’s existence can be an important step on the way towards spiritual realization.

Faith can also be stored in the emotional being. While intellectual conviction can go a long way towards providing essential foundations for faith, the actual experience of faith is often as a sort of reliance. This could be understood as similar to the sort of reliance that a child has on a parent, though for the adult, it is an entirely adult reliance on God. Once this feeling is understood, it can be called upon in the future when faith needs to be invoked again, the same way that a memory of a loved one can recall feelings of caring and tranquility. Commonly the intellectual and emotional faith work together. You know intellectually that you are feeling emotionally confused and recognize that faith is needed; then you rationally recognize that God is protecting and guiding you, then deliberately retrieve the emotional experience of reliance on God to actually invoke the faith.

Another aspect of faith is the social. Faith is not necessarily a natural attitude. It requires you to go against human nature which constantly doubts the power of God, if not in one part of the being then in another. Therefore it is something that must be deliberately cultivated, and this is done most often because its importance is communicated by some trusted spiritual figure. The community of spiritual seekers has reinforced this message through the centuries in a variety of traditions, that faith is essential to get through the spiritual life, that it will often be difficult but it is eventually rewarded. So does this essay echo this message—this is a piece of wisdom that I myself have heard, practiced, and found to be true, that I am passing along to the reader. The reinforcement of faith is one of many reasons why associating with fellow spiritual seekers can be such a great aid on the path.

But regardless of the specific way that faith operates in one’s being, the most important thing about building faith is the choice to have faith, which is a choice must be made over and over again until faith is unshakable. The key thing about faith is that it is most necessary when one’s being is not in harmony, when either the mind or the emotions or the will is at odds with the truth that is known by the soul. In these moments, there is something which one part of the being knows but the another scared, contracted part of your nature doesn’t know yet—a part which feels scared to go forward, feels afraid that the future won’t be any better than the past, or can’t see or feel the Divine yet. The difficult part about building faith is that it is necessary to choose to have faith at exactly those moments where it feels least justified—though of course it finds its justification in the knowledge of the soul that is clearer at other times. Faith is a choice that must be impressed upon the whole being by making this choice over and over again. Eventually, it will come to rest on experience and what once appeared to be faith will grow indistinguishable from knowledge.