Sradda (Faith: The container which holds the truth)

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Faith is the soul’s witness to something not yet manifested achieved or realized, but which yet the Knower within us, even in the absence of all indications, feels to be true or supremely worth following or achieving. Aurobindo Sri, A Greater Psychology

 

 Faith fuels the bright fire of our enthusiasm and energy. Gitte Bechsgaard, The Gift of Consciousness

 

 Where do you turn when things start falling apart, when life feels unbearable?  What is it you have faith in?  For me, it comes as feeling of being held even in the midst of falling, a knowing that I will be okay no matter what is happening. It comes from a connection to my deeper self this passageway from fear into faith.  When I can get to that interior place, I find an accompanying presence holding me that is greater and more spacious than my small self. 

 

 Faith is sharpened by the travails of life. When our hopes and dreams are tested as they surely will be that is when we have a real chance to cultivate faith and with faith courage. But what is it that we are to have faith in?  I experience faith as a trust in myself to be with my innermost self when I feel hopeless.  In fact, hopelessness is often my pathway into faith.  When all feels lost, I am pried from clinging to what I think will save me and fall into a deep well of unknowing. Surrendering my control of the situation feels like a death but it is in this surrender I have the chance to find a deeper source of direction.  This is the wellspring of great creativity and authenticity of seeing how things are truly unfolding not how we hoped that they would go and having the chance to respond to that reality with a wisdom that is greater than the smaller egoic view of things. This is a perspective that can hold both loss and possibility, death and rebirth, within a life-giving whole. Faith in its fullness is all about feeling less afraid of dying and learning how dying is interwoven with growth.

 

 We are here to grow into a deeper knowing of ourselves and to bring forth into the world what we alone can bring.  We must do this without knowing how it is going to work out.  It wouldn’t be creative otherwise.  Stepping forward into the unknown, surrendering what is no longer needed, cultivating what is, we have the chance to nourish faith in ourselves, in the universe, in our purpose for life.


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