Faith is an act of ultimate concern.

—Paul Tillich

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By faith, I don’t mean obedience to any principle or doctrine or person, but more, a faith in life. Faith is our covenant with life no matter what befalls us. It is our belief that we are part of something larger than us. It is our commitment to let all that is larger than us be our teacher. What light is for plants and flowers, faith is for human souls. It is that which causes us to grow and that toward which we grow. Imagine a seed growing underground toward a light it can’t yet see. In just this way, love and suffering cause us to break ground and flower.

People often ask me about the power of faith. How can I have faith in the midst of such uncertainty?

I read a story recently which describes what human faith is. Human faith is when you go to someone that you don't know and you tell them about a problem that you have, and they write a prescription that you can't read, and you take it to a pharmacist whom you've never met, and they make a compound. They hand it to you and you put it in your body with all the trust in the world. Yes, human faith is a very interesting dynamic. The question is what do we put our faith in? And, don’t we owe it to ourselves to explore beyond human faith to work with spiritual faith using natural laws? 

Like many, I take my yoga practice off the mat. I study life in search of greater wisdom and truth. Some people show me what I need to work on and others set an example of where I would like to be in my personal development.


The store I currently work part-time for recently got a new manager. This lady started managing after a long line of her predecessors quit, due to the incredible amount of pressure the job put on them. Every time I work with her she seems to be in great spirits, always smiling and joking.


While I have a great number of skills that will help me to find inner peace, she seemed to have a much greater grasp on it. I often times wondered how she so easily maintained a positive mindset knowing how much work she was responsible for.


It was easy to understand why the others seemed constantly frazzled and stressed. The way this particular business is structured keeps everyone in the fear of losing their jobs and with that their livelihood.

The aptly named “butterfly effect” has become well known in recent years as people begin to take seriously the interconnectedness of all life on our planet, as well as the nature of energy itself. The name refers to the possibility that the movement of a butterfly’s wings affects the world around it in unforeseen ways. The greater truth of this idea resonates within my own life again and again, often quite literally.

 

Several weeks ago, I reread Sharon Salzberg’s book Faith, published in 2002. I had read it then, but I was moved to take it off the shelf again because its title called to me strongly. As my spiritual journey has deepened, I have found myself repeatedly stepping off the edge of certainty (or the illusion of it) into the unknown. Over the past two months, everything seemed to fall away until I realized that I was being asked to move forward completely on “faith.” Thus my reason for rereading Sharon’s book. With each chapter, I saw how much more deeply I connected with it than I had 15 years before.

Worry is a waste of time.

It changes nothing.

Most of the things you are worrying about now, you won’t remember in a few years.

Stop focusing on the small stuff that you won’t even remember a week from now, and certainly not on your death bed.

Life gives you no refunds for the time you spent worrying.

What you focus on expands, so focus on what is truly important and meaningful to you. Decide to constantly feed what is beautiful about yourself and your life rather than what isn’t.

The quality of your life will be determined by the quality of your attention. And this is your choice.

By trying to furiously control life, you often end up controlled by it.

Shiva is the power of destruction, dissolution, or transformation in our lives. Nothing entirely new and innovative can be created without this strong, and often unsettling, force that turns the tables on the status quo, normality, and habituation. Without Shiva, our lives would be dull and uneventful—one long Groundhog Day, playing the same scene over and over again. Yet the word destruction strikes fear in our hearts; we freeze at the very thought of losing what is dear to us. Of losing everything.

Hurricanes like Irma, Maria, and Harvey embody this extreme aspect of Shiva. Monumental raging winds and rising water completely obliterate the old, often leaving thousands homeless and grieving the deaths of friends and family. In the aftermath, something new is eventually created, but loss of home and loss of life are not easily assimilated or accepted. Those affected may experience emotional trauma as well as financial burdens. These human crises break our hearts. How do we face life at times like these?