Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “It is faith that steers us through stormy seas, faith that moves mountains and faith that jumps across the oceans. That faith is nothing but a living, wide-awake consciousness of God within. He who has achieved that faith wants nothing…I am a man of faith. My reliance is solely on God. One step is enough for me. The next step he will make clear to me when time for it comes.” Clearly Gandhi was a man who walked in faith, able to steer through the stormy seas of life with God as his polestar. What is faith, exactly, and how can it become a true refuge and inspiration for our lives?
Faith is defined as “a confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.” Faith is what we trust in, what we rely on. Our faith is not so much our stated beliefs as it is how we live, the basis for the choices we make. In Sanskrit the word for faith is śhraddhā, which means trust, belief in divine revelation, or what is placed in the heart. In Proverbs of the Bible, faith is spoken of in this way, “As we think or believe in our hearts, so do we act, and so is our life.” Our faith is continually revealed in our thoughts, speech, actions, and ultimately, as the life we live.
During times of great challenge, some people may question their faith. With money in the bank, a secure job, and good health, it can seem as if our faith is strong. But when the outer conditions we were relying on fall away and we are thrown off balance, what we actually believed to be the real source of security is revealed. Most of us have occasions in life when our faith is shaken and we question the real source of our inspiration and support. We have only to look to the lives of the saints—those great souls who were ablaze with a burning desire to live a life of faith—to see that even they had their trials and times of doubt. It is clear that we do not develop deep faith in God in a day, or even in weeks, or months. Faith develops over our lifetime as we persevere with vigorous intent on the spiritual path and are met time and again by the presence of grace—life’s inherent support that leads us to our highest fulfillment.
To have the living faith Gandhi describes, to walk through life consciously knowing God as our constant companion, we must develop dispassion. Through practicing dispassion, we learn to remain nonreactive to changing conditions. This is the key to mental clarity and inner peace. A peaceful mind is necessary for us to be able to access the spiritual truth that is the basis of real security. A mind that is continually disturbed by outer conditions clouds our perception and obscures the light of the soul’s guidance. To rely on God, we must be able to lift our attention beyond physical and mental involvement to the unchanging spiritual realm, to experience our essential nature, beyond thought and phenomena.
When I was a young girl, I took dancing lessons. I was fascinated with the older dancers’ ability to twirl—to turn and turn in one spot without losing their balance. When it came time for me to learn this part of the dance, my teacher gave me the secret. She told me that in order to keep my balance; I must find a single spot in the room, something stable on which to anchor my attention. Each time I turned I was to focus my attention on this stable point. I was not to look around at what I saw passing by as I turned. I was only to stay aware of that single, steady point of reference. It worked like magic. And I discovered, much to my discomfort, that every time I lost my concentration and wandered from my point of focus, I would lose my balance and fall over. Developing a living faith is not so different. We have to develop a single point of attention, a wide-awake consciousness of God within.
When the mind is one pointed, established in truth consciousness, we can overcome great obstacles. And when we are distracted by the storm of worries, we lose touch with our own divine resources. Each of us must have a point of divine reference to walk in faith, to not sink down under the heavy burdens of the world’s sorrows. See them for what they are, boisterous storms that howl one day and clear the next. With God as our constant companion, we can each walk in confidence through the wildest storms of all.
If you become distracted by challenges, pause for a moment of meditation, to bring your attention back to God within. Look beyond changing conditions to the heart of Reality, to that which transcends heaven and earth. Within you is the help that never fails. Within you is the strength that will allow you to walk in confidence. Take one step at a time, knowing that the next step will be divinely directed.
Think About It: Faith and well-being were linked in a recent Gallup poll. The report revealed that the most religious Americans also have the highest self-reported well-being scores (according to the latest data from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index).
Very religious people scored 68.7 on the 0-100 Index, compared to 64.2 for those who identified themselves as moderately religious, and 64.2 for nonreligious Americans. “Very religious” was defined as people for whom religion “is an important part of daily life and church/synagogue/mosque attendance occurs at least every week or almost every week.”
Be Inspired: I have made Thee polestar of my life. –Paramahansa Yogananda
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