Faith - a vital function in life

by D. Evan McCormick

We all possess a kind of faith. It is part of being human. Just like we all have a physical heart, or liver, or blood cells... anatomy we all share - so too, we share an anatomy of mind. Awareness, perception, imagination and yes, faith.

Faith is a container word. Filled with ideas from cultures now and from the past. It is a vital function our mind uses to create movement. A type of pain that seeks what is beyond the next horizon.

Faith and movement are tethered together. Faith wants to know, movement seeks that knowledge. It has very little to do with religion or even a god. It is one of the many functions of our mind.

Faith has levels of development. It is like growing up. There is infant level - dependent on institutions for basic needs of faith. Child level - finding our role in life by looking to authority. Teen level - trying out styles of faith. Young adult level - seeking our own path of faith. Adult level - internal confidence with not knowing.

Faith in an object changes to faith in what the object represents. What an object represents eventually vanishes into qualities we never knew existed. Faith moves our body. Directs our body. Gives directions where to go, what to think, how to feel.

What is faith? You know it, that unspeakable location beyond mind's knowing.

Faith and Mind

Faith is a function of our mind. Like awareness that links to our perceptions. Our sensory input informs our awareness. Our tie to physical life brings up questions within our awareness. Being aware of limitations of what we are sensing calls in faith. There is something there, over the horizon, a new way of perceiving. Faith expands our awareness. Imagine awareness is a fire. An innate quality of registering our internal quality of being alive mixed with data we receive from our outside world - the external. As information passes between our surface of skin into our body, awareness picks up what it has been trained to accept. Faith though, challenges our set of rules governing what we allow and deny. It brings up pain. Is this all there is in life? Aware of my parameters physically, what lives outside what I can sense? What is beyond my conditioned senses? What other ways can I see, hear, taste, smell, touch and intuitively know?

Try out simple ways to expand perception. This informs our general tone of feeling inside. A quality of awareness changes as we choose to allow more information to arrive. Focus your eyes on backgrounds, blur the foreground details. Listen to the silence between thoughts. Touch with a slow tenderness every detail of clothing you place on your body. Chew with an inhale of aromas. Notice the gut compared to the heart. Allow information to show up in new ways. Automatically, awareness will change tonal qualities. Try a new thought out. Why persist in a negative feeling? What lives outside a cranky perspective? After all, thoughts are choices too.

Awareness as a Fire

Imagine awareness is a fire inside the heart. Our global family has ancient traditions that speak about awareness as a fire. A private flame that only we can enter. It lives in our heart. Like the aortic node that transmits ionized molecules through our blood as a heart beat. An electric fire stimulated by a river of blood. A pulse of life that automatically animates an exchange of nutrients in cells. It is happening if we like it or not. If we choose to notice this image of fire in our heart, have faith something is sparking a charge of life inside, our mind can partner with this idea.

Mind likes to do this - make images. Use mind like a tool. Try this choice - turn sensations and knowledge into useful healing applications. Choose to create a moment in your daily routine where you can quietly imagine a fire representing your life giving flame. Our eyes are closed. We are sitting or laying down comfortably. We commit five minutes to this exploration. Activating our imagination. Open to this thought of an image. Thoughtful images stimulate sensations. Allow the image to connect to the sensations associated with this idea. Choose to direct your mind. Focus on whatever type of fire shows up in your internal perceptual screen.

What if nothing shows up? Give the image some shape. Think of a camp fire. Shape the fire. Is it too big? Too intense? Send it some attention. What kind of fire would feel calming? Warm rather than burning hot. Notice the image, allow feelings to move, match the image to a nourishing feeling inside. Let yourself inhale and exhale naturally. Notice as you summon this image with feelings, how the mind likes to distract our focus of attention. Rather than give up, choose to return to the image again. And again and again - until the flame feels natural.

Remember, this is a fire representing our tone of awareness. Shaping the quality of our internal image of fire spontaneously changes our cellular experience too. Heart likes this kind of training. Open to the possibility that our mind speaks a language - images. Our body speaks a language - chemical exchanges. Between the mind and body, awareness enters with sensations. Ride the sensations. Direct attention to sensations along with the image of fire. Inhale and exhale naturally, expanding and contracting within this focus.

Faith does heal. Open to an image that produces calming feelings. Open to sensations flowing through our body within a tone of calm. Open to the unseen processes of cells responding to calming energy. Our awareness changes. A new perception occurs. New words show up in this experience - grounded, centered, a sense of okay-ness arrives.

Faith and Religion

Remove all the religious ideas about faith for a moment. Take out an idea that there is a set of rules attached to your faith. Take out the need to please a god or be destroyed. Take out the expectation that faith will lead to riches, or a relationship or a better life. Try this thought out - what if faith is acknowledging that perhaps, maybe, something beyond our knowing is happening right now.

At this very moment there are functions in our cosmos intersecting in a point called - you. You are a location in this universe. Your body is a physical address. A home. A place in space. How did this happen? To me, this question needs a simple kind of faith. You happened, I happened - and we can't fully explain how. Yet, here we are, a you and a me.

This is where all the complexities step in and wrap our mind into rules, ideas, philosophies, personalities and the list goes on. Remove all that for a moment. Stay with the basic beginnings. A you is physically interacting in a shared space with me - that I know. Beyond our shared space in this cosmos is a horizon belonging to faith. This is what this blog is all about.

Levels of Faith; growing from infant to adult

Exploring levels of faith. Starting with ...

Infant Faith.

As an infant we needed a care giver. A person who essentially volunteered to give their time and resources to care for us, a baby. We didn't know life outside the care we received. Our hunger, warmth and interaction with the outside world depended solely on what was given. Faith at this basic level is like this, dependent. Our mind reaches out like an infant's hand seeking connection and there it is - an immediate reassurance that we are ok.

Our body seeks stimulation. It is part of our physiology. Cells in our body need information. An infant's sensory nervous system opens to the world and discovers who is smiling, laughing, yelling, frowning, or staring back with a blank expression. Sensory information seeks reflection. This shapes our perception. A face smiles and our body instantly feels that smile. The smile transmits through our infant body as a coded message. A meaningful signal that says, you are loved. This shapes our perception. We carry this message into our future. When we are coded through our sensory reflections that we are loved, we carry this message through the years of our development. Eventually, we become an adult who can say without thinking about it - I am loved.

Our faith when like a new born is hungry for stimulation. Constantly seeking reflections from the outside world. Desiring messages of reassurance. We place our faith in structures that behave like care givers. Seeking that smile. Sometimes we will do almost anything to satisfy that deep feeling to experience unconditional love.

The infant level of faith is a vulnerable time. Like an infant is vulnerable. It is easy to hurt a baby. We know that though. We have seen how easily hurt we can become when reared in hurtful environments. Caregivers don't always offer the reflections our faith is looking for - this happens when we become dependent on institutions.

This is important for faith to know. Placing our trust in outside structures, systems, institutions or charismatic personalities will only serve the infant stage. We grow up. We can't help it, nature likes to develop beyond infant faith. Nature is process. A step by step sequence of events that leads our awareness to the next level.

What do you do when you realize you have outgrown a structure of faith? Fear is the first to alert you to this growth. Our mind though, will fight. This happens. It takes energy to challenge ideas that don't make sense anymore. A routine is made of many habits. Repeating a thought trains our body to experience an expected feeling. We learn actions that match expected feelings too. All of this goes into a habit. That becomes a routine. That becomes a life style we eventually call living in our faith.

If fear is keeping you dependent on a harmful caregiver/organization, try this out - Observe what the fear is telling you. How does it speak? What is the fear trying to protect you from? There are very deep reasons we become dependent on faith structures. We needed protection. We needed security. Safety. We needed to feel special. We wanted to be loved.

Infant faith looks to outside structures to nourish basic needs. Remember though, our basic needs are more powerful than any organized faith community. Our internal needs are nourished directly from a process of discovery. Like an infant. Discovering how to walk. How to talk. How to lift a spoon to a mouth. How to put on cloths. How to use the toilet. We grew up through discovery.

I leave this fear with these thoughts - observe how a baby grows up. How you grew up from infant to adult. Did we make that happen all by ourselves? Or did a process in the cosmos help us? Didn't a process beyond your knowing take care of that for you?

Child Faith.

As we develop beyond full dependence on a community structure of faith, the child level shows up. A child is able to move with interdependence. Dependent on authority while maintaining an emerging sense of self. An internal world that is ignited by imagination. Mind likes to use imagination to play out roles. Discovering meaning is what roles like to do. We need meaning. We want to know why? We want to figure out the reasons why things exist. This is important for this level. When we were a child, we wanted to know - Why?

We ask questions to find out meaning. Meaning connects us to an innate need to feel rooted. To feel secure. So I am doing this because? Ok, that makes sense. I am not being fooled. I am doing this because it has meaning. It connects me to my sense of self. This is so important for children because of the following -

Innocence. The experience of innocence allows us to have choice. Being able to feel free with imagination's choices is innocence. Trauma though, forces choice. Trauma violently takes our choices away - you can't feel free in your imagination because now you are this and only this. Innocence when cultivated and encouraged in a secure environment allows a child to feel a freedom of imagination. Trauma takes this freedom away. It introduces stress and tension that limits a free flow of happy chemicals.

Security roots the child emotionally into their body. A child is grounded into their body when a structure of authority daily - repetitively - offers a calm and loving environment. Trauma disrupts these roots. Pulls the child emotionally out of their body into stress. Creates a chasm between mind and body. Trauma wrecks innocence, that need to feel less stress and more freedom to roam within imagination to discover meaning.

Faith of a child hinges on innocence. A need to ask questions to discover meaning. A need for security, repetitive loving and kind reassurance that they belong and their presence in life matters. That they have a role, a meaningful place in cosmos. When we have the faith of a child it allows us to imagine anything we want about the world and universe. It allows us to question everything. Ask why, over and over again. Trusting in an authority that doesn't have to posses all the answers, just an ability to provide an open loving acceptance. A space that allows exploration.

Child faith looks up to authority. It wants authorities of faith to provide a secure exploration of cosmos. A reassuring yes, keep going. Yes, wonderful question. Yes, try that out. Yes, you have a place in cosmos. Yes, you have a role. You are meaningful. You are loved because .... and so the child goes on ... asking and then imagining and exploring and wondering and playing in the realms of nature.

This is why authorities of faith sicken us when they abuse a child like innocence. The violence of abuse to a child ends innocence. It ushers in stress and tension. Separates mind from body. It forces a fear of limits. It destroys a sacred heart that wanted to love god/authority/parent/teacher/guru.

More importantly, a heart seeking a secure bond with cosmos.

Innocence though, is attainable if once crushed. Restoring choice. Bringing back a natural curiosity and exploration of the cosmos is possible. It requires a few steps. Naming the pain. Identifying how pain has lived in our body. Allowing support, not authority, into our lives. Allowing pain to move past tensions built into our nervous systems. Creating a compassionate dialog with our heart, compared to the forceful stress making voices we adapted. Practicing a simple faith of imagination that connects us to what we have never lost - our essence.

Once we begin to name our pain, allow the pain to reveal hidden messages, listen to what the pain needs and then give our pain support - choices return. Stress diffuses. Our heart's fire, our inner essence, can become heard once again. It takes time and effort. Healing our awareness though, restores innocence. It brings back a dialog with our heart. Our essence has never stopped loving the body. It has been consistently, tirelessly, guiding awareness back home. To its roots. To a secure sense of self.

As we move from child faith to teen faith, it is important to know something - We want to bring this innocence into adult faith. We want to keep that curiosity, sense of awe, exploration, imagination and freedom to go anywhere we place our mind's attention. We will need our innocence of faith to connect us to our roots. A secure bond to cosmos. An adult faith is nourished by its roots in innocence.

Keep asking questions. Keep immagination active. Keep releasing pain and tension. Take hold of the child, that essence. Like a spiritual warrior, heal anything that stands between mind and heart.

Teen Faith.

The level of faith associated with teen development is an exciting period. Like a teen, we begin to play with styles of faith. We lose an interest in the authorities that shaped our thoughts and begin to answer a deeper calling. There can be rebellion if our past stages were violent, disrespectful or narrow minded. If our faith was cultivated with loving attachment to the cosmos, we naturally transition into an exploration of what matches our style.

We view authority like an apprentice, which is also associated with young adults. Leaving our home of faith to learn new and novel approaches. Like trying out new clothing, we look for non-traditional experiences. Over riding our nervousness we seek traditions found in global systems. Perhaps traveling to never before seen sacred places, or experimenting with meditations and psychedelics. It's all part of teen life faith, seeking the new over the old.

This is also a period where emotions become a push and pull off of cosmos. That god that once had all the answers, is now a god who we can distrust. It is a positive force pushing away from the known. We desire a larger landscape to roam, yet still find it frightening because the world of faith is a big place. Perhaps we have already learned adults can be wrong. Institutions have lots of problems. Structures can be punitive and lean toward a punishing kind of god. So we pull inward and want more answers. Untrained though, we can become conflicted what to pull close to our heart and what no longer fits anymore.

A danger found at this level is this - getting lost in experimentation. Trying out one thing after another. Going from faith to faith trying to find the truth. Seeking is a vital quality faith needs, yet getting lost can happen if we forget who we are as an essence. Teachers are important, yet can flirt with the innocence still shining brightly from our eyes. Youthful energy can become a quality gurus take advantage of and thus ruin the seeker's quest for honest guidance.

Important to note, our essence. It takes faith to welcome the idea of an unspeakable, undefinable pulse of life tucked within our heart. Global traditions speak of essence as Christ consciousness, Buddha seed, inner god, inner light, so many names. Perhaps this is a positive thing, being unable to define that energy. Teen level faith needs to remember that one thing is undeniable, we have a body. We have a container with an inside realm. A place the surface of our skin protects. A realm that digests ideas, cycles with emotions, conjures imaginative ways to perceive cosmos.

This internal space we all posses is necessary for teen faith. A location in a vast endless horizon that can remind our mind something vital - go inside. Pause, notice what is happening within you and only you. Whatever the chaos, the conflict, the pain and confusion - pause, direct your mind's attention within the body. Answers outside of our body become conceptual, philosophical and unable to offer the whole picture of who we are as a seeker of faith.

We don't have all the answers either, but we do have something no one else does - our internal world. Becoming an apprentice of our internal self initiates our mind into a profound exploration. By including our internal space while searching the landscape of traditions, we can gather information and make our own conclusions. Feelings become educated when we pause, go still, cultivate silence.

Silence is the door that opens our development into adulthood faith. A level devoted to listening. Learning to listen to our internal silence at teen level begins this journey.

Adult Faith

Experiences within each level of faith matures our perspective. Perspective grows from limited choices. Once dependent on choices others made for us, we can now make those choices. We can name our needs and find what will nourish our faith. Learning a respect for authority and institutions while knowing a structure is not the answer, it is not the complete picture of cosmos, it is not god. We can reference an authority, a person skilled in an aspect of knowledge, and then make our own decisions. An adult faith is like this - we value knowledge, yet realize facts are tools wisdom activates into choices. Wisdom is the ability to make choices based on facts. Making choices gives us an understanding, the ability to observe who we are and what we need. Understanding births an observer. An internal witness to a world processing levels of faith.

Levels of faith act as an exercise that trains our perception. Remember, our senses inform our perspective. If we stay in the infant, child or teen level of faith we are limiting our perspective to what our senses are telling us. When perspective is able to detach from sensation, something happens. Silence.

Silence has qualities stemming from awareness. When our senses are freed from dependence on objects, awareness is able to reveal what is on the other side of reality. Infant faith is attached to objects. Needs objects for a sense of belonging. Child faith is attached to authority. Needs authority for a sense of security. Teen faith is attached to teachers and experiences. Needs teachers and experiences for a sense of fluid autonomy. Adult faith though, surrenders attachment. Lets objects go.

Releasing objects means letting go of permanence. It allows awareness to open up and experience a direct connection with cosmos. It is an energy exchange. I choose to let this attachment go, I choose to connect to the unknown. Then spontaneously, without our mind making it up, an indescribable experience reveals itself to our awareness. It is called a knowing. An exchange of what I perceive for what is given. An exchange is found when relinquishing all we know for what is possible. This all happens internally within a space called silence.

Silence can be a space between thoughts. It can be a quiet nervous system. It can be a harmonious balance of emotions. It can be a sudden realization that leaves us awestruck. These are qualities our awareness contains. The kind of silence that comes from faith though, is direct communion. When cosmos takes our mind into a process we can't put to words. Where imagination ends. Where images dissolve. Where knowing becomes a step beyond a horizon.

Adult faith contains some parameters. It asks that our perception abandon objects as permanent reality. Asks that our perception undergo training, detaching from sensation that fed an identity. Asks that we choose an exchange of surrendering our identity for innate knowing. Adult faith asks that we combine two vital qualities inherent within awareness; stillness and silence.

Stillness trains our autonomic mind to find a center to begin a dialog with cosmos. A center that is located within our body. This center serves only a beginning though. It dissolves as we continue our next step. Silence. Qualities of awareness become realized when entering the space between thoughts. Right after that one thought, right before the next, is silence. This is a quality found when training thoughts. As waves of sensations flood our body, then peak, then dissolves our sense of internal, surface of skin and infinite horizons - a quality of awareness of silence is found. This trains our perceptual sensory interface. When repetitively engaged in stillness, entering silence, a patience occurs. A freedom from commitment and goals shatters and awareness receives a glimpse of the unknown. This trains our indifference. In other words, waiting and repeating stillness and silence can become ritual. A sneaky expectation can occur. This is when indifference slips in and makes our effort seem ineffective.

So what do you do when practicing adult faith and indifference creeps up. Joyfully realize another identity has been found. The practice of stillness combined with silence initiates our faith into realms of identities. Little did we know how many hidden observers have been borrowing our body. Observers that have been formed long ago since we were an infant. They show up in adult faith. It is important to know this because adult faith is devoted to uncovering the hidden, surrendering the discovered and further integrating into a process only silence can teach. The more awareness discovers what identity inside is observing, the more awareness can choose who to surrender. The exchange occurs through discomfort for another spontaneous knowing.

There are qualities of awareness that takes our faith past the adult level. We find those qualities when going still and entering silence within a communion with cosmos.