What is faith? Where does it come from? Have you been faithful? – tends to mean have you kept your promise to be intimate with, and committed to, only the person to whom you made that promise. It is a form of faith that leans towards the idea of a commitment to keeping a promise.
Religious people are encouraged to ‘have faith’. Which means, “Believe what you hear in scriptures, and all will be well in your life and after death”. It is what someone often hears when they might express doubts around some of the ideas/ insights contained in their particular scripture. Doubt always accompanies faith where faith is positioned as an antidote. Often the doubt is neither clarified nor fully explored, so faith is forced in order to supress it.
Different religions have faith in different ideas/insights/stories. This tends to be a faith based on religious belief, as the origins of all stories tend to be in the past. Some people get a sense of security from such beliefs in a chaotic world of uncertainty. Then there is, “I have absolute faith in that person”. A kind of confidence that they will rise to the challenge and find the best solution. And finally, there is faith as trust. “I trust them, I have faith in them”. Confidence and trust come together under this use of faith.
While none of the above applications of ‘faith’ are wrong, the deepest meaning of faith seems to lie in a ‘kind of knowingness’. A knowingness within consciousness that has an unknown cause. Imagine a guru shares some ideas that you put into action as an experiment. They work. The recommended methods and insights have the effect of making a change that is felt by the self as a transformation. For the sake of argument, imagine that you lose contact with the guru for one reason or another for many years. One day you meet again and based on past experience, you will automatically have faith in what in the guru says.
The same could be said of a parent. We have a natural faith in them because they have already invested their love in us when we were children. Our faith is a kind of knowingness from mostly unknown causes, as we cannot consciously remember what they did or said. But we do remember some of the nurturing love they gave us as we grew. The faith in them is a mixture of both unremembered (unknown) and the remembered (known).
There are two kinds of people when it comes to religious faith. First there is the individual who has been told to ‘have faith’. So, they do, as it brings approval, a feeling of belonging, and keeps any sense of insecurity at bay.
Then there is the person who just has faith the moment they encounter the ideas and insights of a particular religion, philosophy or knowledge system. It is as if they recognise the ideas/ insights. It is as if they have encountered them before. It is as if they know but cannot remember the causation of that knowing. Their faith is almost instant and natural. A natural faith slips into the ideas and insights of the knowledge system with ease. They are at one almost instantly with those ideas/ insights. Their acceptance and understanding is immediate as they flow naturally from one idea/insight to the next. But to the onlooker this natural faith can appear to be a kind of ‘blind belief’.
Belief tends to be a fragmented understanding. Belief can be a sign of being stuck on particular interpretation of ideas. Which is why a faith based on belief is frequently being smashed on the rocks of doubt. Beliefs can make us blind if we become attached to them. Yet the gradual refinement of belief may be necessary to the unblinding of consciousness as it awakens to what is true.
The individual with a natural faith seems to have an intuitive knowingness that arises from the deep unconscious where the deepest memories of previous encounters with ‘what is true’ are stored. Having once embodied that truth, it becomes an unavoidable, unconscious memory.
Mike George is an author of 16 books focussed mostly around self-awareness and spiritual intelligence. His new website is at www.relax7.com