In my youth the idiom keep the faith was often heard in my household.
I didn't give it much thought when I was young but when I started studying meditation and mind-body practices like yoga I became interested in learning more about different spiritual traditions.
I noticed that many faith traditions had a bit of wisdom that wasn't unlike those ubiquitous sayings of our childhood.
I started to explore what some of them really meant and why they were so common.
Keeping the faith was one saying that now makes sense to me in my adult life and has even become a soothing touchstone to me when life feels difficult.
Roger Housden is the author of Keeping the Faith Without a Religion.
He writes about what he thinks keeping the faith means.
Pay attention to the part when he mentions being actively engaged.
Keeping the faith is basic trust in the way life weaves its patterns and awareness that is not passive or fatalistic but actively engaged with and accepting of all of life's twists and turns.
In other words basic trust or keeping the faith requires us to stay present in our lives especially when life feels difficult.
Neuroscience has shown that most of our decisions,
Actions,
Emotions,
And behavior is coming from about 95% of our brain activity that lies beyond conscious awareness.
Meaning that 95% of your life comes from programming in your subconscious mind and that subconscious wiring may have been programmed in a way that is no longer serving your highest self.
Trauma response is an example of this.
When something happens to us that is not pleasant instead of being able to pull from our consciousness and have a logical response we might pull from our deep subconscious or our nervous system might take over and we go back to when the trauma response was originally formed.
When it was good and protective it probably served us and kept us safe but that response keeps getting triggered that subconscious response when we have perceived dangers and that's an example of when we're living from our subconscious.
That's not being actively engaged.
Now for most of us this triggering this trauma response isn't happening on a day-to-day level or perhaps it isn't happening in such a dramatic way during our day-to-day lives.
What usually happens when we face difficulties and jump right into the subconscious mind where everything gets pretty ugly from there goes something like this.
A bad day.
A bad day is often one where there isn't a big overwhelming dramatic experience.
A bad day is often one with a series of unpleasant events.
So you wake up on a Monday feeling pretty good about the week ahead and then you spill coffee on your favorite blouse right when you're trying to walk out the door.
You're late for a meeting.
You realize you forgot to email somebody and they're upset.
You find a bill that went unpaid and so on and all these things add up and we drop into our subconscious.
Suddenly we're triggered into believing things that are very far from the idea of keeping the faith.
Here's some common beliefs that come up from having a bad day.
Oh this is gonna be a bad week or the world is conspiring against me.
I'm not good enough.
I can't trust anyone.
It's too late.
This is too hard.
Nobody understands.
Or my personal favorite I'm all alone.
So what's the opposite of all of these?
It's keeping the faith.
Keeping the faith is a choice you make.
You pull out of your subconscious and you make a choice to respond to the negativity by keeping the faith.
When you keep the faith you have agency.
When you keep the faith you're doing your best work.
You feel good.
With a sense of faith you can be your best self and show up for other people.
And when you keep the faith you can be your best self and you can show up for yourself.
We're gonna move into our meditation.
Remember that the meditation practice is one that gives us a leg up on choosing how we want to show up for our lives.
It's not always easy to reframe the way that you're looking at your day or the way that you feel especially when you're having a bad day or if you've been triggered even triggered into your trauma response.
But you can make a choice.
You can usually make a choice and change the way you're feeling inside.
Spending time in meditation gives us the ability it's like a superpower to see things more clearly in the day to day life when we're not in meditation.
And then we know when we're moving through the day in this subconscious place we know when we're acting from subconscious and we can pull ourselves out and go from things seeming really bleak to noticing our thoughts,
Our attitude,
Our behavior and choosing from a conscious place.
That's where we choose basic trust in life and that's when we're actively engaged.
Go ahead and find a comfortable seated position.
Once your body naturally settles you might like to pull in a breath.
It doesn't have to be unusually large but you might feel an inhale filling the circumference of your lungs and let out a sigh.
You might notice a difference in the way that you feel.
Maybe it's easier to settle into a little stillness.
Maybe your body feels a little more relaxed or perhaps you just feel embodied.
You feel like you're present that your mind and your body are one together in the moment.
Notice your breathing,
What pattern it's making,
If it feels like it's moving fast or slow or if it feels like it's full and deep versus shallow.
You might notice any associated sound that goes with your breath.
Sometimes we can hear it.
If you feel tight and bundled in your belly just let it soften so on every inhale you can feel your lower belly just drop slightly towards the earth and then watch it naturally rebound.
You can gauge your approach to the day or your anticipation of the day in the body sometimes.
So if there's trouble spots that aren't letting go it might just be a form of protection.
Maybe you're anticipating stress or negative events but oftentimes if we just soften maybe one degree more in our body our mind also feels a little bit more at ease.
Ultimately whatever is there whether it's relaxation or some tension or discomfort know that sitting quietly in the space of an observer is meditation and is a beneficial practice that you're participating in right now.
So you can be assured that you're on the right path.
Allow the sound of the bell to bring you to a place where you're not thinking about future,
You're not thinking about the past.
You're just quietly sitting here in the present moment taking in the sense of the body,
The space around you,
Even sound and temperature.
Start to gently move your toes and fingers.
You may even make larger movements,
Stretch,
Turn side to side.
You could yawn as you reach your arms overhead and then gently blink your eyes open.
Keeping the faith is a simple but powerful phrase.
It can take us from our subconscious thinking and acting which often isn't the most ideal place to be working from,
To thinking,
Saying,
Being in a way that helps us live our best lives in a way that gives us more agency.
When you keep the faith you can be your best self.
Thanks for joining me today.
