You have faith. The question is, in what?

On one level we have faith in the physical world. We have faith in gravity and in each other. You can tell where your faith is because it is a place where you have stopped questioning. Once you have faith in your surroundings, you expect them to be as you know them to be. You operate out of faith in their consistency.

You don’t feel the ground carefully with your foot before you take each step. You trust that the ground will be there underneath you as you walk. You have faith in the earth.

You have faith in the people in your life. You trust them to keep having the same basic physical characteristics and personality. You count on this. You recognize your loved ones. This is faith. You don’t question it.

Every time you look up, there is the sky. Every time you go to the beach, there is the ocean. They are reliable. You have faith in them.

In the same way that you trust the good earth to meet your every step and you trust the heavens to light the day and you trust the oceans to roar with power, you can trust the flow of well being that is ever moving within you.

But in general, we don’t. We look around and we see our loved ones suffering. We suffer, ourselves. We find much to challenge our faith. And while the earth keeps supporting us and the sun keeps shining and while we still move through life with unquestioning faith in those good gifts of nature, we often come to question the goodness of our lives and our situations. How can we have faith in God and in Goodness when we see so much pain and devastation around us? How can we live in faith when we hurt?

We can. In the same way that the sky has earned our trust by being magnificent every time we look up and the earth has earned our trust every time we press our foot to the ground to meet its loving support, we must know where to look and how to find the ever-present Goodness. Then, when we find that every time we look for it, it is there, we come to have faith. We stop questioning. We relax. We know that Goodness is consistent, always available and ever reliable.

Where is it? It is steady below the waves of your consciousness. It hums in your diffuse sense of your energetic body. It is the field of your being. It is who you are.

The Goodness that you can have faith in glows just below the surface of your worries. Strange as it may seem, it is glowing quietly at the center of every knot and tangle in your life, just waiting to be revealed. It can always come untangled. It can always be perceived.

The baby is buoyant in the arms of the mother. This is trust. This is faith. When you can walk through life as an adult, buoyant in the arms of Goodness, you know you are cared for by the stream of well-being, God, all that is Good. You are dearly mothered by your own Source. There is no moment, no situation, no circumstance when it is not there to hold you, light your way and carry you in the direction of your own Good.

Try this:

1. Close your eyes and relax as you would if you were a baby in the arms of the Great Mother. (This may take the image of your human mother.)

2. Notice any worries, fears or disturbances in your field.

3. See them dissolve into the loving embrace of the Mother energy.

4. Sense that all is well.

5. Know that the biggest stream that is carrying your life, carries you toward your greatest Good.

6. Give this stream permission to untangle your problems and reveal its Goodness in the living of your life.

With practice, you can tap into the sweet, all-pervasive glow that is your nature. It is as reliable as the earth and the heavens. It is who you are. Once you look for it and find it, time after time, faith becomes natural. It lifts you high in times of joy. It holds you together in times of grief. It gets stronger, more reliable and more expansive the more you grow into it.

Faith is not something to grasp,
it is a state to grow into.
                                                      Mahatma Gandhi

© 2006 Rebbie Straubing

Dr. Rebbie Straubing is author of “Rooted in the Infinite: The Yoga of Alignment.” You can instantly download the beginning of the book at http://RootedintheInfinite.com . Rebbie is a workshop leader, Abraham Coach and spiritual writer. Her free e-course, “7 Secrets for Manifesting Your Heart’s Desire,” is available at www.YOFA.net. Her meditation recordings are available at www.affirmativecontemplation.com.