Uncommon Faith + I’m Teaching Tonight

Slouching Toward Optimism.

I want to write about faith.

We could use some right about now.

Not the common kind. Not the kind that relies on an idea.

Not the kind that rests the heart on shaky things.

Things working out the way we want is shaky.

But it’s hard to fathom a happiness apart from certainty about a particular future.

Imagining the possibility of this kind of satisfaction is the spark of faith.

I want to write about the kind of faith the buddha taught. The verb kind.

Faith is a verb.

Faith is a verb that includes everything, even our skepticism. Even our disbelief.

Faith is the place where naked hope is born. Even if we don’t know what will happen, we can touch and live inside true happiness.

We can have a life worth living, worth sharing, and worth losing.

I found meditation in my late 20’s when anticipating how I would feel in the future, even in tiny ways, would set off a momentary paralysis.

I thought I was going mad.

The longing to be truly happy, to be free from the irrational scenarios that were making me call in sick to work, overshadowed the despair of not knowing who I was anymore. I could no longer take comfort in my thoughts because my thinking world felt hostile.

But I was on fire to find a true source of comfort.

The buddha called this spark of faith bright faith. It’s distinguished from common faith, which ebbs and flows with the tides of threat and opportunity.

Bright faith is an uncommon optimism, not that the future will be favorable in a particular way for us, but that possibilities for deep happiness can be found when we rest our hearts in the moment at hand.

That we can be free amidst everything right and wrong.

Faith is trust in stopping. Faith is trusting that in the stopping, something is happening.

Faith doesn’t ask us to pretend.

To trust enough to let our hearts rest. To trust enough to shepherd awareness, not just let it run amok in the full catastrophe.

Faith is a full body experience.

Let your faith bring you to class tonight at 4:30pm at Yogalutionmovement.

True restoration happens in the stopping. Stretching feels really good to.

Hope to see you there.

xoxo,

Carina

P.S. If you loved this installation, please give it a heart. This helps me know what speaks to you, my dear reader. If you love someone who needs it, please share.

P.P.S.

Faith by David Whyte

I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.