“An excerpt from Padme Nina Livingstone’s forthcoming book: Let's Not Call It Meditation: Practical Guidance for people who think they can’t sit still and quiet the mind

It’s difficult to define what faith is. It’s easier to describe what it looks like. We know when we see other people living a life of faith. They appear to move effortlessly through their work and family challenges. We notice them fully rejoicing when there’s good reason. We notice their stability in chaos. They are the ones that keep on going when the going gets tough. When they lose a job, they say things like, “This could mean new opportunities.” Or “Something better must be waiting for me.” They are the ones who recover from divorce, illness, and death of a loved one, with resilience and openness for what’s next. They feel safe and seem to move on solid ground.

So, how does faith fit into a life of awareness and meditation? Faith usually becomes an issue whenever anyone is caught up in pain, and suffers emotionally, physically, or spiritually. Faith brings us out of confusion, seeking the light of clarity. Having faith in something better than this, is what keeps us going. Our intention is to keep growing, and having a meditation practice focuses our faith so that we have the energy we need to grow.

When we first begin to be more awake, we often notice habits which we find personally distasteful about oneself. We may hear thoughts about other people, “He’s so obnoxious!” or, “How can she let herself act like that?” Thoughts that have run through our minds unconsciously, are now heard, and we are surprised how judgmental and mean our thoughts can be.

Often we judge ourselves most harshly. We can easily get caught up judging the “judger”(oneself). “How could I have been so stupid? “Why can’t I ever get things right?””Faith in the path keeps us wondering about these thoughts, instead of getting stuck in dark feelings and giving up. Good questions arise when we become more aware of habitual blaming thoughts. “Where do these pain-producing thoughts come from?” “Is it possible to be a better person, when I keep having these thoughts?” “What do I need to do to change?” “How can I relate to all these thoughts so they do no damage?” “Are they true?”

Faith allows us to seek out, ask for, and accept useful guidance. Especially in the beginning, we need the wisdom and support of others who have gone before us. We do develop a new healthy relationship with these thoughts over time. And we are filled with gratitude for where our faith has brought us.

For me, the beginning of my meditation practice was completely rooted in faith. I had little else to go on. My family was a confusing, often unhappy place to grow up in. I was in pain, and felt confused about loving behavior. I knew my family life had been a poor model for me and I wanted to be loving and feel love.

When I first began to meditate in 1976, I had excellent guidance from Roshi Philip Kapleau and Toni Packer at the Rochester Zen Center. I looked up to anyone who could meditate. I felt the rightness of the path, and kept going to meditation sittings at the Rochester Zen Center out of a deep desire to stop my pain. I had complete faith in every word I heard about the eventual benefits from this meditation work and wanted to experience those benefits first hand.

For the first two years in Rochester, my husband-to-be Bill and I attended every possible sitting and talk at the Zen Center. We were both hungry for more clarity and dedicated our lives to finding it. Faith is what got out us out of bed and to the 6AM sittings every weekday. Faith is what got us to every evening sitting. Faith is what got us to attend our first all day sitting and then 7 day silent meditation retreats when we were ready.

Especially in the beginning of inner growth work, faith is what keeps us going. Some people feel the benefits right away. However, it takes a while for some of us to feel the benefits in our daily life. We meet others who inspire us with their behavior, and hear inspiring stories. We keep going, and after awhile, we begin to notice changes in our behavior. We may even have stories to share about family members who have noticed our changes and may be changing themselves because we’ve changed. If we seem to be the only one who is changing, we often need help to understand how to deal with the confusion that often arises when only one person in a family is meditating and working on awareness. The support of proper guidance is essential in order to keep going.

When I first began teaching meditation, I worked with a woman named Jackie, who was new to meditating. I suggested to Jackie that she take the practice of saying, “I am” to herself, with each out breath. “I am” is actually the only completely truthful words we can ever say about who we are, because it includes all of our physical, mental emotional and spiritual reality in the moment. Anything else we might say would only be part of the truth, as “I am breathing” doesn’t include the reality that I am also hearing, or seeing, or talking, etc. When we can say ”I am” simply, without adding anything, just as it is, “I am” brings us right to the moment. All thoughts of worry, anger, frustration, judgment and blame fall away. Try saying it a few times and see for yourself!

Back to the story. Jackie tried it for a week and was upset with her experience. Each time she said, “I am” her mind filled in the sentence with words like lazy, slow, ugly, incompetent, and so on. I had imagined something quite different. Clearly, my instructions were incomplete. I was new and had much to learn. Jackie was very unhappy and I was so startled at what came up for her, I didn’t have useful guidance for her! Without proper guidance, faith wasn’t tapped. She wasn’t inspired and she gave up. I’ve often wished I could talk with her again.

Now I would tell Jackie to look into the mind that completes the sentence in the negative; to notice how the body* responds with these words; and to wonder if they are true or not. Questioning is wonderful. Curiosity about negative self talk transforms it. Questioning brings light to the dark feelings these thoughts create when we are unaware. Awareness and meditation is all about finding out what is true and what is not. We must question thoughts which create painful experiences in the body/mind and with others. Wondering about our thoughts allows what’s true to be seen and what’s not true to fall away. Faith grows over time, as we question our pain-producing thoughts and find them to be untrue. I hope Jackie continued to explore her pain-producing thoughts and discovered them to be what they were- simply not true.

*. Using the body instead of my body helps us feel a healthy distancing from the body’s experiences. When we speak of the body as its own being, instead of using possessive pronouns when we talk about it, we may actually experience it as it really is- the vehicle we live in, as it carries us through our life.

The whole basis of a meditation practice to is to find out for oneself what’s true, through personal direct experience and understanding. Faith alone is not enough. Although we also need to trust our gut feelings about what and who feels like good guidance for us, it’s good to remember that blind faith is not what’s being spoken of here. Even with faith we need to be awake: curiosity, discretion and honesty help us decipher what’s real and what’s not. We can trust the faith we develop in a meditation practice. It’s based on excellent references! People have been meditating for inner growth for a long time, and their deeply moving, powerful personal stories have been passed down through their recorded teachings, writings and poetry.

All the great sages teach through their wisdom, gleaned from the understanding they have integrated from their own direct experiences: having found out for themselves what’s true and what’s not and what’s loving and what’s not, they have something to share. Awareness and meditation work should never be confused with the kind of dangerous blind faith associated with cults. In order to keep our faith, we need to always question or stay open about what others say, until we know what’s true or not for ourselves. That’s how our faith grows, by finding out for ourselves. Everytime!

Experiencing painful times and having faith that the path of inner growth is right for us, we sense the light at the end of the tunnel and we find the strength to go on with the work; meditating and practicing being aware, even with our pain. We also notice pain we have created for others along the way, through our unexplored, unconscious living. And, with faith, we begin to have glimpses into a life of complete integrity, where we are the same person wherever we go- and our behavior displays our honesty and integrity undisturbed by chaotic circumstance.

It is important to remember, that with even the slightest bit of faith to jump start us, we move toward growth because as soon as we have a little bit of faith we begin to allow for new possibilities, a different perspective, and a deep curiosity about what is, rather than what we think should be.