1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, an idea, or a thing. 2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. 3. The theological virtue defined as a secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will. 4. The body of dogma or teachings of a religion, i.e., Moslem, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu faiths etc., 5. A set of beliefs or principles of such religions.
The meaning of Original Faith differs from this usual understanding. Original Faith is the felt experience of our Innate Confidence and Trust in the Vast Wisdom that gives us Life, embraces us unconditionally in Death, and eternally sustains the manifestation of the Infinite Universe as a Whole. Original Faith, as felt experience, is not a belief. It is the Original Way of being in our human body while experiencing life through our pristine senses before the mental influences of languages, histories, cultures, ideas, and religions. Original Faith is our Innate Felt Trust in the Vast Wisdom that is This Only Moment.
All Religions seek to nurture the felt experience of Faith---a deep innate confidence in the wisdoming wholeness of our embodied self, our relationship with others, our relationship to an infinite universe, and our passage into death. That confidence is the liberating bases and support for expressing the behaviors of humility, love, gratitude, integrity, purpose, and compassion for all sentient and insentient beings. Although religious beliefs arouse and nurture the felt experience of Faith, they are not the actual bodily experience of Original Faith itself. Original Faith is the human need to consciously experience the deep meaning, entrustment, purpose, and confidence in the innate wisdoming wholeness of our physical body and its journey through life and death. This means that the need to consciously realize the felt experience of Original Faith is common to all human beings without exception. |
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No Practice can Gain It. No Being can Lose It. No Religion can Own It. No Words can Capture It. Breathing is Its Wisdom. Silence is Its Presence. Stillness is Its Nature. Not Attached to Beliefs, It is a Deeply Felt Confidence in One's Embodied Self and in each Moment as it Arises. Its True Body of Meditation may be said to Preserve the Breath at the Dawning of Humanity. Its Sincere Living Expression, Beyond and Yet Inclusive of All Spiritual Beliefs, is the Hope of the World. |
