Faith and Endurance

Happy New Year!

The two main contents of my spiritual toolbox at this time of year are endurance and faith. Faith in the seeds I am planting, whose blossoms I will not see for a long time yet, if ever. Endurance to keep slogging along even when I’m tired, discouraged, or in discomfort or pain. Can you tell that winter is not my favorite season?!

Usually by mid-February a psychic angst accumulates in me that feels like it may smother me to death before that blessed final 28^th (or 29^th day, this year - yikes!) rolls around. I was inspired by the group of wise souls at my winter solstice circle, who shared things they love about this time of year, and I’m trying to change my attitude toward the cold season. A guide once reflected to me that perhaps when I learn to embrace winter I will learn to truly love myself. When I look more deeply into this I realize that it is always the rough patches in life that evolve me, and that deepen my capacity for love. It is easy to love and give thanks when I feel on top of my game. Harder when I feel stuck in the mud. So in an evolutionary sense the seasons and times of life that are uncomfortable, unpleasant, or even painful for me are probably the most valuable.

Faith gives me the strength to keep going when times get rough. Gloria Karpinski has some wonderful exercises for cultivating faith in her book Barefoot on Holy Ground. She writes, “Where we don’t trust ourselves, Spirit or the universe shows us an edge in our consciousness. Stretch the edge, and grace will pour in. This is an exercise about deliberately experiencing that stretch.”

I am condensing her 18-step practice called “From Fear to Faith” into the following twelve steps:

1. Choose a fear that you are willing to bring into consciousness. Confront yourself with: “I have faith in everything except…”
2. Prepare sacred space with candles, incense, music – or whatever helps you relax. Breathe deeply, connecting to the life force within and around you.
3. Invite your fear into this sacred and secure setting, sensing the feelings around it, as well as its history and any images, colors, sounds or other sensations that arise with it. Just attempt to experience the fear without reacting or responding.
4. Ask the fear if it has a message for you, and listen without judging, noticing any reactions in your body.
5. Move your attention to your heart, breathing love and compassion into the fear.
6. Let the sense of love and compassion move throughout your body, by placing your hands any place where the fear felt strong and breathing there. You can talk to your cells, saying “I love you and thank you. Now it is time to release fear.”
7. Now decide if you are ready to let this fear go. “What will be different in my life if I don’t carry this fear? What might I give up in my life if I give up this fear?” If you don’t feel ready to release the fear, then bless it, knowing you will do so another day.
8. Affirm faith in what you cannot see yet. For example, if your fear is about lack, you might affirm faith in abundance. “I affirm my faith in…”
9. Visualize a purifying fire, transforming your fear to strong faith.
10. Offer gratitude: “I am grateful for the grace that transforms this fear.”
11. Breathe with awareness into your body and bring your attention to your physical surroundings.
12. Daily follow through: Declare something a touchstone, perhaps a small rock or a piece of jewelry. Every time you touch it, visualize your new freedom. Write an affirmation of faith, repeating it like a mantra every day for at least six weeks. When doubt or old psychic patterns emerge, catch yourself as soon as you can, bringing yourself back to your faith gently but firmly. Give thanks, knowing that every moment is an opportunity to strengthen yourself.