Trust and faith.... these two words have been playing on my mind for a while now. Two words that are often upper most in an any seeker's mind...Are they one and the same or is there any difference? How do these words play themselves out in our journey as we re-trace the various filaments of the Spider web and go back to the Centre, the Origin and source, to the Creatrix of all things?
Oxford dictionary defines " trust "as "to rely on, depend on or believe in something or someone". It goes without saying that along with trust comes that element of hope or expectation being met from the other person/situation, which is absolutely essential for the feeling to last. It involves an act of commitment from the person/ seeker. Trust often requires proof or validation... We trust the words of people based on their veracity. In the Goddess path, this doesn't always hold good. For the seeker, empirical verification of mystical experiences is not always possible - these experiences have a temporal /spatial dimension which is quite removed from our experience of everyday realities. Often, the reliability of information/experiences can be questioned if we look at them in the light of their empiricism. I have often been perplexed by this...
Why is trust in something not just enough? Many times, I have found myself relying on my ability to trust in people or situations and I never got anywhere close to the answer. I have been dwelling on this for a long time and then suddenly, in the last few days, the answer came to me. The word is "Faith"... and, yes, there is a difference, subtle but significant, between trust and faith, even though both are essential to a person traveling on the Goddess path. Faith does not depend on empirical verification or seek justification for the way things are. Rather, it is absolute belief which is beyond proof or attempts to validate. Faith is complete surrender and complete acceptance - a state of being which will transform itself into a state of becoming - a journey which leads us through the baffling uncertainty of chaos to the comfortable certainty of chaos, a significant aspect of what we call Kundalini or Goddess energy, which manifests itself as we travel towards the Centre which is no Centre...
Faith doesn't wait for moments of reciprocity, the way trust does...it helps us to move on even when we are not fully conscious of Goddess responding to call of our soul or that hand guiding us unseen... Faith, then, is not an act of the senses, the way trust sometimes is...Whether miracles happen along the way or proof is provided at various junctures, these hardly matter when there is faith. These are merely manifestations of the larger reality which chose to manifest itself because of its own will... The journey, however, must and will continue, whether we are aware of the milestones we cross or not. Faith will help us perceive even the pain/obstacles we encounter in our journey, as acts of abundant grace from the Mother Goddess...
It is indeed this faith that makes the Sufi poet Rumi say, “My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”
