Leap of Faith

Faith is a deep concept in any religion, but also in spirituality. There are many who have faith in a greater Creator or Being, even if they do not follow a defined religion. When I left to go to a camp 4 years ago, I didn’t know what I was going for, or where I was going. I kind of just grabbed a flight fairly last minute, knowing that I needed something different in my life. What that camp (Sarab Rog Ka Aukhad Naam) taught me was the power of faith. Being around so many people who so deeply believed, I realized that I truly hadn’t had that level of faith ever before in my life. I had some kind of trust and faith, but that also was deteriorating, and I didn’t know what to hold onto anymore. My faith surely had never been to the extent of the other sangat I was immersed in. That camp hugely accelerated my spiritual journey by giving me the concept of faith, and I have never let it go since. There are days I can still be shaken, but I still turn to ask my Guru for the strength to carry on and my strength is renewed. 

The concept of faith is also intertwined deeply in my role as a healer. I had a discussion with a palliative physician one day. He is honoured and privileged to be a part of people’s dying moments. He told me that as someone who is non-spiritual, he noticed that those who have faith do see miracles. He explained through science using explanations of anti-tumor markers released in the brain used to heal the body, etc. but that ultimately he thought the one element that was key to these surprising cases was the element of unshakeable faith. He explained that it is not like it was guaranteed to save a life, but he had seen it many times that the medicines simply seemed to work better, and even if those people did pass, they did so peacefully. Indeed I have seen this myself. I remember reading once in Giani Sant Singh Ji Maskeen’s books that one who has science wants to see the proof first, but in religion one must have faith first to be able to see the proof. It cannot be done in reverse. 

When we think of any Shaheed from our history, or any notable person from Sikh history, their unshakeable faith lights up their path and defines their story. Adversity after adversity, we have collectively survived as a Sikh nation because of our faith in our Guru and God. I think the reason why we struggle so much now is because of our doubts. We don’t have faith and trust our Guru’s path. We lose faith easily in times of adversity and are quick to blame God. The biggest things in life that break people’s faith are those of emotional pain, death, illness, etc., because we cannot dig deep into Gurbani to explain to ourselves. We built a shaky foundation of faith, just like I did. I thought that faith was just action, going to the Gurdwara; yet we do not actually prepare ourselves for the challenges of life. How did Guru Gobind Singh Ji sacrifice his whole family and still write that he was satisfied as long as he had God? How did people survive hunger, starvation, torture, hiding in the jungles and the deserts? Surely the emotional pains of those times must have been severe when we look at the descriptions of the destruction done by Babar’s army in Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s Bani. We continue to face that very same destruction in different forms, but we need to understand that we still have the tools to be able to deal with it. The path to Sehaj is laid out in Gurbani and starts with building the sparks of faith. It may start as actions but as the Laavan lay out for us, the physical actions then move to mental action and love for God, to Naam, and a longing, and finally merger. 

When we see these notable role models from our history, they didn’t have faith in a “Mr. God” up in the sky, they realized that the living essence of the universe itself is God, within and in the outside. Faith was no longer a belief, but a fact of truth and of being alive. It changes from “I have faith in God” (two different entities) to there is no “I”, there is just You (One entity), and therefore faith is a matter of realization. It is a matter of recognition of the universal truth that is hidden from us because of maya, because of the wall of doubt, because of ego and our actions. It is the mind’s realization of God. This is why the little strands of faith matter. The tugs at your heart that keep you going. The little sparks that deepen your interest in Sikhi and in something greater than yourself, the ones that make you question your ego and see the world in a different light. We get these sparks from reading books (Se Kinehiya and Forgetting the Way of Love are life changing), simran, sitting in sangat, katha, camps, Ardas/Hukamnama, Sehaj Paath, sewa, and kirtan. Faith is built in each others stories and conversations of amazing things in life. We get these sparks anytime we forget ourselves and just immerse ourselves in something greater than ourselves. So I encourage you today to think about the role of faith in your life and how to build the sparks of faith, but also spread the sparks of faith to those around you.