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Milarepa, the 12th Century Tibetan Master, is known for songs about the correct way to meditate. In a song Milarepa says mind has more projections than there are dust motes in a sunbeam and hundreds of spears could not put an end to it. If you are not aware of this wild nature of mind, you have not seriously tried to meditate.
Tibetan Teacher, Pema Chödrön, in When Things Fall Apart, has a chapter with the title "Relax As It Is." In light of the nature of mind, Chödrön suggests we who meditate "might as well stop struggling against our thoughts and realize that honesty and humor are far more inspiring and helpful than any kind of solemn religious striving for or against anything."
Chödrön's advice is sagacious for not only meditation but life generally. Why? Life, like mind, is beyond our control, and life is as unpredictable as is mind.
Is it possible that faith is most evidenced in acceptance of what is, not striving to make things other than what is? I believe faith can change things, and sometimes we need to pray and work for change. But faith primarily changes us and how we relate to life.
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I recommend we utilize the wisdom of religion and its rites to assist learning to relax into our lives as gifts from the Being of God. And, rather than struggling all the time, we can relax in the practice of honesty and humor in our fallible, odd Journeys.
When the early Church was faced with choosing the first deacons, one chosen was to become the first martyr of the Church: Stephen.
... They chose Stephen who was a man full of faith and full of the Holy Spirit. ... (Acts 6.5, NLV)
Being "full of" (Gk., pleres), or "permeated with," faith is joined with being permeated with the Sacred Spirit. Faith, loving faithfulness toward the Mystical Reality, and communion with the Holy Spirit, as the Beloved Companion, go hand-in-hand.
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