I believe in belief.

My mother once told me that I was the happiest baby she had ever met, overjoyed to take part in the tumultuous new world around me, but preoccupied with perceptions beyond her reach often enough that she would’ve wondered if there was anything wrong with me, if I hadn’t been so happy.

I would lie in my Kinderwagen, crib or in somebody’s arms, stare off into space with almost unshakeable focus for hours, and I was happy to be engaged with, but also content to stay wherever it was that I went to. When I got older, she said, I’d try to explain myself, to describe what it was that I was seeing, but would eventually give up.

I wonder now looking back, was I meditating? Did I focus inward, into my true self, yet to be buried underneath the debris of my collissions with life, or did I see something external, like uncompromised beauty or energetic flows, or wandering spirits? It might seem silly to some, but I like to believe that I did, either or both.

In the intervening years I was too busy surviving to tap into my spirituality. But as I am now learning to live, I’ve come to realise that faith is deeply rooted in my being, is what structures this inexplicable cosmic chaos for me and gives meaning to the mostly inane experience of being human.

I call it the Universe most often, but sometimes I call it the Higher Powers or God, it’s all the same to me, because the truth of it cannot be put into words anyway. The truth of it is approximately light, love in its purest form, but so much more than that, and it’s that force, that liquid energy, that binds Everything together.

It’s what our bodies are made of and made to contain, the internal destination of my meditations and the external destination of my prayers, and thus it is subject to my belief, it is what I Create, as I am the universe experiencing itself from one specific perspective.

And it is also, and this is where I’m confronted with it most often, a direction. It guides me through my intuition, through the way I read patterns and signs in my environment and respond, through awareness and mindfulness, through knowledge that I am so lucky to have received, and that I am drawn to.

Only I decide what I focus on, where I move to, but with enough practice I can effortlessly flow with the current and receive that which I should. I can peel back the layers of culture, language and ideology that cling to the world and the layers of physicality, character, thinking and feeling that my true self hides behind, and I will discover the same thing; Everywhere it is the same, so it really doesn’t matter who I am, where I go or what I do.

It’s about how it is done. With consciousness, and trust in ourselves, our connections, in the Higher Powers and always always with sometimes wavering, mystifying, all-encompassing, miraculous and above all gracious (so gracious, I am eternally grateful to be part of this, for something to have faith in)

belief.