Faith is a blending of heart-mind. We have faith that the sun will rise every morning, that our friends will be our friends, and the stars will shine at night. Faith is not necessarily a religious or spiritual term, though there is that side to faith and the various beliefs that a person might have faith in.
Faith is born of trust (heart) and a recognition of pattern (mind). With religious ideas or doctrine, one might have been told something repeatedly, thus a pattern in one’s mind is established and combines with the trust that one has of the person or source of the repeated teaching. All religions do this; it is how the faithful learn the practices and creeds of a particular religion and why there are different doctrines in different religions.
In meditation, heart-mind is the experience of a result that is beginning to take hold or establish: that of a settled ease and presence combined with contentment. If one’s practice is yielding its fruit, then the practitioner – due to repetition of one’s practice – is now beginning to experience – more often than not – a settling that expands and stabilizes. This includes a certain quality of less activity in the mind and more space, more clarity, more tranquility. The feeling of ease of of the heart chakra or heart center permeating the usual active state of the mind.
With repetition, a practitioner grows to have faith in one’s practice and faith in oneself as a meditator.
Downloadable podcast: Entry: faith