Faith in the Journey as a Spiritual Paradigm

 Many people in the West today face a great inner challenge; namely, how to approach spiritual renewal in an age dominated by a materialistically oriented secularism, on the one hand, and dogmatic religious fundamentalism, on the other. For most of us, the option of blind adherence to religious dogmas and theologies is simply not a viable one. Our capacity to eradicate doubt regarding the teachings of fundamentalist religion is simply no longer an option, nor is our ability to deny the validity of the findings of modern science in the face of these teachings.

That said, the problem with the alternative offered by radical secularism is that it leaves us struggling with an ever-deepening sense of existential despair, with the sense that nothing ultimately means anything. Of course, the fact that modern secularism is simply a reaction to an evermore vehement insistence on blind belief by adherents of fundamentalist religion does nothing to solve the dilemma we face.

I, too, have struggled with the need to find a relationship to the sacred that avoids the perils of both dogmatic religion and soul-deadening secularism. As an alternative to both, I’ve come to embrace the idea of Faith in the Journey as a spiritual paradigm for living a deeply, profoundly meaningful, and purposeful life. As psychologist and spiritual teacher Sam Keen observes, “My life is the text in which I must find the revelation of the sacred.”

That living text through which the sacred reveals itself is comprised of stories. Like those that come to us from the world’s great religions and wisdom traditions, our sacred stories also concern many of life’s most profoundly joyful and challenging experiences. There are stories of fateful events and choices that mark turning points in our lives. There are stories about those times when we have touched someone’s life in some important way or when others have touched our lives. Other stories tell of experiences that made us aware in some new or deeper way of being part of something larger than our individual selves. Some of our most poignant stories concern the losing or finding of faith, be it faith in ourselves, in others, or in life itself.

Central to the spiritual paradigm of Faith in the Journey is the understanding that we can find the sense of sacredness we seek by reflecting on the archetypal, mythic dimension of stories of our own lives. This spiritual paradigm proposes that mindfully and compassionately embracing all of the experiences we encounter on the Journey of life—both the joyous and the tragic—has the power to teach us whatever it is we most need to understand. Perhaps most poignantly, a spirituality based on the idea of Faith in the Journey allows us to trust that an ever-renewing source of life lies deep within the sacred stories of each of us, there to be tapped whenever we most need it.