The Faith-Centered Life as the Path to Salvation
Faith is, essentially, a lifestyle choice. It is the choice between “believing” and “not believing.”
In the Christian paradigm, “faith” means the decision to believe that one’s “sins” have been forgiven through one’s trust in the name and person of Jesus Christ.
But faith is more than that. The very act of faith, in and of itself, is enough to forgive your “sins.” In essence, when you believe that your sins are forgiven, then that very act of belief, of faith, serves to forgive your sins.
Sin, Ego, and Trauma
“Sin” is, essentially, deep-seated trauma and stress embedded within the human system — physically, psychologically, and emotionally. The Christian concept of “original sin” may be understood to be generational or ancestral trauma — in other words, trauma, even PTSD, inherited from one’s ancestors via epigenetics, deeply embedded into one’s subconscious mind as well as one’s physiology.
Faith essentially means letting go — releasing doubt, fear, greed, desperation, and the desire or need for control over one’s circumstances. It means trusting in a power or agency beyond oneself to show one the way and guide one to salvation, or the “Promised Land.”
The very act of faith equates to the release of trauma, therefore. Every subsequent act of faith in life — every decision to have faith, to let go of circumstances — is a process of releasing trauma from one’s system. Thus, the very act of “letting go” in “faith” results in trauma release, which, in turn, amounts to the “forgiveness” of “sins.”
The Lord’s Prayer, one of the centerpieces of the Christian belief system, has the following, widely reputed line:
And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.
KJV, Luke 11:4
In the Aramaic language, which was the language that Yeshua (Jesus) originally spoke, this line reads as follows:
Washboqlan khaubayn (wakhtahayn) aykana daph khnan shbwoqan l’khayyabayn.
The direct English language translation of this line is as follows:
Loosen the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.
In this line, we can catch a glimpse of the original Christian understanding of the concept we call “sin” (in the modern sense). The original concept refers to the condition of entanglement or knottedness, metaphorically applied to ropes, netting, or perhaps elastic bands. This interpretation is in sharp contrast to the modern concept of “sin” as a form of legal transgression against the overarching moral authority of God.
This understanding of the concept of “sin,” derived from Aramaic-language words originally ascribed directly to Jesus Christ, provides insight into the inherently knotted, entangled human condition we call “original sin.” In essence, we are each internally knotted up by our personally experienced stress as well as by inherited generational trauma. Additionally, we are knotted and entangled together, as a human collective, in entanglements involving feuds, vendettas, and reciprocal violence, in matters ranging from the petty and trivial to the earth-shakingly consequential.
This internal trauma, compounded by external societal entanglements, is rooted in our individually egocentric and fear-driven frame of mind. We react to one another when our egos are bruised, seeking individual ego validation by venting our rage on the unsuspecting other. We are knotted up internally by stress and trauma, which is rooted in the bruising or wounding of the ego as well as in the deep psychological wounds that we experience in life and inherit from our ancestors via epigenetics.
Ultimately, “original sin” applies to this knotted, entangled state that we human beings find ourselves in by virtue of our own humanity — the knots and entanglements of stress and trauma (internally), and feuds and vendettas (externally).
Faith as an Act of Release
The act of having faith, therefore, is the act of release or letting go, of loosening the “cords of mistakes binding us” (The Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic). This act is inherently redemptive because it involves releasing stress and trauma from the human system. It implies letting go of egocentric control, greed, and fear, and trusting in the invocation of a higher moral agency. Faith implicitly leads to deliverance because it entails a release from the entanglements of life. It enables one to “let go” to breathe more deeply and freely and to live more meaningfully and purposefully.
The tools for living such a faith-centered life, therefore, are practices that aid in this process of letting go and release. On the one hand, it requires the surrender of personal ego to a higher moral agency, because as long as one clings to one’s ego, one cannot access faith. On the other hand, it involves releasing stress and trauma from the system through practices that facilitate letting go and deeper breathing — practices that may include meditative, yogic, and similar techniques, such as qigong, connection with nature, etc.
The essential idea of pursuing the faith-centered life, therefore, is this idea of disentanglement and unwinding from an inherently entangled, knotted condition, identified as the originally “sinful” condition of man by none other than Jesus, in the original Aramaic-language version of the Lord’s Prayer. By pursuing the path of release from stress, trauma, and ego, and from the entanglements resulting from such a condition, one can ultimately achieve a state of disentanglement, centeredness, harmony, peace, and oneness, unity, or connection with nature and the universe — a state of being we understand as “salvation.”
Following a faith-centered path, of course, does not imply isolating oneself from all human connection, nor does it mean relinquishing empathy or concern for others. Disentanglement from stress, trauma, and ego-driven entanglements such as feuds and vendettas does not imply giving up one’s very humanity — one’s emotions, feelings, and empathy for others. Rather, it frees the human psyche to engage in empathic connections, unencumbered by egocentric attachments and stressful entanglements.
Faith — letting go of ego and attachment, of stress and trauma — is at the core of this process. Having faith, therefore, enables the psyche to unwind and disentangle itself both internally and externally. It enables the psyche to achieve higher states of consciousness and an expanded awareness. It frees the human psyche from ego and egocentric concerns, enabling the pursuit of higher faculties such as empathy, love, creativity, connection with nature, and relationships with others.
Practices such as meditation, yoga, qigong, and nature walks are helpful tools one can use to relieve stress and trauma from one’s psyche and better pursue the life of faith — a life characterized by the relinquishment of personal ego and egocentric attachments and entanglements, including greed, fear, control, desire, and acquisitiveness. Such meditative, yogic, etc., practices are complementary to faith, therefore, because they aid in trauma release — even providing relief from entrenched PTSD symptoms, as documented extensively in academic literature.
The Process of Faith
Because trauma, especially generational or ancestral trauma, is deep-seated and extensive, trauma release and relief do not happen overnight. It is a long-term process. Living by faith, therefore, is a lifestyle choice, not merely a one-time deal — it is a decision to continue to have faith throughout one’s life.
The human system may be analogized to an elastic band that is entangled and twisted up into knots by stress and traumatic experiences. The phenomenon of generational trauma implies that one is born into this twisted-up, knotted condition, simply by virtue of being human. It is the legacy of having a human ancestry, carried down through the ages, through no fault of one’s own.
Choosing to live by faith, therefore, essentially means opting to unwind from one’s inherently twisted-up, knotted condition of congenital stress and trauma. Yoga, meditation, qigong, connection with nature, etc., aid in this process of unwinding, of finding release and relief from stress and trauma. Therefore, practices such as these are the natural adjuncts to a life of faith.
Losing faith at any time in life — which happens to all of us, time and again — essentially amounts to returning to the twisted-up, entangled, knotted condition into which one is born. Sometimes, it is the force of habit that leads one back to it; other times, it may be fear or uncertainty associated with unfamiliar circumstances. However, this doesn’t mean that faith cannot be restored — one can always choose to release pent-up stress and trauma by returning to a life of faith.
Ultimately, it must be apparent that continuing indefinitely down a path of compounding stress and trauma, without ever finding any release or relief, results, eventually, in one reaching a breaking point. One eventually snaps, like an elastic band wound too tightly. One experiences a physical, psychological, and/or emotional breakdown.
Faith is therefore the remedy for this condition. The decision to believe in a higher agency and to let go, finding release or relief in inordinately challenging circumstances beyond one’s control, enables one to “unwind” from one’s inherently wound-up condition. Faith, properly understood, together with helpful meditative, spiritual, mystical practices, enables one to properly release stress and trauma and find the path to salvation, to the “Promised Land.”
The Promise of Salvation
Thus, salvation, or the “Promised Land,” properly understood, is not necessarily a physical destination. Rather, it is a condition one experiences after having lived the life of faith — a condition of being unwound and deeply released from stress and trauma, of experiencing an expanded awareness and heightened consciousness, together with a profound sense of connection with nature and the universe. It is the destination of a life of authentic faith, of pursuing the lifestyle choices and practices that enable it. Faith is the process that eventually leads to this destination.
Living by faith is its own reward — it is inherently rewarding, because the very act of faith, or release and letting go, brings about relaxation and trauma release that improve one’s circumstances. The life of consistent faith, therefore, leads one in a positive direction — towards salvation, deliverance, and freedom from enslavement and oppression.
Thus, the act of faith is intrinsically redemptive. By choosing to live by faith, one allows trauma and stress to be released from one’s system — a process that is inherently beneficial, healing, and salvatory. Through the process of faith, one opens oneself up to a higher moral agency and to an expanded consciousness or awareness. One begins to experience meaningful synchronicities and positive life-altering experiences. The universe itself responds to an attitude of faith and opens itself up to deep connection with the Divine.
The alternative option we face is the opposite of faith — to respond to circumstances with anxiety, mounting stress and fear, and the ego-driven need for control over one’s circumstances. This tendency may be expressed, variously, as greed, cynicism, paranoia, malice, and so forth. The result is the same — the accumulation of stress and trauma rather than its release. And because trauma compounds on itself, such a lifestyle choice — namely, the abandonment of faith — leads, inevitably, to one experiencing a downward spiral in one’s life. It is fed by one’s own choices to act out of cynicism, fear, malice, desperation, or bad faith. It is a course of action, a process, that feeds on itself and contains the seeds of one’s own self-destruction.
One must keep in mind, however, that acting and living in faith does not imply succumbing to naïveté or allowing oneself to be victimized and exploited by bad-faith actors or malevolent cynics. Rather, the choice to live and act in good faith, to release stress and trauma from one’s system, has the effect of expanding one’s awareness and sharpening one’s perceptions. Thereby, one is better able to recognize dangerous situations, such as the threat of exploitation, and to act effectively to avoid or remedy them, even in self-defense or the defense of others, as necessary.
Thus, the attitude of faith — of release and letting go — liberates trauma and stress from the human system and leads to an expanded awareness and heightened consciousness of reality, to a broader, deeper, better comprehension of the universe. On the other hand, acting out of fear, cynicism, desperation, egomania, narcissism, and egotism all serve to close oneself off from such an expanded awareness of reality. Such an attitude contains within itself the seeds of one’s personal destruction because actions such as these compound stress, trauma, anxiety, and fear, resulting in a self-defeating downward spiral that inevitably culminates in some kind of meltdown or breaking point.
Misconceptions in Modern Christian Doctrine
Christian doctrine, as we know of it today — especially “born again” Christianity and similar denominations — seems to view the declaration of faith as a kind of one-and-done deal that ensures one’s personal salvation, cleansing one of all one’s sins in one fell swoop. Often, this is ritualized in the baptismal ceremony — the cleansing of sins.
While I don’t deny the importance of such initiatory practices, I think we have a fundamental misunderstanding of what is at work here. If one believes, as many Christian denominations claim, that initiatory practices, such as baptism or the avowal of faith, in and of themselves, are the ultimate guarantee of one’s salvation, then, I think, one is mistaken in that supposition. If one believes that, having been initiated into the life of faith, one is free to pursue any kind of lifestyle one chooses, even one of extreme hedonism, depravity, corruption, or criminality, secure in the knowledge that one has received the seal of ultimate salvation, that one has purchased a ticket to heaven, in effect, then, I believe, one is sadly misguided in what it means to live the life of faith.
I do not believe that any rite of initiation, be it a baptism, a declaration of faith, a secret handshake, or whatever, is a guarantee of anything in and of itself. Rather, it is merely the initiation — the first step — into the faith-based lifestyle — the faith-centered way of life. It is not the initiation that guarantees salvation. Rather, it is the practice that leads one to salvation. The point to be made, though, is that there is no judgment of moral failings under such a paradigm. It is simply a matter of how reality, how the universe, operates.
Living the authentic life of faith — of release and letting go — inevitably leads to the process of unwinding, of stress and trauma release, that ultimately leads to the state of being we understand as “salvation.” The practice is the vehicle of redemption, not so much the rite of initiation by itself. However, as the Bible teaches, this understanding is an act of Divine grace because the process of release or letting go is, in effect, a way of allowing grace to enter one’s life. It is a process that leads from the strain and hardship brought on by congenital trauma towards the experience of liberation and deliverance through simply letting go in faith — allowing stress and trauma to be released and Divine grace to enter one’s life.
In this respect, it seems to me that the Christian lifestyle of faith is not unlike other mystical schools of thought centered on relaxation practices such as yoga, qigong, and meditation. Such practices are intended to relieve the human soul of the burden of deep-seated trauma and stress, bring about an expanded consciousness, and an attunement to the mystical energies of the universe that pervade nature and reality.
Thus, I suggest that modern Christian doctrine has become partially distorted from what might have been the original first-century Christian belief system and practice. This distortion might have resulted from centuries of theological misinterpretation, possibly originating in archaic or Medieval times, by thinkers whose sensibilities may not have been conducive to a clear understanding of the original Christian message.
I believe that a more accurate understanding of the Christian practice stems from a clear, correct understanding of the concept of “original sin” — that it applies to the congenital human condition of entanglement and knottedness (as described in the Aramaic-language version of the Biblical Lord’s Prayer), which is, in turn, the consequence of ancestral or generational trauma, together with collectively and individually experienced trauma, often residing in the human subconscious.
Faith as a Way of Life
Thus, the practice of faith in one’s life is the process of progressively releasing pent-up stress and trauma from the human system, thereby achieving an expanded awareness and heightened consciousness. Ultimately, one achieves a state of profound connection with the universe, with nature, and with other human beings, of deep empathy and humanity, and, correspondingly, of freedom from trauma and stress. We call this state of being “salvation” in the Christian paradigm, while other traditions may refer to it as “Nirvana,” the “Promised Land,” “Paradise,” and the like.
In this way, we see that the inherently redemptive quality of faith lies in its ability to release trauma and stress, and to expand awareness and heighten consciousness. In this respect, the practice of faith is closely connected to mystical practices such as meditation, mindfulness, yoga, qigong, and communion with nature, which all seek similar objectives, though within different linguistic and cultural traditions.
Therefore, I suggest that the essence of the Christian belief system and practice lies in the practice of faith — in the faith-centered way of life — rather than in any religious doctrine or dogma. In this respect, Christianity, when correctly understood and appreciated, is similar to other mystical traditions and practices that seek salvation through the release of trauma and liberation from the entanglements of the ego-driven life.
