The Hebrew phrase אני מאמין באמונה שלמה בביאת המשיח translates to: "I believe with perfect faith in the ultimate redemption."
What is "perfect" faith? And how does one acquire it?
I can only share what it means to me and for me. To me, perfect faith means divine certainty. Certainty beyond logic. Certainty beyond anything in this 3D reality. A certainty deeper than words can say. A certainty built on the parts of us that know, that feel, that ARE divinity.
Before I dive deeper into what divine certainty is to me... I'll dive into what it isn't:
- Divine certainty isn't spiritual bypassing (using words of faith to bypass a real feeling of sadness, grief, anger, or fear.)
- Divine certainty to me is not a certainty that only allows certain emotions. It is a certainty with enough space for a full spectrum of feelings.
- Divine certainty isn't fully "knowing." It's deep faith beyond knowing. It's deep faith that allows for not knowing.
To me, perfect faith and divine certainty include: our inherent humanity, our inherent divinity, our bodies and souls, our suffering and our resilience, our solitude and our rest. Our fortitude, our past traumas, our current triumphs. Perfect faith includes our full selves, our whole and broken families, our secrets, our sickness, our beauty, our light. Our selves that are sometimes perceived as broken, and always deeply whole. Perfect faith is an allowance of all the parts within the whole.
To me, perfect faith is creating art not despite of, but in spite of insecurity. To me, perfect faith is singing from the heart, with deep feeling and tears. To me, perfect faith is silence that permeates and allows, perhaps something new?
To me, perfect faith is meeting the melancholy in a moment, and knowing that that moment too is blessed and holy.
To me, divine certainty is to reckon with God. To me divine certainty is to find balance each day. To me divine certainty is to let myself heal. To me divine certainty is to let myself fall.
As the Ba'al Shem Tov said many years ago: "Let me fall if I must fall, the one who I will become will catch me."
To me, that is perfect faith.
One of my favorite quotes from Terence McKenna is: "This is how magic is done, by hurling yourself into the abyss, and discovering it's a feather bed."
To me, that is perfect faith. That is divine certainty.
What I know in my soul is this: if you have any faith, celebrate it, amplify it, sing it, make art about it, let it heal you.
Our collective redemption is a culmination of personal redemptions. Allow your perfectly imperfect perfect faith to redeem you. Allow divine certainty to lead you to the featherbed, where you can rest into your becoming.
And because faith is a radical and precious thing in this burning and healing world, because faith has the ability to catch fire until it burns in all of our souls and it becomes all of our song, I will say:
"אני מאמין באמונה שלמה בביאת המשיח"
"I believe, with perfect faith in the true and ultimate redemption. And even though it's taking long, I believe, I believe, I believe."
