Most of us are taught, subtly or directly, that faith means gripping harder. Holding beliefs tightly. Clinging to certainty. White-knuckling our way through uncertainty as if sheer effort could keep us safe. But real faith—lived faith, not conceptual faith—works in the opposite direction. It begins the moment we loosen our grip.
Alan Watts once described faith like swimming: if you grab hold of the water, you sink. If you relax, you float. The water doesn’t need to be conquered or controlled. It already knows how to hold you. Life works much the same way.
We suffer not because life is unstable, but because we refuse to trust its movement.
Why We Try to Control What Can’t Be Controlled
Control feels like protection. When things are uncertain, the mind searches for something solid to hold onto—plans, expectations, outcomes, beliefs. Control gives us the illusion of safety, even when it quietly exhausts us.
We tell ourselves:
“If I think hard enough, prepare enough, anticipate enough, I won’t be surprised.”
But control is a poor substitute for trust. It narrows our vision. It keeps us tense, hyper-vigilant, and perpetually braced for impact. And the irony is that the tighter we hold, the less stable we become.
Just like in water.
When you’re swimming, panic convinces you that tightening your body will keep you afloat. In reality, tension pulls you under. Relaxation is what allows buoyancy to do its work. The water doesn’t resist you when you soften into it—it supports you.
Life behaves the same way, but we rarely give it the chance.
Faith as Relaxation, Not Effort
Faith isn’t something you do. It’s something you allow.
It’s not about believing the right ideas or predicting the right outcome. Faith is the quiet willingness to be held by something larger than your fear. It’s the decision to stop wrestling with uncertainty and let yourself rest inside it.
This doesn’t mean passivity. Letting go isn’t giving up. It’s releasing the false belief that tension equals strength.
Real faith feels more like:
- Breathing out instead of bracing
- Listening instead of forcing
- Trusting timing instead of rushing it
- Allowing answers to arrive rather than demanding them
Faith is a soft strength. A grounded strength. One that doesn’t need to dominate in order to survive.
Trusting Yourself to the Water
We often talk about faith as trust in life, the universe, or something spiritual—but the deepest form of faith is trust in yourself within life.
Trusting that:
- You will respond when you need to
- You will adapt when things change
- You will learn from what breaks you
- You will not disappear if things don’t go as planned
Faith is knowing that even when the map fails, you still have a compass inside you.
Most of us don’t actually fear the unknown—we fear our perceived inability to handle it. But you’ve already handled things you once thought you couldn’t. You’ve already survived moments you didn’t prepare for. You’ve already been held by the water without realizing it.
The body knows how to float before the mind interferes.
The Cost of Holding On Too Tightly
When we cling, we shrink. Our world becomes smaller, our nervous system tighter, our imagination limited to worst-case scenarios. We become rigid, brittle, reactive.
Holding on too tightly can look like:
- Obsessing over outcomes
- Replaying conversations in your head
- Trying to control how others see you
- Resisting change even when it’s necessary
- Mistaking certainty for peace
But peace doesn’t come from certainty. It comes from flexibility. From knowing you can move with life rather than against it.
Water doesn’t reward stiffness. Neither does life.
Practicing Letting Go in Small Ways
Letting go doesn’t require a dramatic leap of faith. It begins in small, almost invisible moments.
Try this:
- Notice where your body is tense and soften it
- Take one slow breath and don’t rush the next
- Release one expectation for the day
- Allow a situation to unfold without narrating it mentally
- Choose presence over prediction
Each time you do this, you’re teaching yourself that nothing collapses when you stop controlling. In fact, things often become clearer.
Faith grows quietly. It strengthens through experience, not effort.
Faith as an Ongoing Practice
Faith isn’t a permanent state. It’s something you return to again and again, especially when fear resurfaces. Some days you’ll float easily. Other days you’ll forget and start thrashing. Both are part of learning.
What matters is remembering that you can always soften again.
You don’t need to understand everything to trust the water. You don’t need certainty to be supported. You don’t need to grip life for it to hold you.
Closing: Learning to Float
Faith is not about believing that nothing will go wrong. It’s trusting that you don’t need to be rigid to survive what does.
When you stop grabbing the water, you discover it was always beneath you. When you stop forcing life, you feel its support. When you loosen your grip, you don’t fall—you float.
And maybe that’s what faith has always been:
Not holding on tighter,
but trusting enough to let go.
TheSpiritualExplorer 