Learning to Trust
17th February 2016
Guest Writer for Wake Up World
During my world tour each year as a spiritual teacher, I spend plenty of time talking with people who are on their spiritual path. They often mention to me that they are learning to trust. I usually ask them if they actually know what trust is. The honest ones quickly admit that they do not, while a few come up with a variety of answers which prove that they, also, have no idea.
I find this interesting. Most people can give you an intellectual explanation of trust, yet they have never actually experienced it! An encyclopedic description of trust is not trust, just as the jam label description on the jam jar is not jam! This is obvious when pointed out, yet multitudes of people are trying to learn to trust, but they do not know what trust is! They only have the label. How can we expect to learn from this? Surely if we want to learn something, we need to know the basics of it. It is difficult to learn to trust when we live in a world that does not support trust? Society supports suspicion and distrust; laws are based in this. The insurance industry is based in distrust. We do not live in a society of people who have lost their trust – we live in a society who have never yet learned what trust truly is.
It is fairly well accepted that we learn trust by first trusting ourselves. The reality here is that we, ourselves, are the one person we most distrust. How can we trust the person whom we most judge and criticise? Self-trust and self-criticism do not live together. If asked, some people say, “Oh yes, I trust myself,” yet they suffer from anxiety/angst and fear and worry. This does not add up. A good method of measuring your trust is by measuring your degree of worry. If you worry, you do not trust. If you trust, you do not worry. It is impossible to trust and worry. It is the same with fear. If you fully trust yourself and life, you have no fear. Many people fear making major decisions; they lack trust in themselves. While it is easy enough to read or hear these words, it changes nothing. To experience trust you have to live with trust.
Can we learn to live this way? Yes. I have forgotten what worry feels like. I no longer experience it. Nor do I experience anxiety/angst, or anger. I do not have mental or emotional stress, nor do I experience unease or fear. Inside me, there is peace. Why? Because I trust myself completely. I also Love myself. When I speak or write for the public, I trust myself. I trust my actions. This does not mean my words and actions are always met with approval, but I trust that the way people act or react to them is perfect in their moment of creation for themselves. I trust myself, so I do not seek the approval of other people. I trust myself, so I do not criticise myself. I am not worried if other people criticise me, or have a negative opinion of me. What other people think of me has nothing to do with me, or with my life.. What other people think of me – or of you – is always based in the way they think about themselves. And, unfortunately, this is mostly negative. Not always, mostly! This is not bad or wrong or terrible; it is as it is.
The content of what you think of yourself is of utmost importance. There is a great life principle involved in all this. In every moment of your life, you are creating the direction and the content of every moment of your life. I cannot overstate the value of your realising this – and acting upon it. You are the creator of your life – do you trust this creator? Another life principle: Your relationship with yourself is your relationship with life. More creation. If you do not trust yourself, you do not – you cannot – trust life. Unfortunately, if you do not trust life, life will show you no trust – and this is your own unwitting creation! More and more, trust is needed in everyday life. And wanting to trust and trying to trust achieves absolutely nothing with regards to experiencing trust.
Okay, so how do we learn to trust?
Let me create a small scenario. You are going away for a couple of weeks, and you ask your neighbour friend if they will water your favourite houseplant three times a week while you are away. They agree to do this. You are happy, because you trust your neighbour. You go away, come home, and go to collect the plant. It is dead. They forgot to water it. They are full of excuses, but the houseplant is dead. You mutter to yourself, and replace the plant. A month later you again have to go away for business for two weeks. Will you ask your neighbour to water it? No. Why? You no longer trust them. End of scenario.
The trust you had for your neighbour was based in an expectation and a result. You expected them to water the plant; a living plant would be the result. This is not trust. When you trust yourself, your trust is based in an expectation of yourself, and achieving trust is the result. This is not trust. Long, long ago, millennia ago, you quit trusting yourself. You let yourself down over and over, for lifetime after lifetime, until trust became an intellectual game. Trust is not a word, the word is simply a description. If I sit on a Berlin roadside signpost all day, have I spent the day in Berlin? No? Berlin is a city of people and buildings, of streets and traffic. Sitting on the Berlin signpost did not even connect me with the actual city. So it is with the word, trust. Trust is a great power available for anyone. But when your life is based in your intellectual dominance, then the thought that you understand trust creates the illusion that you know and experience trust. You do not. You can only know the nature of trust when you are fully trusting yourself.
I describe trust as unconditional. Unconditional trust. Now you have a whole new way to approach trusting yourself. To learn to trust, you are not allowed to place any conditions on trust, or upon yourself. You begin each day trusting yourself. Long before the day is over you will have broken your trust in yourself. This is okay. You consciously acknowledge that you have broken your trust – and you continue to trust yourself. No conditions. For as long as it takes, months, years, you consciously trust yourself, without any conditions.
We now have conscious trust. You cannot trust yourself subconsciously. You can only fully trust yourself as a conscious act. Your subconscious program does not have trust in it. It is not possible to subconsciously program yourself for an act requiring full consciousness. And most people live their day subconsciously. Trust is unconditional and conscious.
Trust is metaphysical. It is not physical. While you are consciously trusting yourself unconditionally, you are creating a metaphysical structure within the energy-field of your own metaphysical body. When that metaphysical structure is complete, you will have created trust for yourself. And you will know. To have trust, each and every person has to create it for themselves.
Now for the good news. Once you have learned to unconditionally and consciously trust yourself, you have this power for ever. You will never need to learn this again. You will have grown in consciousness as a result of trusting yourself, and your state of consciousness will remain as you continue on your eternal journey into an ever expanding experience of life.
Trust is truly life-changing, life transforming. Trust me on this! Trust yourself!
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