I last reflected on vulnerability, and spoke of openness to the core of our own being, to one another, and to the mystery of life in its blend of joy and sorrow. We mentioned briefly that such openness implies and requires a degree of trust. In order to be vulnerable, to allow another enter our inner space, trust is essential. So, a few thoughts on trust might be in valuable.
I think that the key ingredients of trust are at once a trust in ourselves and a trust in life itself, in the universe. The central implication is the challenge to become ourselves a trustworthy person.
Trust in ourselves means a trust in the deepest part of ourselves, our essential core. To do so implies being aware of and in touch with that core. This is a gradual and never complete process. It involves going beyond the surface of life, the constant pulls from outside. It involves going beyond the scripts of a society that stresses possessions and power over others, a viewpoint that preys upon our fears which are channelled into hostility, and into an “us”versus “them” mentality.
This process of self-awareness unfolds gradually–as we have mentioned often–through solitude, friendship, and social outreach. This uncovering process occurs through quiet solitude in which we become present to ourselves and allow what is deepest within us to emerge to the surface of our awareness. It occurs through friendship, especially its expression in open conversation from our core. It develops through compassion in which we reach our from our deep within ourselves to another who is suffering. It comes through activity in which we place our whole heart, and later become aware of that heart. It takes place through social responsibility and the struggle for social justice, in which we recognize and strive to create situations in which people’s true self may unfold.
Beyond awareness of self within is wider context, trust requires a sense that our core self, who we truly and deeply are, is of worth or value, that we are each a sacred self. Perhaps the most fundamental, underlying form of trust is trust in ourselves. Such trust implies that it is safe, true, and valuable to trust in ourselves, and in the unfolding process of life within ourselves. It implies that we actually experience our basic identity as a sacred self, or are moving in that direction. This of course is the central conviction of everything I have ever said or written, and remains for me always an unending challenge.
Beyond trust in self, extending to trustworthy others, in is trust in the context in which we live our our lives a trust in life itself, in the universe. In his “wonder-ful” book Apology for Wonder, Sam Keen has written that the basis for an authentic life is trust in self and trust in the context of life. He recalls the work of Erik Erikson, who has maintained that basic trust as a necessary component of a healthy personality.
“The foundations of gracefulness,”Keen writes, “are trust in the context within which action must take place and confidence in the ability of the self to undertake appropriate action. … Tension, fear and anxiety are the results of a vote of ‘no confidence.’ … In the final analysis, authentic human life rests upon the inner conviction of the ultimate trustworthiness of reality; the conviction that the ultimate context out of which we emerge into our own hands, and into which we and the self and world we fashion, disappear, is ultimately life-furthering.”
Scholars such Wilfrid Cantwell Smith, Hans Kung, and Karl Rahner, have maintained that basic trust in the meaningfulness of life is the root and heart of all religion. Holocaust survivor and psychologist, Viktor Frankl, reinforces this view by asserting that meaning can be found even in the midst of unavoidable suffering. Student of religion, Karen Armstrong, further states that practical compassion is the universal expression of such a conviction.
In a letter to his daughter, Albert Einstein writes that love is the most powerful unseen force in the universe. Such love energy explains everything and gives meaning to life. “If we want to save the world and every sentient being that inhabits it, love is the one and only answer.”
Finally James Doty, late Founder of the Stanford University Centre for Compassion, contrasts what he calls the fear mode and the heart mode. We are hardwired for heart mode, he states. Our purpose is to love ourselves, and to love other people. At the Stanford Centre, they teach compassion for self. They urge us to give ourselves positive affirmations, that we are worthy, good enough, deserving.
A lot of the negative self-talk, Doty comments, comes from the baggage we carry from our childhood. It then shapes many of our decisions, our relationships, our occupations. This negative self-talk creates a false narrative. It leads us to create the limited belief systems that imprison us.
But, Doty says, we can come to see this is a story we can change. We can change what we believe. In the heart mode, we are coming from a place of service, where we are actively visualizing positive beliefs about ourselves that we are good, worthy, loved. Fundamentally, our world is one we create.
He adds that most people are loving, kind people inside. But they have been battered often by the forces that make them think that is not the case, or that they don’t deserve love. Everybody deserves love. Everybody deserves dignity. Most people, if they actually sit quietly, and are present to and listen to themselves, they realize the falseness of the dominant narrative. If they practice such mindfulness, for example, they recognize that they don’t first of all want things. The want food for the table, shelter, caring relationships, meaningful lives.
And if we look through that lens of what we are doing to be of service to help my family and my environment, it will ultimately help us as well. Our physiology works at its best when we are focused on others, when we are trying to be of service.
May you come more and more to recognize that your deepest self is a sacred valuable self and is trustworthy. May you recognize that your deepest and truest orientation is towards caring, compassion, justice, and love. May you more and more discern which persons you meet and which life situations are trustworthy. And may you strive in whatever ways possible for you to contribute to a more trustworthy society
