Opening to Trust

... Episode 8 of What's Arising

In this podcast, I talk about the increasing levels of distrust throughout our society with the accompanying reactions of increasing control, conflict, anxiety, fear, censorship, and surveillance.

Without trust, our relationships, communities, institutions and social systems disintegrate or become rigid. Without self-trust we get stuck; closing down our hearts and minds.

But what can we actually trust in life? How can we reestablish trust in ourselves, in others and with our communities? In returning to trust, what possibilities arise?

Shadow-integration⁠ is a return to self-love and self-trust:  https://www.wisdomways.net/shadowintegration/

⁠Cohering Community⁠ is a small group experience aimed at rebuilding trust and genuine connection with others. https://coheringcommunity.com

Transcript

Welcome to this episode of What’s Arising?

As part of my tradition so far, I will begin by ringing my bowl three times.

As I ring it the first time, I invite you to settle and connect with yourself.

With the second ring, perhaps imagine reaching out and connecting with the people in your life, and with humanity.

With the third ring, connect with all that is — with life itself.

Overall, I invite you to become very present. Then I will begin this podcast on trust.

[Music / Singing Bowl]

This episode of What’s Arising? is about trust.

Trust has been a very near and dear topic to me for many years.

The question here is:

What can I trust?

Or perhaps:

What can we trust?

Who can we trust?

I do not know your experience of life, but it seems to me that trust in our society is waning, or in many cases, has been lost.

When I grew up as a child, we did not lock our doors. We pretty much trusted everyone. Perhaps some of that trust was naïve or unfounded, and people could still get into trouble, but for the most part, there was a sense of trusting life.

At least, that was my experience.

Now, we lock our doors. It seems like almost everything has the potential to betray us. We try, or maybe even feel we need, to control so much of our lives.

There is censorship. There is fake news. Can we trust the news? Can we trust alternative news? Can we trust other people? Can we trust our governments or institutions?

Can we trust God?

I think many people have felt betrayed by all of these things. Deep inside, even if they are unwilling to admit it, some may feel that the universe, God, or Source has betrayed them or left them alone.

Life itself may feel like one big betrayal.

So what can we actually trust when this is our experience? What can we trust when we carry deep hurts and traumas that seem to say, “There is no reason to trust anything here”?

And what are the implications when we do not trust?

We can see those implications everywhere. We need virus protection on our computers. We have to filter spam. We have to be careful about who we open our door to. If we watch the news, it may seem like there is no trust left in the world.

Maybe anxiety itself is a symptom of this crisis of trust.

When we cannot trust, we often move toward deeper levels of control. When we cannot trust people or governments, we hunker down and try to implement more measures of control.

On a larger scale, lack of trust can lead to surveillance, monitoring, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism. As a society, when we move further into distrust, we risk creating a world where no one can trust anyone.

But that is not the world I want to live in.

A world without trust is a world without connection, without love, and often without kindness, except perhaps in small protected circles.

So what can we trust?

Who can we trust?

How can we come back to being more trustful beings?

How can we help move society in a more trust-based direction, where relationships are not merely transactional, but rooted in connection and care?

I do not have all the answers. Perhaps you have some answers, or some questions of your own. But I can share a little about my experience of trust and my philosophy around moving toward trust.

Many years ago, perhaps twenty or more years ago, I was working with a healer. One of the things she said to me was:

“Richard, you are here to learn how to trust the process of life. To trust life itself.”

That stayed with me.

How can I possibly trust life with everything?

Since then, I have had many broken hearts and experiences that felt like betrayal. Yet within those experiences, I have learned to keep coming back to trust and not closing my heart.

When we are in protection, it is because we do not trust.

We close ourselves down. We shut the doors and windows. We lock ourselves away. But when we do this, we are not free. Because we cannot trust, we surround ourselves with protection.

What if we could begin opening the doors again?

What if we could open our hearts and minds, step out of some of our protection mechanisms, and move into the world with more freedom?

So what can we trust?

There are certain things about life we can trust.

I can trust that I am going to die someday. I can trust that I am getting older. I can look at my whiskers and see that. If I continue to live, I will age. Eventually, I will die.

I can trust that.

I can trust many aspects of life without needing life to conform to my expectations. I can accept some things as they are and trust them as they are.

For example, I am not likely to walk up to a wild bear and try to pet it, especially a grizzly bear. I can trust that if I did that, it might swipe me and possibly kill me.

I can trust the bear’s nature.

I can trust the bareness of the bear.

I can trust that a rose has a beautiful flower and also thorns. If I grab the stalk of the rose tightly, I may be punctured and bleed. The rose has both beauty and protection. Its nature includes delicacy and toughness.

So if we look at life and discern the essence of what something is, we can learn to trust its nature.

Instead of simply saying, “I do not trust that,” we can say, “I trust what it is.”

I trust the bear to be a bear. I trust myself not to poke the bear.

I think we can do this with people too.

If we begin to turn on deeper levels of discernment, we can get a sense of people. If we recognize someone as deeply manipulative, narcissistic, or unsafe, we can be careful. We can choose not to develop trust too quickly. We can put up boundaries. We can grow our thorns.

That too is a form of trust.

If I do not trust certain news outlets, Facebook posts, or social media messages, then I want to be discerning. Can I trust this message? Is it coming from someone I trust? Have they done their research? If not, can I do my own research before passing it on?

My integrity is important.

This brings us to a deeper question:

Can I trust myself?

Can I trust myself to make decisions in the moment? Can I trust myself to open my heart where it is safe to open, and to set boundaries where boundaries are needed?

One thing we can trust is that if we have not dealt with our wounds, beliefs, and shadows, they will continue to be mirrored back to us in life.

If we have not healed our beliefs around love, betrayal, judgment, or safety, those patterns will keep showing up. Life will continue to reflect them back until we do the inner work and no longer need the mirror in the same way.

You can trust life in that sense.

Life may not always give us what we want, but it often gives us what we need.

My view is that life mirrors back to us what we are carrying inside. It wants to bring us into fullness, wholeness, and the full light of who we are.

When we have the doors and windows closed, life may try to break open the shell and bring us into our light. It often does this by reflecting back the darkness, beliefs, and unintegrated patterns we still carry.

Eventually, we may get tired of the way life is showing up, tired of being in opposition to life, and we find a new strategy. We shift to another level of consciousness, and life shifts with us.

So we can trust that life will show us what we need, though not always what we want.

It will grow us.

If we want to move toward trusting life, trusting other people, and opening our hearts again, the first step is to look at ourselves and change our own vibration.

We do this by healing the shadows within us and forgiving the betrayals from the past that we are still holding onto.

If we continue holding the energy of betrayal, hatred, or “I can’t stand this,” our hearts close. That energy may continue to attract similar situations based on the trauma we have not yet healed.

We cannot usually fix someone else, especially if they are reflecting back our own shadow. But if we stand more fully in our light, they may show up differently. Or they may simply stop resonating with us in the same way.

I do not find many people showing up in my life that I hate or cannot stand. And if they do, I go back inside and ask:

What is this about within me?

What does life want to show me through this person?

I can get rid of them. I can shut them out of my life. But life may bring someone else to hold up the same mirror.

Life loves me that much.

It wants me to be free.

It wants me to be in the full expression of love.

It wants you to be in the full expression of love too.

So anything that does not resonate with that love may be shown to us so we can see it, heal it, and integrate it.

The first step in regaining trust in the world is regaining trust in ourselves.

We do this by letting go, forgiving, surrendering to the process of life, and learning how to trust life itself.

When I look back through difficult experiences and move through forgiveness and surrender, I often find that life can be trusted. When I dip into the hurtful experiences and the trauma, I often eventually arrive at a place where I can say:

I would do this all over again if it brought me to the joy and insight I feel now.

That does not mean the experience was pleasant. It means that when I unravel the mystery of the event, I can see how it served my growth.

There are still places where I have not fully trusted life. I am sure life will show me those places too. While I am working through them, I may say, “This philosophy does not work because I do not trust this moment.”

I expect those places will come. But I am committed to dipping into the places where I feel aggravated, stuck, triggered, or caught in “I can’t stand this.”

I am committed to discovering, again and again, that life has given me what I needed, even if it was not what I wanted.

That has been true for me. And if it is true for me, perhaps it is also true for the world.

Even the collective experiences we are going through — wars, censorship, distrust, control — may be consciousness showing us what needs to be brought into the light.

Perhaps life is moving us, through pain and suffering, toward greater responsibility for our own light.

As more of us take responsibility for healing what is inside ourselves, we can begin showing up in the essence of who we are — as part of the whole, in service to the world.

So the first step is working with self and our own vibration.

The second step is re-establishing connection, communication, and circles of trust with others.

There are skills and capacities we need to learn, like listening deeply. I was not really taught how to listen. I was not often in places where I felt deeply seen or heard.

Once we begin healing that within ourselves, we can practice showing up differently in trust circles. In those spaces, we can learn to respect, trust, release assumptions, release judgments, and really listen to one another.

We can listen to the fullness of another person. We can also listen to our own inner voice and learn to trust that voice, rather than only the thoughts rolling around in the mind.

So I invite you to look for or form circles you can trust.

Find places where you can develop positive experiences of deep trust with others.

When we build trust in small circles, that trust can begin to extend outward. If I trust someone deeply, and they participate in another group and return with a report of what happened there, I may be more likely to trust what they share because I trust them.

In this way, trust can grow through networks of relationship.

Perhaps democracy itself could be reformed from the bottom up. Each person learns to trust themselves through surrender, forgiveness, letting go, and inner work. Then we come into deep connection with others as trusting, loving beings. From there, trust can extend upward into communities, leadership, and society.

Ultimately, can we become purely trustful beings?

Can we trust consciousness, life itself, without feeling unsafe?

What would happen in that space of complete trust?

What would happen in fearlessness?

What if nothing were ultimately wrong?

What if everything could be trusted?

I hope this reflection stirs something inside you and gives you some sense of ownership.

Maybe you are already doing some of this work.

If you want to do deeper inner work and sense places in your life where you are stuck, triggered, or caught in “I can’t stand this,” I invite you to book a discovery session with me. We can explore what life may be trying to show you and begin unraveling the patterns underneath.

Or if you want to join a trusting group, I am also part of a project called Cohering Community, where we are forming deep trust circles. These are spaces where we can create, co-create, and perhaps help rebuild society from the bottom up by re-establishing trust in our world.

I will put links in the show notes.