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PRACTICE: Trust

I promise you that the same stuff galaxies are made of, you are. 
The same energy that swings planets around stars 
makes electrons dance in your heart. 
It is in you, outside you, you are it. 
It is beautiful. 
 Trust in this.  And you ~ your life will be grand.”

 ~   Kamal Ravikant,  Live Your Truth.  

T – Truthfulness:  Tell the truth, and tell it quickly.”  I heard this statement in a meeting nearly 30 years ago. At the time, chuckled to myself and thought “Are they nuts??!!!” Not saying I was a blatant liar (well … not often… or so I told myself), yet I was puffed up in my own arrogance with excuses such as:  it’s not polite; it’s just a white lie; ‘they’ really couldn’t handle the truth (sounds like Jack Nicholson’s comment in A Few Good Men. Ha!); I’m just being kind; I don’t want to ‘make them’ angry with me; I don’t want to get in trouble (or get caught!); etc. etc. etc.  Basically, all the b.s. one tells oneself ~ and learned from the Masters who taught us the ‘niceties’ of the social norms and/or expectations in the environments one grows up in. Thanks to Harriet Learner’s book Dance of Deception: Pretending and Truth-Telling in Women’s Lives (1997 –  HarperCollins), I suddenly got it ~ why that statement heard years earlier was and is a grounding truth. I encourage you to trust yourself ~ and other trustworthy folks ~ and practice this principle ‘in all your affairs.’


R – Respect: 
If one does not have respect (ie:  dis-respect) for a fill-in-blank: person, place, thing, institution, or event, there is not trust. This holds true for Self and self-respect. Value, admiration, appreciation, and honor are involved.  If I devalue or dishonor myself and my values, or if someone/thing ‘out there’ devalues or dishonors other people, places, things, institutions or events then, in my book, they/it do not get my respect.  I was raised with admonitions to: respect my elders;  respect those in authority, etc., etc.  I also have a long-standing ‘habit’ of respecting boundaries and cultures;  respecting people …. until those boundaries, cultures and/or people are disrespectful of me and my boundaries. Then … from that point forward, respect need be earned (or re-earned). Trust and respect go hand in hand.   

U – Unshakable:  One’s thinking or believing is very different from one Knowing. That deep gut “is.”  The “is” is unshakable. When one is standing upon that firm foundation then the matter of trust becomes a non-issue … simply because. I have found very few things that I have unshakable trust in … yet those that I do have withstood the “tests of time” as it were. The seismograph of my emotional awarenesses in relation to my values is the Richter Scale I use. (Couldn’t resist that one!!) If there are any beliefs present within one’s structure that can be swayed by argument, creative discourse, debate, loved ones and OPOs, then there is not an Unshakable Knowing. [That is very different as well from the stance of being rigid and dogmatic.] I am open to learning. I am open to views and explanations. Yet if I have to ‘argue my side’ or ‘defend my position’ then I am not in Knowing. I am in defending. Not exactly an ‘unshakable’ platform !!

 
S – Secure: 
There is a deep sense of security when one lives in a place of Trust, especially when one is also secure in their sense of Self. Simply said;  simply Is.


T – Tender: 
Interesting, as Trust is a word of empowerment and strength, that Tender came to me as I was contemplating the “T.”  Yet … just as it takes vulnerability to have courage, I believe it takes a deep ability for tenderness in being willing to Trust. As one trusts another (PPTE) the wellspring of caring, kindness, empathy, generosity, affection and humaneness flow. Being Tender does not connote wussiness or subservience, the need to overpower or suck up. When there is Trust there isn’t any power struggle. When there is Trust between, one easily chooses to ‘tend’ to the relationship.


With this type of Trust … your life will be grand.