Trust — A State Of Being - The Good Men Project

Trust is one of life’s most rewarding and testing of aspects. It’s curious to me that life’s most rewarding things often lie within the realm of the most testing things, that speaks to me of YinYang. Trust seems to be constantly calling us forward to expand our practises of love, forgiveness, compassion, and understanding; our connection with our own inner selves, and the environments that we live in. It’s a choice to embody trust.

I’m really fascinated, and deeply grateful for, the work of Brené Brown, I’m currently exploring her book called ‘Rising Strong’ which explores the idea of choosing love over fear, courage over comfort, and to live an authentic life “In The Arena”.

This is interesting to me because I feel like what Brown talks about is the cultivation of a trust in one’s own life path, which might not always be pretty, and clean, but that’s always authentic and aligned with your sense of purpose, and always leads you to achieve a higher sense of fulfilment; a richer life experience. Brown’s style of combining research with storytelling is inspirational to me, and I believe it speaks to a really mature, and integrated, approach to life.

Trust also deepens our practises of boundary setting within respectful relation, feeling our emotional processes, empathising and reflecting back someone else’s experience, allowing and surrendering to the messages that emotions have for us, the energy that wishes to move through us in that state. Quite simply, if we have trust, we are more relaxed, and we’re existing in the rest and digest state where connection can be cultivated; our hearts are open.

The other thing I love in Brown’s work is the notion of strong back, open front, and wild heart. More on that another day though.

The way that Western philosophy has encouraged us to think and be is to consider life as a constructed thing. Individualism has taught us that we are consecrated beings in opposition, or comparison, to everything in our surroundings. This speaks to me of a search for a harmony within ourselves, which I see as a good thing, except for one really big caveat: we are relational beings, and we can’t know ourselves without community, also comparison is a trap.

Individualism tells us we must strive to achieve within our own containers; our own boxes. That’s fine up until a point. There are consequences to that behaviour that I believe we’re seeing now: the loss of structure in the nuclear family, jumping all over each other in corporate settings, unhealthy competition in the rat race, living our lives in comparison to the neighbours (afraid of what they might think).

Collectivism, or the search for harmony in our environment, tells us that the communal is the sacred aspect, and incorporates a sense of self in relation to community and the Universe.

In truth both aspects are needed, it seems that the most imbalanced thing about our time in history is the extreme and polarised state of humanity. That’s a dire state indeed, and it speaks of a distrust that the I, us, the goodies, the righteous, won’t be able to find a common ground with them, the other, the baddies, the enemy.

Most often in this scenario everyone writes each other off as stupid, dumb, ignorant, or hopeless however the hopeless thing is the lack of trust and the lack of willingness to dialogue and to dig deeper into common humanity, to find that area — which definitely exists, where you can both share common humanity and then work together to find a compromise or a solution that fits both parties. Even it is found in the sense that we all have the same blood.

For those who aren’t familiar with what consecrated means it is to declare or set apart as sacred, and this is an essential part of ritual. It allows us to perform the greater art of communing in relation, to something bigger and wider than our individual lives, intentionally. The consecrated object becomes a symbol to our own experience of greater life. The trouble with consecrating the individual is that chronic narcissistic tendencies form where the individual cannot see, and doesn’t seek, any other reference of self other than their own thoughts and actions.

Mindset

I wanted to expand on mindset. It’s impossible for us to observe our experience of our lives fully without seeing it through our own bias and filters, in other words, a stimulus gets to our senses then it passes through the brain networks and routes that have been set there in our life’s experience, and that’s the natural way of things. Neurones that fire together wire together, these brain networks fire, they regulate chemical processes in our brains, and they set of emotional states of being that we exist in consistently. We’re here to experience life, and experiencing life is one of the most sacred activities that we can do if we choose to do it consciously.

Choosing to do it consciously means that you cultivate the space to decide whether to continue to act in the ways you have done previously, or choosing to use the neuroplasticity, that your brain is so wonderfully capable of, and act differently.

When we look in the mirror we see the reflection of ourselves from our own point of view. This is also a technique that occurs within the mind in a function that’s called dissociative memory. It allows us to see a memory as if it were a movie screen, we can observe it. This function is unique to human beings, we can detach ourselves in love or fear from our environments and analyse them. This is the nature of what some may call consciousness, others may call it the Universe, or God, moving through us; experiencing itself.

When we are in relationship people view us a certain way and they reflect it back to us in body language, language, and emotional charge. It’s information for us to process in order that we can know ourselves better.

I believe that the nature of the call from our souls is to integrate our desires and purpose with our action; to live the life that lights us up — as Joe Bernstein would put it in a facebook community that I’m a part of. Of course, this isn’t always possible minute to minute, there are things that we don’t enjoy that need doing, there are times when we just have to go to the shop and get some more [insert appropriate milk type here] milk when all we want to be doing is relaxing. One thought that I’ve been considering recently is that the things that seem futile, and unimportant, or even most infuriating and maddening, might be the very things that hold the key to my spiritual growth: A greater awareness of myself. It’s so tempting to spiritually bypass all of the crap, and right it off, I know!

If I can understand why I feel those ways, I can unlock a deeper sense of knowing. Often, through that process, I unlock the ability to integrate a part of my self that was draining my energy and therefore I don’t want to just slob out on the couch anymore, I don’t mind going down to the shop in gratitude. Do you see how these little choices can start to stack, and make a big difference?

I am coming round to the idea that I don’t need to learn anything for the sake of learning it. We’re so often taught that if we learn this thing, get this certificate, and get this job, then we’ll be enough and that life will somehow relax on us. It’s not contextual to you, it’s more contextual to society’s needs. The thing is, learning and getting certificates are great if they’re intentional and they suit your soul purpose and it is possible for you to contribute to the needs of society and your own simultaneously, however if you don’t put intention and awareness into it you’re more likely to just be meeting someone else’s needs; it’s the difference between taking a course that you hate just to climb the social ladder, and taking a pottery course so that you can build your pottery business which fulfils your soul and sense of purpose. I’m not discriminating the corporations here, I know people who recognise that marketing is the thing that really lights them up, and all power to them.

Both confirm that you have a certain level of competency in that particular area, both take time and intentional energy.

Why not make sure that it’s aligned to your values?

Another great example is the role of a therapist. If a therapist becomes a therapist to satisfy a need to be validated then they’ll be worse at the actual process of therapy than someone who trains to be a therapist because they want to serve and to help an human being who has experienced hardship that they can’t process on their own. The level of compassion, empathy, and service is much greater in the latter, and the process serves to fulfil them as well. They have integrity and they are aligned with their values, and deeper sense of faith and purpose.

In my opinion, this speaks to self-trust as well. Therapists that work to serve others often have a more integrated awareness of the wider picture and are able to know the reality of their patient, or client, better. This manifests itself in less self-doubt and therefore allows the process to be more considered and restorative to the patient, or client.

Our first relationship is with ourselves, if we don’t cultivate an inner trust then we don’t have a hope of cultivating trust outside of ourselves. That is what I mean by state of being, you become the embodiment of the trust. It is this first relationship that often gets neglected, but put it this way:

What do you think is happening when we consistently put ourselves in situations that compromise our values?

We rupture self-trust.

We get shitty, we blame, shame, judge, get angry, resentful, jealous of others with more integrity and the list goes on.

Rupturing trust can be useful, because sometimes there is growth in the repair, however most of the time all we are doing is ignoring the rupture, not attempting repair, and therfore hurting ourselves. The other great misinterpretation is that if we ignore these ruptures then they will simply disappear. As human beings we have an immense capacity to do this and there are very real consequences in our lives: Mid-life crisises, “loveless marriages”, divorce rates increasing, even the rise in anxiety, and suicide rates all speaks to ruptures in self-trust.

It’s not always possible to take intentional time to journal out thoughts, or have a therapy session, of course, but it is possible to be aware of ruptures and mark them for a time where I do have space to get curious around them.

Inner-parenting

This brings me to inner parenting which I’ve been intentionally engaging in with Intrinsic Brilliance Institute. These ruptures in trust are an excellent moment to get curious and to provide an authoritative model of parenting (the only form of parenting that is constructive and empowering). Essentially these compromises that happen are a refusal or an inability to set healthy boundaries. There are a plethora of reasonings we can assign here nonetheless I always like to be mindful of the cause that brings about the symptoms. Essentially we are dealing with parts of our selves that are frozen in aspect, that experienced a rupture in their environment, often centred around childhood where we couldn’t meet our own needs so we needed someone else to meet them, coupled with the fact that children often cannot communicate exactly what it is that they need.

So these aspects, these parts of our selves, are disintegrated, frozen, injured.

The way we see that show up is when life rubs up against these traumatised aspects of our selves, and we react, often unconsciously and automatically.

It’s always best to remove ourselves from any situation like this before it escalates out of our control but we can return to it to learn the lessons in retrospect, and as our practise advances, we get better at creating the space in our lives to start witnessing, and then responding, in the moment rather than reacting unconsciously.

The inner parenting framework is a way to talk to these parts of our selves and to integrate them into our experience and the Intrinsic Brilliance Institute’s way of teaching this framework is to use age appropriate language when discussing with these younger aspects. I’ve heard this in the Man Talks Alliance too (a men’s group I am an active member of), where a particular man was talking about a rupture that he experienced at the age of three where he kept remembering himself being locked outside in the snow, he communicated to us all that he wasn’t sure what to do, and kept asking his child self what he needed, the child self didn’t respond. Eventually in the imagined memory, he let his young child self into the warmth of the house. After the fact he shared with us that that felt obvious and that of course the child couldn’t communicate what they needed, they just needed it.

This speaks to Dr. Levine’s work with somatic experiencing too. Any frozen or traumatised aspects of ourselves are aspects where the energy is stuck in us, and given the right environment; a trusted, safe, educated, wise, and supportive environment — sometimes a professional environment is required, we can start to move and release some of that energy.

The process of maturation seems to be to give ourselves the space to choose a scenario where that situation is appeased, but also to parent the inner child part of our self that is stuck in their pain. Observing this process in real time tells me that these parts of ourselves will always reappear and want to be heard, to be integrated. The cyclic nature of life and relationships demands this from us, this is the case even in a pragmatic sense where our life partners are continuously asking certain things from us, and one or more of them might rub up against, or remind us, of occasions in the past where we haven’t felt safe.

The integration process is a remembrance process. Because we help to bring those aspects into the integrated member of our being.

Learning the skill of relating in this area is challenging, and the imago dialogue is an excellent tool, it also requires a huge amount of trust.

Trust in self

Trust in God

Trust in others

Trust in Life

These are the four essential trusts that are posed in the book ‘Trust: Mastering the 4 Essential Trusts: Trust in God, Trust in Yourself, Trust in Others, Trust in Life’ By Iyanla Vanzant.

In this book Vanzant poses that trust is not merely a reaction to our environments, it is a state of being; a belief that the Universe is a friendly and supportive place and that I only need to ask for what I want and it shall be provided.

The environment precipitates the connection and relationship. Imagine yourself walking into a room which has recently seen an argument, the air is heavy and thick, and the people’s body language is closed of and fuming, in an electric way. Now imagine yourself walking into a room where there’s just been a respectful, and loving, conversation where the people involved have come to a deeper love and understanding of each other. Which one of these rooms do you think you’d feel more naturally open and responsive to?

That’s an extreme example but it highlights the trust we must cultivate in order to see the relation and connection we want. There’s a side note here, I’m not talking about scenarios where someone repeatedly refuses to honour and respect your clear and communicated boundaries, and so distrust of a certain person is the correct response on that occasion. That’s a survival mechanism.

There are three stages of pain: survival, healing, and growing. I tend to seak around the latter two.

What trust means to me

A trust in my own soul: a combination between my capacity to sense-make, think critically, and to feel deeply, be vulnerable, hold space empathetically for others, and listen to my intuitive voices — the parts of my self who have information for me.

Trust in God: as I perceive it, I am here to experience Source energy as Source energy. I am of the Universe, I am made of star dust, because the chemicals that made me were formed in the heart of a star. So I am connected deeply to all that there is, even the biggest forces.

Trust in others: This has been a long journey for me, especially healing through childhood trauma, and I’m in no way saying that it’s fixed now, it’s just that I choose to see myself as a relationship between multiple things. Even how my body works is a relationship between my brain, heart, gut, liver, and all the other organs, my genes are in relationship to the proteins that they make, and how they make them, my gut is full of non-human microorganisms that help me to digest things. The human being is formed in relationship to others. We are formed of parts of our selves that interact, that have different drives and desires. So when I think about this, it makes it easier to have a faith that I am in relation to my world. I am intentional with who I let into my life, and I observe the energy of the way people relate with me, some people have gained my absolute and complete trust, and others I trust that I will share what is appropriate, but I have trust that I can have respectful relation to everyone, because I observe my boundaries in each situation.

Trust in life: I mentioned that trust in others wasn’t fixed, and I see trust in life this way too. I have developed a trust in the nature of life; the fact that it is always flowing and changing, and that it is and never will be fixed in a certain way. I can build mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical habits that allow me to experience life in a consistent way but this doesn’t guarantee that I won’t want to change those habits in the future or that life might have other plans for me. I trust in life as the beautiful stimulus for the remembrance and unfolding of my human spirit on this planet.

All my actions in the world are designed to help me to remember who it is that I am, and what it is that I need to be doing. I have seen that congruency unfold in my life since I have committed to trusting the path of my soul.

I can do this intentionally and proactively by choosing to follow clues and resources that are consistently coming into my awareness. For example, trusting the reoccurrence of the same resource, twice in quick succession in different areas of my life, as one of those clues. I’m also cultivating a trust that there will be things that I am not, and cannot, be aware of that will come into my life and change me in the way that they are meant to.

Let me expand on that a little from my belief. Something comes into my life in which I have to make a decision. I consider the stimulus, how much time I perceive that I have to make the decision, I consider my life experience, and I consider what I feel is possible to do. I arrive at a decision. Was my decision based on free will? Or was it based on the most efficient option that I felt the energy to follow?

Mostly the latter, but certainly an aspect of the former. The really deep trust work is to grow within myself through a situation that is demanding me to be both insecure, and unsure.

That speaks to two of the biggest perils of humanity:

“ I am not enough” and

“I am not worthy”.

I say perils because they come in many different forms, and trials. They are constantly surfacing in behaviour and thought patterns, maybe it’s: “I’ll do that tomorrow”. The thought of ‘I’m not sure I know how to do that right’ might underlie the stronger thought about doing it tomorrow. If the uncertain thought goes unaware then the action will never come, we’ll always say that it’d be better to do it tomorrow. Trust and curiosity are key way markers to build so that I can delve into the activity and face the uncertainty, because the truth is that life is hard sometimes and we can only know if we can’t do something by trying it out, the good news is that once we’re aware of our defficiency we can take one of two steps:

Ask if learning more about that deficiency suits our values, or whether we should delegate to a supportive community.
Learn what it is that we need to learn to get to our goal.

The biggest thing we need when we come up against the challenges of life is trust. It becomes a state of being, that allows to face what we have to face, and come out the other side.

—

This post was previously published on Hello, Love and is republished here with permission from the author.
—

***