Zen Baby:: on Trust
What do you trust? What do you base your trust in?
Do you believe that if you go to a good school you will get a good job? If you get a good job you will get a good girlfriend who will then become your good wife and then you can move to a good area and get a good car and then have good kids and send them to a good school and then everything will be good?
So what happens when you went to a good school and got good grades and got a good job? You got a good amount of money and you became very popular and successful and then you got lots of good looking women after you. So you trusted you were in good shape and you dated these women and the sex was good and the conversation was good and everything seemed good so you let your heart get involved and you trusted them, but then you found out that they were cheating on you and lying to you and then the trust was broken.
But you were still good. You had your job. So then you poured all your energy into your job and your work and you did well and then all of a sudden you lost your job even though you did good and since you did good, you trusted that you would be kept there because you were good. So then you're still ok. You have friends, you have a good degree, you had a good job and you think that you will be all good. So you look for a good job and since you have all the good cards, you think you will find one, but then you don't and so then you start not feeling so good. Then those people you thought were your good friends and who you thought were good people start becoming distant and uncaring and unsupportive.
Then you stop trusting that you're good. You start feeling that you're not good enough and that all of this is happening because you did something wrong or you aren't good enough. So you go into a state where on the outside you try to please and give more to earn your worth. You are more social and you are as good as you can be, but even then you still don't feel good enough. Then you discover over time that people are using you and you are letting them because you feel that if you are good enough, do enough, are pretty enough, are rich enough, and are powerful enough, that all will be good.
Then someone comes into your life and challenges your perspective of good by saying that you are good even though you're broke, you have nothing to give and you are depressed all the time. But you don't believe this. You can't trust this. You don't think you are good and you don't believe that you can be good unless you have a good job, a good place, a good girlfriend, a good car, a good family, a good body, a good sex partner, a good credit card. So when someone tells you that they love you even though you feel you're bad and you have nothing to offer, it makes you confused and disturbed.
Why? Because it challenges everything you have based your worth and trust in. Because it goes against the system which controls you and has made you into a puppet. Then you either believe that you are good and it has nothing to do with being good or you reject that concept and get back on the being good treadmill.
Once upon a time we said "In God We Trust," which meant "In God We Trust." We used to base our worth not on what we did, but what had been done for us. We used to believe that if God loved us, we didn't need to be approved by the rest of the world. We didn't need to be good because if you already have God's approval and love, what else could you possibly need? So with that in mind, life had a bit of a unique twist. Because if you believe in God and you believe God really loved you and you really trusted in God, your life would no longer be based on being good enough. Nor would it be based on earning the world's or other people's stamp of approval. Rather, if you were already loved unconditionally and no longer had to worry about earning or finding love, then what was left in life to do?
To be free. To love each other the same way you were loved. Not to worry but to do all things out of love. To do the work you loved because you loved it and not because you were trying to find love or trying to make it earn your love. You were already good enough so you didn't need to earn or to work to be good enough. You were already accepted so you weren't trying to be accepted. So if you really lived that way, life was no longer about conforming to what the culture or your lover or your parents told you to do, but you would follow your heart and do what you really longed and loved to do and to love for if you really believe you are loved unconditionally, you can love unconditionally in return.
You cannot have complete trust unless you have unconditional love. For we will all make mistakes and we will all hurt each other. We will all mess up and do things that harm ourselves and each other. If we base our trust in other people without unconditional love, we will very quickly lose our trust in them. For when they do harm us or hurt us or mess up, we will see it as a breach of trust. If we look at the situation through unconditional love though, we will see that it is not something that should make us unable to trust them but, rather, to see that they are human and we are human and trust isn't based on being good or living up to expectations because that is impossible and we will all fail when it comes to that.
Trust is only able to really exist if there is unconditional love so people feel that even when they mess up or hurt each other or do something wrong, they don't have to end the situation or the love because of it but, rather, be open about it on both sides and discuss it and learn from it. Things happen to teach us, not to destroy us. What can tear us apart can also glue us together, but it depends on how we react to it.
But then over the last hundred years or so, things have really changed. We no longer seem to base our ability to love on God. By understanding and accepting the universal unconditional love, we have adopted the mindset that in order to love, we first must be good. We must have a good house, a good job, a good body, and be good. We can't help other people till we are good and we can't love other people till we are good. If we don't have anything to give, we are not good enough to love or deserve real love. So we focus on being good; we work endless hours trying to be good. To be good in a material sense, in a spiritual sense, in a moral sense, because we feel if we are good enough, then we will be able to earn love and be loved.
There is only one flaw with this. We will never be good. Never good enough to earn love and/or feel like we are good enough to love. We will always find something that is broken or, just when you think you have it all together, it will all fall apart. You will never be good enough. You're only distracted by the process of being good so that in many ways you will never let go of your walls and/or experience love.
This is one of the greatest tricks that the king of destruction has pulled. By making the majority of humanity begin to believe this and then enforcing it through the media, more and more people are caught in the never ending hamster wheel of trying to be good enough or love or to love. So when love does come, they feel they are not good enough or ready, or when they have the chance to love, they feel they are not good enough or ready to love so then they shut off.
Relationships are now based more on what can I get than on what can I give. We don't even trust those we sleep with. We use each other for sex and money or security. Wives secretly hate their husbands because they never really loved them in the first place. Humanity is becoming more and more like insects. We use each other to feed but we no longer have a reason beyond ourselves.
Trust and love go hand in hand.
Today it seems it is hard for people to trust at all. I grew up without the TV being my teacher. My mother loved me unconditionally and I also learned to love unconditionally as a child from my mother's example. I carried that with me into adulthood. I would love my friends in a deep and intense way. This would often confuse them. Then it would usually force them to face the good enough complex and usually they would feel they were not good enough or I was not good enough. Then, either they would do something to really hurt me or I would do something to really hurt them. Then they would usually run away.
I would usually be sitting there going, "Well, here we go again." For years sometimes I would continue to love them without seeing them. I would continue to go back to them, even after they hurt me or I hurt them and say, "I still love you." Each time I did this, they would either turn and run further because each time I did it, I was challenging a much deeper issue than our friendship. Everything here teaches us that in order to get love, we must be good enough. What I was saying is "I don't care if you are good. I don't care if you hurt me. I don't care. I still love you." This made them look at me and ask, "How can she do that or say that?" and they knew and I knew they knew, but if they accept my love, they are also accepting the source of my love, which means, in the end, that they are going to be faced with the biggest choice in life.
On what do you base your trust? In God or this world? In being good or in grace? In earning or giving?
The world is unstable. You are unstable. I am unstable.
But love is not unstable if it is based on God's love because if we base our love on God's love, it never ends. It continues on; it forgives; and it is unconditional. How can you not trust someone who will love you even if you run away, break their heart, tear them down and call them a liar? If you try to destroy it and it continues even through the fire, how can you not see that there is something real there that won't leave even when you are far from good or worthy?
When you love someone unconditionally, you can have trust. If you love conditionally, you will never have trust. Trust is not built on being good, but, rather, on learning from our mistakes and weaknesses.
Usually, if I love someone for years and keep going back for years even when they hurt me or get angry or lock me off, eventually they see that it is unconditional and then they see after usually trying to destroy it, that they can trust it. Once you accept that it isn't about being good or about earning love or that your worth is not based on your body or your job or your relationship or being good, then you can let go and be free from fear.
You can never really trust until you are free from fear. The only way to be free from fear is to love unconditionally so that when they do hurt you or you hurt them, the love will continue and only then will you ever be able to trust yourself or other people.
The greatest story of love was when a man who was said to be the son of God was killed on a cross. That is the greatest story of sacrifice. Love is when you are willing to die, not physically as much as your ego. When you accept others' imperfections in love, then you will find love. For the only way to know love is to love. We cannot ask for anything in return or then it becomes conditional. Jesus didn't say "I love you but you have to always be good." He just said. "I love you and it's not about being good and all you need to do is believe that I love you and that God loves you."
That is true with all of us. If we really believe we are loved and can love, even when we hurt, then love will be born within ourselves and around us. But we have to believe in it. Even when it is hard and difficult.
Love and trust go hand in hand.