Deep Trust

This comes from "The Pulpit" - a monthly segment in the Radical Spirit Catalyst. See the site for more details or sign up here for the newsletter, which is mainly geared to allies in Northern California

Much of the time, I find myself trying to push reality to move forward more quickly than it is ready to move. I now find myself in the opposite position, with a pending sense of a tidal wave of activity coming and my impulse is to withdraw or postpone the wave.

While in this push-pull relationship with reality, I recognize that my body and mind attempting to break alignment with the larger currents of the moment. Pushing forward and withdrawing backwards are forms of distrust – a lot of me doesn’t buy that I will get the results I want without forcing one direction or another. What I aim to cultivate is a greater capacity to float in the middle of the stream, aligning with the larger currents of life, leaving me to enjoy the ride rather than peddling furiously or attempting to fight towards shore.

Deep trust is difficult, though, to program. Mistrust runs to our marrow, manifesting in the form of tension, defense, suspicion, and fear. I don’t believe the solution is to ignore or circumvent those defenses but rather to honor them, allowing them to come fully to the surface while recognizing that they do not hold the ultimate truth.

The larger truth, as I’ve come to see, is that we have nothing to fear. Our divinity is assured. Our destination is the same whether we paddle furiously or lounge lazily. Each experience unfolds with perfect timing. And we will awaken again to our true nature when the time is ripe. We can trust the current of the river.

However, this stance of deep trust is hard to believe when we move beyond the personal into realms of collective evolution. Can we trust that, for example, that even if George Bush represents something we don’t like and he appears to be doing harm, that somehow he also is playing a perfect role in evolution? Even war, which appears to be nothing but an immoral waste of resources, may be part of a strange dance in which humanity is learning to wield greater power with more consciousness. By experiencing the less conscious forms of power we may, in a long-range way, be doing precisely what it takes to wield it with more consciousness.

Imagine for a moment that everything, right now, is conspiring to birth the world we dream of – even those parts that seem to be holding it back. The very act of delay and resistance may be maturing us. When we are really and truly ready for a collective shift forward, we will be better prepared than if the change happened with no resistance.

This is not to deny the importance of passionate, committed action and even outrage. These can also be seen as perfect ingredients of the flow forwards. I just wanted to encourage us today to imagine that even the parts of us and the parts of our society that seem to be anti-evolutionary may be serving their perfect role as well.