Trust and Mistrust Issues

What is trust?

We talk a lot about trust, how important it is in life. We have many, many experiences around trust, mistrust and betrayal, but – how much thought have you given to what trust is?

We’re talking about when we trust and how somebody earns it, but what is trust? When we say that someone earns your trust, what do they earn?

Diamond Heart Book One

Is trust a commodity in our lives, something to be earned, to be bought and sold? If we spend some time thinking about and feeling into “trust,” there’s a sense to it, an amorphous sensation or vague presence of trust.

You’re saying what it is that gives you trust—which is the certainty that comes from direct knowledge. What is trust itself? Everybody has talked about what supports trust so far, but we haven’t really touched on what trust is. When you trust somebody, what are you doing?

Diamond Heart Book One

Levels of Trust

Trust has different levels and different varieties: for instance, trusting yourself, trusting somebody else, trusting a situation, trusting a certain truth, or certain knowledge, or a certain belief. The experiences of these different kinds of trust feel different. When you trust yourself, you don’t feel the same as when you’re trusting somebody else. When you’re trusting yourself, you’re more surrendered to what is happening inside you, to your own promptings, to your own truth. When you’re trusting somebody else, it feels different. When you trust yourself, you don’t have a feeling of surrender—you just do it. When you trust somebody else, there is more sense of surrender, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, allowing yourself to be there without needing defenses. And trusting a situation means you’re feeling somewhat secure in the situation. There is a kind of security and safety that things will be okay or that what’s supposed to happen is going to happen.

Diamond Heart Book One

Basic Trust

Basic trust gives us the capacity to surrender, the capacity to let go, the capacity to jump into the unknown. With it, you don’t need assurances that things are going to be okay because you implicitly know things are going to be okay. It isn’t a trust in something in particular since it is preconceptual—it is prior to your differentiated ideas about what you trust. So basic trust is even beyond trusting in God, because feeling that you trust in God means that you already have a concept of God.

Facets of Unity

The Implications of Basic Trust

Vanessa and Brooke from Bliss+Grit podcast discuss A. H. Almaas’ concept of basic trust.

Trust and Vulnerability

People often trust a friend more than they trust an intimate relationship. It’s a different kind of trust. You’re not as vulnerable with a friend as you are in an intimate relationship. It’s a different kind of relationship. Of course, for some people it’s the other way around—that friends are not to be trusted.

Diamond Heart Book Two

Heart: Beyond Trust

Beyond trust or no trust is the state of complete abandon. It’s the love of the heart when you are at your source, before you have known yourself as separate from everything else. When you’re a lover, you’re a sweetness that doesn’t think of itself. You are not concerned about being careful or cautious; you don’t wonder if you’re going to say the wrong thing.

Diamond Heart Book Two

Lack of Trust

This lack of basic trust is fundamental to the normal identity. There is no sense that the deeper nature of the universe is good and loving. This basic distrust reflects the ignorance of the knowledge which arises only with self-realization, which is that Being is the fundamental ground of all existence, and that its nature is inherently benevolent. In religious language, this issue is understood as the lack of faith that God exists.

The Point of Existence

Trusting the Now

When you settle into the moment, you realize that there is not much happening—a few things here and there. The primary awareness is of the immediacy of the moment. This is because presence—being in the now—is characterized by beingness, simply being here now. In contrast, our familiar self is based on doing, going, making things happen. We do not trust that action can arise and proceed from inner stillness; we do not recognize that Being is the ground of everything. To be in the now connects you with that quiet beingness that underlies all changes, all activity—the simple hereness where what is most basic is not activity but presence.

The Unfolding Now

Normally, your experience of yourself is spread over time—that is, into the past and the future as well as the present—in accordance with your ideas, beliefs, hopes, and fears. If you withdraw your awareness from the past and future and concentrate it solely in the present, your experience of yourself focuses into a single moment: now. To trust the now completely can lead to the experience of yourself as a self-originating presence.

Brilliancy

Realization and Trust

The more we are self-realized, the less we rely on ideals because we experience a growing trust that the dynamism of Being will manifest what is needed. Ultimately, we do not need high ideals because we have integrated into our being their very source. Our actions might appear from the outside as if they are inspired by high ideals, but in fact, we are merely manifesting our true nature.

The Point of Existence