Grounded Trust

I spent many years studying, learning and teaching the Bible. For most of those years, I was pretty dogmatic about my beliefs and how I held what I thought I knew from the Bible. I have moved away from that dogmatism; I no longer hold the Bible as my "only rule for faith and practice." But I do hold it as an important spiritual text, and I honor it's depth, tradition, and richness.

After leaving the ministry as I knew it, there were three verses that stayed with me and  provided a thread of faith and strength along the path toward finding my own spirituality, my own truth. The first one is:

Proverbs 3:5 & 6*
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Somehow in all my questioning, I always knew that there was something beyond what I knew. Something kind, loving, benevolent. Parts of what I "knew" resembled that Something. Parts of what I "knew" didn't. I had to untangle that labyrinth by simply putting one foot in front of the other, and doing it enough times to find the clearing.

Trust requires vulnerability. But there are different forms of trust. There is dogmatic trust, where no matter what, I hang on to what I have, not allowing the wisdom of emotion and common sense to inform me. Close to that is blind trust, where I scramble to hold on to anything that presents itself as hopeful, with no discernment or introspective consideration. Then there is grounded trust, where I look within; I experience fully the questions, the fear, the doubt; I consider options or the lack of them; I observe my thinking, my tendencies. And then I choose to trust. Trust is given. Dogmatic trust and blind trust attempt to avoid the feeling of being vulnerable; grounded trust embraces it through choice.

I believe that what I have described as "grounded trust" is the essence of "acknowledging him in all my ways." There is a deep comfort in choosing to acknowledge The Great One, our Source, in everything. Whether I am at work, at home, with friends or alone, I can find that presence in a very real way if I but look, stay present and allow life to be what it is.




* I quote from the King James Version. This is the text that I learned and studied so deeply. I still love its language. Other versions may work better for you. The KJV throughout uses the masculine pronoun when referring to God. I do not subscribe to this notion. For me, the God of the Bible is the Great Mother, Father, Spirit and Source.

Freedom

I am realizing that the greatest gift I can ever receive comes to me only when I decide to release you, my brother or my sister, from the perceptions I have been projecting upon you.

There is a truth that is true always about you. There is a truth that is unchanged and unchanging about who you are. It is this truth, this gift above any gift, that is revealed to me as I release you from the perceptions I have held about you.

Of course, this is so regarding anything that I see. I am beginning to understand that I have not known the world. I have only known my perceptions of it. And I have learned to insist, and guard vehemently, that my chosen perceptions are right:

• My perceptions of you, what you do and say.
• My perceptions of my parents, the choices they made, the way they were toward me.
• My perception of my job, my behavior, my choices.
• My perceptions of myself.
• My perception of the world.
• My perception of God.

As I relinquish my insistence to be right about my world, I find that there is something deeper, something glimmering, something holy just beyond my perception. As I allow the world - you, others, myself, God - to be as it is, to be innocent, I am free. Free from the idea that circumstances control me. Free to see and therefore create my experience as I desire. Not by making what is out there different in itself, but by allowing myself to be changed, deeply, gently, by the choice to see only the good, the holy and the beautiful.

Have A Light Touch With Yourself

I have spent many years fighting with "my demons," that on-going conversation within my mind that was able to convince me of my own ineptness, my own guilt, my own weaknesses, my own undeserving-of-anything-good nature. It seemed like other people's on-going inner conversation was convincing them of just the opposite: their worthiness, their ability, their strengths. And so, I got into comparing. Comparing myself against an impossible standard that I had constructed within my own mind, and also against what others seemed to be able to accomplish in their lives, while I struggled to even get off the ground. Some people refer to this on-going conversation as "monkey-mind," or "the committee."

Sound familiar?

Well, I have come to understand some things that have really helped me. Here is one:

I have come to understand that I am responsible for my experience of life. At first this can be a hard one to swallow, but once swallowed and assimilated, it leads to tremendous relief and awakening. One of the hurdles I had with this concept is the word "responsibility." There is a lot of "baggage" that comes with that word. I finally understood that responsibility in this statement does not mean "burden" or "blame," (unless we make it so). Responsibility here means that we choose the experience. We choose the experience by placing meaning or value upon the circumstances we perceive. I discovered that if I am able to witness my circumstances in a way that allowed me to question how I was perceiving them, I could make a different choice. And once a different choice is made, the thoughts that correspond to that choice make sense.

As an example, I used to have a "bad temper." So much so that it got in the way of relationships with my children, work and friends. I even used to fly off the handle at circumstances that didn't go the way I wanted them to, like my car breaking down, a stop light being red, or an appliance not working properly. Slowly, I began to bring some quality of "witness" to these time of anger. Before bashing the toaster with my fist, I began to see that  the toaster was just a toaster. It didn't have an agenda of malice towards me. I saw that whatever I was thinking about the toaster, was creating this experience of rage toward it.

One of the keys to this process is having a light touch with yourself. I found it easy to fall into the thought that I am such a dope for thinking this way. That is a vicious circle of thought that is just another aspect of the on-going chatter of "the committee." So having a light touch with the toaster meant for me that I found the humor in wanting to beat up the f&#%@+g toaster for not cooperating. Not laughing at myself, but laughing with myself for what I had just made up about this situation. I just didn't take it so seriously. Instead of identifying with my anger, I was able to step out of it, and find a lightness and humor in my creation of this experience, through my thoughts about it. The seriousness and the identification began to evaporate with practice. I discovered that it was this great seriousness with in the mind that held these triggers of rage in place. Once I could dis-identify myself from the anger, it left. Having anger is not the problem. The problem was identifying with it. If I am not identified with my anger, I can make a different choice, I can see things differently, I can think differently, and therefore have a different experience.

I've had my toaster for several years now, too.

"All my experience is the effect of where I choose to focus the attention of my consciousness." - The Way of Mastery

58 years

It has taken me most of 58 years to embrace the words of the first post ("Your life..."). 58 years of pointing to the world with a finger of blame, listening to myself as a victim, living in guilt, never being happy. Poor sad Steve was my theme, and it was reinforced by everyone, it seemed, and mostly my family...and I believed it.

What changed? Well, it took a while and a lot of painful work. But in the right season and in the right place I began to see that I was the author and creator of my experience. The world is innocent. All events are neutral, until I place value or judgment upon them. Then they are no longer neutral for me, and my judgment does not change the event. The point is not to change what is out there in the world, but to change my mind, to discover the truth that is true always about me.

It took 58 years for Sad Steve to become Happy Steve. It was time well spent.

Your life...

Each of your days is a blessing and a gift if you use it from the full commitment to awakening. Your day in chock full of a million opportunities to discover a deeper truth. For just behind your experiences there is something deeper taking place. Therefore never feel that the purpose of your life is something other than what you are involved in.

Your ordinary daily life is the most perfect ashram you could ever be within. It is the holy city to which it is wise to make pilgrimage every day, which means to bring awareness and commitment to exactly what you are experiencing. Be thankful for it, bless it, embrace it, be vigilant, and be mindful. What is this moment teaching you?

The universe is conspiring with you to awaken you and to heal you. Say,

I do not live any ordinary moments.

With each breath, my experiences are the stepping stones

laid before me of God to guide me home.

I will bring awareness to each moment,

and allow it to teach me to forgive,

how to embrace, how to love, and therefore how to live fully.

Your life, just as it is unfolding moment-to-moment, is meant for you. The way to God can only be found in your willingness to embrace and live fully the very life that is within you and that unfolds through you with each moment.

Quoted Entirely from The Way Of Mastery
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