Learning to trust may be difficult in the beginning. It will be an exercise in futility if you rely upon your mind to create trust. This is because the mind works on material problems by interpreting sensory data. When turned toward spiritual matters the mind attempts to come up with intellectual answers by using proofs, logic and theoretical reasoning. It demands assurance and proof to establish tangible results.
In contrast, the method of the heart, focused on spiritual understanding, is an intuitive recognition of the value of love. Whereas the mind attempts to know the spirit by setting up conditions that must be met logically for there to be a release of love, the heart employs intuitive love as its way. It is not a conclusion of reasoning. It is the way of spontaneity, not the result of bargaining with the intellect. The heart trusts the inner wisdom that it feels and spontaneously knows, whereas the mind demands scientific evidence before it will trust.
Most of us in the West have been taught that the center of our wisdom is in our heads. If you ask people where their ability to process thought and experience is, they will generally respond that it is in the brain. Ask consciously spiritual persons the same question and they will indicate the heart.
When the mind seeks corroboration through specific proofs as an aid to spiritual understanding, it is encroaching into an area far more suited to the heart. For this reason, it is necessary to trust what the heart knows. Without total trust, it is impossible to know the miracles of the higher self and become a manifester.
Spiritual life does not grow in the soil of intellectual information gathering. Spirituality needs the fertile ground of feelings, which the unseen dimension provides. Trusting your heart space is imperative for the growth of a healthy spiritual life.
This means cultivating a harmony between mind and heart, and for most of us this means terminating the intellect’s domination. The mind must surrender its role as full-time judge and allow the heart to contribute its wisdom. It is with this surrendering process that trust begins to flourish, replacing doubt.
Mistrust begins early in most human beings’ lives. It is helpful to realize why it is that the heart space has not been permitted to be the center of our being. Here are two theories describing our place in nature. I think you will agree that the first theory illuminates why mistrust of ourselves and our divine abilities is so deeply rooted.
TWO THEORIES OF NATURE THAT AFFECT OUR ABILITY TO TRUST
First Theory: Nature as a Mechanism
In the mechanistic view of nature, everything is an artifact made by a boss who has many different names. In the Western view, the boss is called God.
This God is often depicted as a white-bearded male who roams around the sky creating the natural world. In this theory, the world is a construct and God the constructor. This biblical God is paternal, authoritarian, beneficent and, in many ways, tyrannical. He keeps track of all things and knows precisely what everyone does and when his laws are being broken.
One of the operatives of this theory of nature is the idea of punishment for one’s sins. This God/father holds us accountable for transgressions. The transgressions are judged by various interpreters of his laws who throughout history have claimed access to the divine. Essentially, the universe is a monarchy, God the king and we the subjects. All subjects are considered born with the stain of sin as a part of their nature and are therefore untrustworthy.
This theory of nature makes many people feel estranged, creating an attitude of separateness from the boss. The more we feel separated from this God, the more we feel the need to create some way of feeling worthy. So we create an idea of our importance based on externals and call it “ego.”
Reliance on ego ultimately leads to more separation as life becomes a contest and a competition with designated others. But the sense of estrangement is partially assuaged with an ego-directed attitude of “us against them.” People are categorized and evaluated on the basis of “egonomics,” which includes appearance, tradition, language and physical characteristics.
I believe that the most troubling thing built into this theory of nature is the impact it has on our ability to operate from a strong position of self-trust. Once convinced that you are untrustworthy and basically a sinner, you are quite lost. If you are untrustworthy, how can you trust in even your untrustworthiness? You can’t!
Everything becomes subject to doubt when God is a vindictive boss. This leads to the confusion of doubting everything because our opinions, feelings and beliefs are untrustworthy. In this scenario, one cannot even maintain trust in God because of a basic mistrust of ourselves. And not trusting in that God may be breaking one of his laws. It is a no-win situation.
This theory of the untrustworthiness of nature, popular as it is, is absolutely incompatible with the second principle of manifestation. You cannot tune into the power and energy of the universe to create and attract an abundant life if that energy and power is outside you.
Second Theory: Nature as Spontaneous and Nonjudging
In this spontaneous view, God is universal intelligence flowing through everything, inspiring the natural process to unfold. The emphasis is on awareness of the divine nature in everything rather than managing and controlling the natural world. The life force is nonjudgmental and is responsible for all creation.
In this theory, nature is an unforced unfolding of life forms and there is no “boss.” Rather than learning to manage and control the natural world, the impulse is to trust it. God, in this theory, loves all things.
Human beings are an aspect of this God and are, therefore, carriers of divinity. Generally, in this theory, human beings are considered the highest level of life form. Trusting this most evolved natural human includes trusting the paradox of behavior described as good and bad, selfish and unselfish, greedy and generous in the same manner as we respect other life forms by trusting their processes.
There is no need to invent an ego that is separate from the divine if our basic human nature is trusted. If we trust ourselves, we know how to avoid interfering with nature and how to live in harmony. When we know God as an unseen, loving and accepting power at the heart of everything, allowing us to make our own choices, then God is a trusted part of our nature.
I believe that our nature is much more reliable than our thoughts. This second principle directs us to develop an inner knowing so that the natural process of what we desire also desires us. Consider how our biological system attracts what is needed for hair to grow, food to digest, fingernails to be hard or breasts to be soft without our thoughts directing the process. Thinking can often lead us astray, while our nature unfolds in the form of amazingly well-functioning bodies and minds. When you trust this natural process, you begin to trust the nature of all things. The God within all informs your trusting response to life.
The order of nature itself is sometimes crooked and sometimes straight. It is wiggly and unorthodox, as seen in the shapes of clouds or mountains. They are not in any pattern that we can perceive, and they are perfect. When we insist on controlling nature, we are interfering with nature.
The need to straighten out nature shows distrust. But when we relax and embrace the infinite variations of the universe, we are allowing the divinity of nature to flow and unfold through our life. We have tuned in to the divine.
Think of yourself as a consciousness being played out by God just as a wave is a part of the ocean that is being played out by the ocean. This theory of nature will promote the kind of trust that you need to attract to yourself all that belongs to you in the universe. This unseen, divine energy is the ocean that your wave form is a part of. You can call it God, ocean or, for that matter, anything else.
This is a profoundly exquisite realization because with it you bring to your consciousness the inner awareness that you are actually in all things. This leads to miraculous manifestations, in that you are actually connected to all that you desire to manifest, and finally you know this to be your truth.
BEING IN ALL THINGS AT ONCE
Authentic trust is only available through the knowing heart. When you enter this trusting space, everything will come to you that belongs to you because you have created the inner capacity to receive it. The irony is that what you wish to receive is a part of you. This can be a troublesome concept to grasp because of the ego’s attachment to being separate and special.
Nothing in your rational mind could ever convince you that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. It appears to be a fluid that flows and has nothing to do with gases. But when we subject water to scrutiny, its constituent elements become manifest. And so it is with the idea of being in all things at once.
Nothing in our everyday experience gives us much reason to believe that our mind has as one of its constituents something invisible that is in all living things. Yet when we examine our life force, using quantum mechanics, we find that this energy is, indeed, not a particle but a wave that is the same in all life.
You trust in the universal energy when you accept this “irrational” fact: At your basic core you are not only worthy of trust, but you are the life force that exists everywhere. If you truly trust in this notion, you realize that everything that you perceive as missing in your life is a part of the same energy that you are. Manifesting becomes the art of bringing to yourself that which is already you.
In a sense it is like thinking of the things you want as being on a string that is infinitely long, but is nevertheless attached to you in some invisible way. It is only a matter of trusting that you can bring that string to you and that whatever is supposed to come to your life will be there when you have developed the capacity to receive it. But the trick is, you cannot receive it or even come close to manifesting it if you have an absence of trust in yourself as an extension of God.
I like to think of God as the ocean and myself as a glass. If I dip the glass into the ocean, I will have a glass full of God. No matter how I analyze this, it will still contain God. Now, the glass of God is not as big as the ocean, nor is it omniscient or omnipotent, but it is still God. This metaphor allows me to trust both in myself and simultaneously in the wisdom that created me, and to see the oneness.
I have deliberately chosen not to use many quotations in this book. But I want to emphasize that every spiritual master and all of the saints, teachers, gurus or priests throughout history have espoused similar advice. This perennial philosophy connects all humanity, from tribal and ancient to civilized and present times. It is the message that God is within and outside every living thing. Also, there is a world we are a part of that is not subject to the changing world of time and space. Moreover, we are presently a part of that invisible spiritual world.
Since it is everywhere, it is not only within you, it is you. The meaning of this is that God is not to be found so much as discovered within yourself. The statement “You and the Father are one” is more than an ecclesiastical admonition. It is a statement of your reality.
With practice, you can learn to know this reality. You can learn to see the aura around all living things. You can learn to assist others by projecting your energy and giving them strength and sustenance. Actually, it is not a skill to learn so much as it is trusting the energy to be part of you.
It may be that the most effective way to trust your reality is through the power of prayer. Prayer and trust offer us seemingly magical methods for manifesting the divine desire. But, first you may have to shift old perceptions concerning prayer and discover a whole new inner vision about praying and prayer.
PRAYER AND TRUST
In the matter of prayer it seems that we often view God as a gigantic vending machine in the sky who will grant us our wishes when we put in the proper tokens in the form of prayers. We expect to insert prayers, then pull on the knob and hope that God will dispense the goodies. The God vending machine becomes the object of our veneration. We tell the machine how good it is and how much we worship it and expect it to be good to us in return.
The basic premise here is that God is outside us and therefore what we need and want is also outside us. This form of prayer is like practicing the absence rather than the presence of God. If we believe that we are separate from God, the vending machine approach to prayer reinforces and deepens that belief.
I prefer to promote the idea of prayer in its essence as a communion with God. Praying at the spiritual level then becomes communing with and knowing that God is as close as our breath. What we seek in prayer is the experience of co-existing with God. Prayer is our communication of readiness for the desires of this sacred energy to manifest through our human form. No separation, no absence of God within, simply the presence of this force within ourselves.
Therefore, the true experience of God does not change or alter God, but it changes us. It heals our sense of separation. If we are not changed by prayer, we have denied ourselves the opportunity to know the wisdom that created us.
The search for happiness outside ourselves rekindles an idea that we are not whole and relegates prayer to the status of a plea to a boss/God. We are then asking for favors rather than seeking a manifestation of our invisible, inspired self.
Prayer, at the spiritual level I am writing about, is not asking for something any more than the attempt to become a manifester is asking for something to show up in your life. What I call authentic prayer is inviting divine desire to express itself through me. It is a prayer for what it is that is for my highest purpose and good, or for the greater benefit of all mankind. Prayer at this level expresses my experience of oneness with the divine energy.
This may sound like a radical or even blasphemous notion to you, but it is the source of all spiritual traditions. Here are a few examples.
Christianity: The kingdom of heaven is within you.
Islam: Those who know themselves know their God.
Buddhism: Look within, you are the Buddha.
Vedanta (part of Hinduism): Atman (individual consciousness) and Brahman (universal consciousness) are one.
Yoga (part of Hinduism): God dwells within you as you.
Confucianism: Heaven, earth and human are of one body.
Upanishads (part of Hinduism): By understanding the self, all this universe is known.
Overcoming your conditioning in this area is crucially important. At first, you may be able to accept this idea on an intellectual level, but be unable to make it your authentic experience. So, I suggest you make prayer your experience by using it to replace the random, continuous thoughts that you have all day. Use your trust to commune with God rather than to be in a constant state of chatter.
Replace thoughts about your experiences with the experience of prayer. For instance, praying in this sense can be a sentence such as “Sacredness guide me now” or “Sacred love flow through me now” silently recited instead of thinking thoughts. Prayer in this form is tilling and clearing the inner self of ego chatter so that what you desire and what desires you can grow. My personal practice of prayer is participating in a communion with God wherein I see God within me and ask for the strength and the inner awareness to handle whatever confronts me. I know that I am not separate from this vital force that we call God. I know that this force connects me to everything in the universe and that by placing my attention on what it is that I want to attract to myself I am really doing nothing more than manifesting a new aspect of myself.
I then let go of the results and let the universe handle the details. I retreat in peace and keep reminding myself that heaven on earth is a choice that I must make, not a place I must find. It is my choice to live with the God force flowing unrestricted through me, and it is the way of co-creating my life at this moment. Trust, then, is the cornerstone of my praying, and with it comes the peace that is the essence of manifesting.
PEACE: THE RESULT OF TRUST
The highest self wants you to experience peace, which is a definition of enlightenment. You may recall that I wrote earlier in this book that I define enlightenment as being immersed in and surrounded by peace. The more you trust in the wisdom that creates all, the more you will be trusting in yourself. The result of trusting is that an enormous sense of peace becomes available to you.
When the ego insists on winning, comparing or judging, you will be able to soothe and calm the ego’s fears with the peacefulness born of trust. When you are able to trust, you know that God and you are one, like the glass of ocean water and the ocean itself. You are what the God force is doing, just as a wave is what the ocean is doing.
As this awareness grows you will discover that you are a more peaceful person and, consequently, that enlightenment becomes the way of your life. Being independent of the good opinion of others and being detached from the need to be right are two powerful indicators that your life is shifting toward a consciousness of trust in yourself and trust in God. Yet there are many people in our lives who disturb our state of peacefulness. Then, the question is how to handle those who consciously or unconsciously disturb our experience of trust and peace.
I once wrote an essay in a somewhat facetious tone titled “Your Soulmate Is the Person You Can Hardly Stand.” The essence of the essay was that the people in our lives who we agree with and share similar interests with are easy to accept and actually teach us very little. But those who can push our buttons and send us into a rage at the slightest provocation are our real teachers.
The person who is most capable of disturbing your state of peace is a person who is reminding you that you are not truly in the state of peace or enlightenment that results from trust. At that moment, this person is your greatest teacher. This is the person whom you want to treasure and thank God for sending into your life! When you can transcend the rage, anger and upset which that person appears to provoke, and instead say, “Thank you for being my teacher,” you have acknowledged a soulmate relationship.
Everyone in your life who can still push your buttons and send you into that frenzied state is a master teacher disguised as a manipulative, inconsiderate, frustrating, non-understanding being. The peace that is enlightenment means that you are not only at peace with those who share your interests and agree with you, and with strangers who come and go, but also with those master teachers who remind you that you still have some work to do on yourself.
Give thanks for those great spiritual masters who have arrived in your life in the form of your children, current or former spouses, irritating neighbors, co-workers, obnoxious strangers and the like, for they help you stay in an enlightened, peaceful state. They let you know each day how much more work you truly have to do and in what ways you have not mastered yourself.
Peace occurs when your highest self is dominant in your life. When you begin to feel peace as the result of trust, you are enjoying a healthy soul. Keep in mind that there is only one real soul, and that your personality is a vehicle for the whole. You cannot divide the infinite. There is no division. You must trust this awareness.
When you divide, you have moved out of identification with the God force and have taken up shelter in the ego. It is here that you will find an absence of peace and also an absence of trust in the wisdom that created you.
There are many things that you can do on a regular basis to make this second principle of trusting in the oneness a reality in your life. Here are a few suggestions to nurture trust in yourself and in the oneness.
HOW TO TRUST IN YOURSELF AND THE WISDOM THAT CREATED YOU
This second spiritual principle of manifesting leads us to a higher place within ourselves. It gives us the confidence to trust in something other than that which we perceive with our senses. It illuminates within us the knowing that there is far more to this journey than what we observe, and we come to trust in this knowing to a point where peace serves as a serene substitute for doubt and anxiety.
When you trust, you know. And a knowing cannot be silenced by the contrary opinions of anyone you encounter. You will be independent of the good opinion of others when this trust becomes your way of life. You will not need to prove yourself to anyone, or to convince anyone of the rightness of your views.
You will be a silent sage, moving through this material plane with a knowing that you have tapped into a source of inspiration that provides you with all the sustenance you need. Indeed, you will begin to see how this earth plane is really a very big part of you, more so than you might ever have imagined. And this is the subject matter for the third principle of manifesting.