Trust is an absolute necessity for our spiritual development. Without it, it is difficult to even enter the path and transformation will be nearly impossible.
Transformation means that something changes into something else. Copper turns to gold. After transformation the copper is not the same anymore and it cannot know the gold until it becomes it. In the same way the butterfly cannot know itself while being a caterpillar.
In other words, we don’t know yet exactly what the new more evolved version of ourselves will be. We have no idea what will happen when we let go of our old familiar ego structure.
I use the word trust here in the sense of basic trust. This is something else than psychological trust, which is based on trustworthiness.
Basic trust means that we have the feeling that our life naturally unfolds and evolves in the right direction.
That whatever happens, it will always be good, even though we don’t know yet what it will be.
Basic trust seems to be a pre condition for us to let go into the unknown and not knowing.
Not knowing is one of the most difficult things for our ego while for the awakened part in us it is the most natural state.
Transformation means that something changes into something else. Copper turns to gold. After transformation the copper is not the same anymore and it cannot know the gold until it becomes it. In the same way the butterfly cannot know itself while being a caterpillar.
In other words, we don’t know yet exactly what the new more evolved version of ourselves will be. We have no idea what will happen when we let go of our old familiar ego structure.
I use the word trust here in the sense of basic trust. This is something else than psychological trust, which is based on trustworthiness.
Basic trust means that we have the feeling that our life naturally unfolds and evolves in the right direction.
That whatever happens, it will always be good, even though we don’t know yet what it will be.
Basic trust seems to be a pre condition for us to let go into the unknown and not knowing.
Not knowing is one of the most difficult things for our ego while for the awakened part in us it is the most natural state.
Also in the normal daily life we really need trust.
And certainly in this moment. Life on the planet probably rarely knew such a lack of trust and had such a fear consciousness.
We are more estranged from our true nature than ever before.
Everything is moving and changing so fast.
Nobody is sure anymore about the future. All predictions about the climate changes or the financial situation have to be adjusted on a monthly or weekly or even daily basis.
Not knowing is lurking around every corner.
This “not knowing” makes us (read our ego) fearful.
We want to secure our future; we want to know what is going to happen to our money because we are not at all sure that all is moving in the right direction.
For sure not now.
A big part of my life trust therefore meant:
Keeping the strings in my own hands and never give up and never let go of control.
I was convinced that all the good things in my life were a direct result of my own efforts.
Everything that came from the outside was at its best dubious. I had learned very early on, to keep my own course. This tactic had proven again and again to be the trustworthiest.
When I came close to the spiritual path, messages like: “let go” and “trust” seemed simply dangerous and unintelligent to me.
However with the support of a new group of people and all kinds of books on meditation and the soul, I started to “practice”.
Also drugs presented themselves. That meant trusting and letting go in huge leaps.
First a joint, later the other stuff.
LSD brought a big opening in the sense that it showed me for the first time ever that there was a reality beyond the mind. In this reality everything was connected to everything else and on top of it, the whole was moved by a force that was way beyond the personal. It also made me aware of the projection field.
Meditation came and drugs left. Letting go and trusting became topics that returned on a daily basis, year after year.
My basic trust however did not grow that fast. It was a slow process, little step after little step. I remained self sufficient and self-reliant.
During my meditation trust was okay, but outside of that it remained a dangerous affair. A split remained between my meditation on the one side and my daily life on the other. I could trust in god by now, but people…and life…. that remained another story.
Again years later I realized that, in spite of my efforts to let go, I was still trying to keep my life in full control. I also noticed that it limited me. My psychological knowledge told me that behind control lurks fear but I had no contact to that emotion and I knew even less how to let it go.
I started to pray.
Praying is a dangerous thing, in the sense that if a prayer is sincere, it generally gets heard. And it was heard indeed.
Very soon after, my partner left me, I lost the house in which we had lived together and my health collapsed to a point that I had to stop working for quite some time.
Of course, all of a sudden, it was not very difficult anymore, to get in touch with my fears. I was terrified.
I used the therapeutic tools that were available then to move through a layer of old pain and fear and mistrust.
Of course, a year later, I could see so clearly that everything that had happened had been absolutely perfect.
My ex had not really fitted with me and the direction my life wanted to take; it was also better to live alone for a while to allow for the new course of my life to unfold. This made it possible for my work to take on a whole new course as well.
I had changed; I was more open and clearer.
All these changes had been necessary for a transformation I me that I would have never been able to create myself.
Throughout the years that followed, life presented me of course again and again with new situations that evoked fear and asked for a letting go.
And every time I was surprised that my previous experience was not sufficient to let me trust once and for all, in the loving intelligence of the universe.
I mean, I “knew” that everything always turned out for the better. Then why would I get so scared again?
Even my awakening into oneness did not do the job. It did not bring a lasting direct contact with this basis trust. Neither did I know at the time, that the ego survives many stages and levels of enlightenment.
The part of us that is aware, awake, knows and sees that all is one and that all is good and that everything moves and unfolds according to a completely loving and intelligent plan.
We see that we all have our karmic place in this whole and when we really start to understand this, we know that whatever happens is perfect and that it fits perfectly on our path.
Great justice reigns, always and everywhere, however difficult it is sometimes to experience this.
This is a deep trust which grows both from insight and from the direct contact with an essential quality of our being.
While we experience the awake part of our true nature with its clarity, our ego, which we also call sometimes “the inner child”, hides somewhere in a corner, usually deep inside of us.
The light, the realization has not reached here yet. In fact, to our ego it feels as if it is a child that still lives with the parents. So it is only logical that there is not much trust present in this separated closed nucleus. How much or how little trust there is there is actually dependent on our early life circumstances.
When we come in touch with difficulties now, or things that bring us fear, we, as awake beings, have two choices.
We can negate the ego/child in us (it often only makes itself noticeable with a small voice) and continue to say that there is no body here and that there never was, and deal with the situation from an awake perspective.
On the level of the absolute source this is also the truth. But we function on different levels at the same time, and each level has its own laws and experiences.
I call this: living from realization and direct knowing.
This brings a certain amount of freedom.
However the danger here is that it can give rise to a certain split in our consciousness that we can justify in the name of awareness.
E.g. we can stop having personal relationship in order not to be confronted with issues that can stir our ego and think that there is no longer an ego. In most cases this shows more that we have become masters in avoiding and denying our ego activity.
Another choice however is that we notice the deeply hidden fear in us and allow it to surface. In this way it can open and we can experience it. This is a very simple and direct, but also confronting and painful way, to allow the fear to dissolve.
We don’t deal with it in a therapeutic way, we let it be and feel it.
If we keep following this process, we often begin to experience an emptiness or a hole behind our fear. Not a positive emptiness but rather a sense of lack.
If we stay consciously present in this hole/lack and accept the not knowing, sooner or later this emptiness will fill up from within the system itself with an essential quality of our soul.
This quality, which Faisal and Almaas call:”Living Daylight”, brings us a very direct physical experience of the loving goodness of existence. Basic trust arises as a natural and direct result out of that. The “knowing” has now landed in the cells. It also has reached the ego nucleus and now we can speak of transformation.
This latter process is often very slow. Little by little the light and the knowing land in our cells.
This part of the journey is often referred to as the process of integration, a stage needed to come to stabilization first and actualization later.
It is a slow process, which needs time, patience and practice.
It reminds me of the story of Meher Baba*, a guru from Pune/India. He received a kiss from Babajan* on his forehead when he was 19 years old. This transmission brought him a very direct awakening. Later he said that he had needed 30 or more years to integrate this kiss and come to full actualization of his enlightenment. (He received help from other masters and teachers in this process)
But let us come back to trust.
How easy or difficult this process of trusting is in a life is of course very dependent on how the “holding environment” in the family of origin was. By this we mean: the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual climate in the family.
In other words: Does the child get touched and held in a loving way?
Does one sense and recognize its sensitivity, does one see its true nature, is there intelligence present in the parents?
If all this is the case, then the child feels itself safe and held in the family and it will not lose its inborn contact with the goodness of existence so deeply. His soul can open and unfold itself in a natural way, like a flower opening to the sunlight.
On top of that, it will also learn that people are good and loving and so learn to trust in both an absolute and a relative way.
Is the environment however not safe or even hostile, and then it is clear that the contact will be disturbed on both levels.
As soon as we lose contact with this living daylight, we cannot truly trust anymore and we will increasingly hold on to the ego structure that we built around this lack.
We will base our trust now on this false structure. Our way back home will be a lot more difficult, because on this road we have to meet the unknown again and again and we need to let go of the old.
Existence is filled with and made of this living daylight, this living goodness. In fact it is the only thing there is in all its different appearances. On a physical level it feels as if we are surrounded by an atmosphere of goodness, warmth, light and space. Some people say they feel like they are held in the arms of God when they sense it, others say they feel safe and supported when they experience it.
This is also dependent on through which of the three main centers we experience it.
In the head we call it also the light of awareness, in the heart is feels more like love and in the belly more like a presence.
In the east they call it Sat Chid Ananda when all centres are open.
Most of us have surely sensed if before.
But if our early experience was one of fear, then we keep our doors and windows closed for this warm light. Often we close ourselves to many other things as well that come from the outside and mistrust becomes a way of life. We create an energetic barrier that can start already on the level of the skin. And the loving daylight cannot reach us anymore. We are locked up in our self-created prison.
The way back to this basic trust is not without pain or fear. The contradiction is however that the more contact we have with this light, the more we also come in contact with the barriers and the old fears.
Someone who has a lot of basic trust is particularly capable to allow the deepest fears to surface from the depth. On the surface it can then look as if that person does not have any trust.
De deeper layers of mistrust can however only be allowed and felt when there is a certain amount of trust present. Trust is like the bedding for it. The more light, the more darkness.
In this way deep wounded parts of our psyche can be felt and through this a letting go of old ego structures can take place.
This means a letting go of our identity. This can be felt as disintegration, a sense of falling apart. Again this can be fearful because the old falls away while we don’t know yet if there will be anything to replace it. It feels more like the famous jump or fall into the abyss.
If this falling or jumping is easy, then the original family settings was usually fairly healthy and the transformational process will be relatively easy.
Was the trust very disrupted or disturbed, then we don’t jump so easily but rather clamp or hold on to our old safe ego identity.
What could ease this falling or jumping?
As I said before, the absence of this light is felt as a hole. As a lacking, a missing of something that should have been there. The more we can tolerate and accept this hole (often it is filled with all kinds of unpleasant or fearful memories), the more the loving daylight can stream in again. From there, the passage to our basic trust is restored and letting go will be less hard. This takes place step by step. Each time we notice that our true nature DOES show itself when we let go, by itself, we open a bit more.
The disintegration of our ego structure is not a matter of one jump or one fall. We would not be able to let go of this structure in one go.
If we did, we would not know how to function anymore. Just like Meher Baba who was in coma for months after the kiss of Babajan. When he came to, it took years before he finally could manage to live from his new essential and healthy structure.
The good news is of course that whether or not we feel it or know it, the goodness of the universe is always here. It never left, it never diminished and it can never leave because it is intrinsic to existence itself.
And on that we can always count.
*Meher Baba ( Indian Guru from Pune 1894-1969)
*Babajan ( Hazrat Babajan, a Persian guru who became 141 years old and who lived in Pune under a neemtree, 1790-1931)
*Faisal Muqaddam is the founder of the DiamondLogos work and co founder (with A.H. Almaas) of the Diamond Approach.
*A.H.Almaas is the founder of the Diamond Approach and the Ridhwan School
And certainly in this moment. Life on the planet probably rarely knew such a lack of trust and had such a fear consciousness.
We are more estranged from our true nature than ever before.
Everything is moving and changing so fast.
Nobody is sure anymore about the future. All predictions about the climate changes or the financial situation have to be adjusted on a monthly or weekly or even daily basis.
Not knowing is lurking around every corner.
This “not knowing” makes us (read our ego) fearful.
We want to secure our future; we want to know what is going to happen to our money because we are not at all sure that all is moving in the right direction.
For sure not now.
A big part of my life trust therefore meant:
Keeping the strings in my own hands and never give up and never let go of control.
I was convinced that all the good things in my life were a direct result of my own efforts.
Everything that came from the outside was at its best dubious. I had learned very early on, to keep my own course. This tactic had proven again and again to be the trustworthiest.
When I came close to the spiritual path, messages like: “let go” and “trust” seemed simply dangerous and unintelligent to me.
However with the support of a new group of people and all kinds of books on meditation and the soul, I started to “practice”.
Also drugs presented themselves. That meant trusting and letting go in huge leaps.
First a joint, later the other stuff.
LSD brought a big opening in the sense that it showed me for the first time ever that there was a reality beyond the mind. In this reality everything was connected to everything else and on top of it, the whole was moved by a force that was way beyond the personal. It also made me aware of the projection field.
Meditation came and drugs left. Letting go and trusting became topics that returned on a daily basis, year after year.
My basic trust however did not grow that fast. It was a slow process, little step after little step. I remained self sufficient and self-reliant.
During my meditation trust was okay, but outside of that it remained a dangerous affair. A split remained between my meditation on the one side and my daily life on the other. I could trust in god by now, but people…and life…. that remained another story.
Again years later I realized that, in spite of my efforts to let go, I was still trying to keep my life in full control. I also noticed that it limited me. My psychological knowledge told me that behind control lurks fear but I had no contact to that emotion and I knew even less how to let it go.
I started to pray.
Praying is a dangerous thing, in the sense that if a prayer is sincere, it generally gets heard. And it was heard indeed.
Very soon after, my partner left me, I lost the house in which we had lived together and my health collapsed to a point that I had to stop working for quite some time.
Of course, all of a sudden, it was not very difficult anymore, to get in touch with my fears. I was terrified.
I used the therapeutic tools that were available then to move through a layer of old pain and fear and mistrust.
Of course, a year later, I could see so clearly that everything that had happened had been absolutely perfect.
My ex had not really fitted with me and the direction my life wanted to take; it was also better to live alone for a while to allow for the new course of my life to unfold. This made it possible for my work to take on a whole new course as well.
I had changed; I was more open and clearer.
All these changes had been necessary for a transformation I me that I would have never been able to create myself.
Throughout the years that followed, life presented me of course again and again with new situations that evoked fear and asked for a letting go.
And every time I was surprised that my previous experience was not sufficient to let me trust once and for all, in the loving intelligence of the universe.
I mean, I “knew” that everything always turned out for the better. Then why would I get so scared again?
Even my awakening into oneness did not do the job. It did not bring a lasting direct contact with this basis trust. Neither did I know at the time, that the ego survives many stages and levels of enlightenment.
The part of us that is aware, awake, knows and sees that all is one and that all is good and that everything moves and unfolds according to a completely loving and intelligent plan.
We see that we all have our karmic place in this whole and when we really start to understand this, we know that whatever happens is perfect and that it fits perfectly on our path.
Great justice reigns, always and everywhere, however difficult it is sometimes to experience this.
This is a deep trust which grows both from insight and from the direct contact with an essential quality of our being.
While we experience the awake part of our true nature with its clarity, our ego, which we also call sometimes “the inner child”, hides somewhere in a corner, usually deep inside of us.
The light, the realization has not reached here yet. In fact, to our ego it feels as if it is a child that still lives with the parents. So it is only logical that there is not much trust present in this separated closed nucleus. How much or how little trust there is there is actually dependent on our early life circumstances.
When we come in touch with difficulties now, or things that bring us fear, we, as awake beings, have two choices.
We can negate the ego/child in us (it often only makes itself noticeable with a small voice) and continue to say that there is no body here and that there never was, and deal with the situation from an awake perspective.
On the level of the absolute source this is also the truth. But we function on different levels at the same time, and each level has its own laws and experiences.
I call this: living from realization and direct knowing.
This brings a certain amount of freedom.
However the danger here is that it can give rise to a certain split in our consciousness that we can justify in the name of awareness.
E.g. we can stop having personal relationship in order not to be confronted with issues that can stir our ego and think that there is no longer an ego. In most cases this shows more that we have become masters in avoiding and denying our ego activity.
Another choice however is that we notice the deeply hidden fear in us and allow it to surface. In this way it can open and we can experience it. This is a very simple and direct, but also confronting and painful way, to allow the fear to dissolve.
We don’t deal with it in a therapeutic way, we let it be and feel it.
If we keep following this process, we often begin to experience an emptiness or a hole behind our fear. Not a positive emptiness but rather a sense of lack.
If we stay consciously present in this hole/lack and accept the not knowing, sooner or later this emptiness will fill up from within the system itself with an essential quality of our soul.
This quality, which Faisal and Almaas call:”Living Daylight”, brings us a very direct physical experience of the loving goodness of existence. Basic trust arises as a natural and direct result out of that. The “knowing” has now landed in the cells. It also has reached the ego nucleus and now we can speak of transformation.
This latter process is often very slow. Little by little the light and the knowing land in our cells.
This part of the journey is often referred to as the process of integration, a stage needed to come to stabilization first and actualization later.
It is a slow process, which needs time, patience and practice.
It reminds me of the story of Meher Baba*, a guru from Pune/India. He received a kiss from Babajan* on his forehead when he was 19 years old. This transmission brought him a very direct awakening. Later he said that he had needed 30 or more years to integrate this kiss and come to full actualization of his enlightenment. (He received help from other masters and teachers in this process)
But let us come back to trust.
How easy or difficult this process of trusting is in a life is of course very dependent on how the “holding environment” in the family of origin was. By this we mean: the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual climate in the family.
In other words: Does the child get touched and held in a loving way?
Does one sense and recognize its sensitivity, does one see its true nature, is there intelligence present in the parents?
If all this is the case, then the child feels itself safe and held in the family and it will not lose its inborn contact with the goodness of existence so deeply. His soul can open and unfold itself in a natural way, like a flower opening to the sunlight.
On top of that, it will also learn that people are good and loving and so learn to trust in both an absolute and a relative way.
Is the environment however not safe or even hostile, and then it is clear that the contact will be disturbed on both levels.
As soon as we lose contact with this living daylight, we cannot truly trust anymore and we will increasingly hold on to the ego structure that we built around this lack.
We will base our trust now on this false structure. Our way back home will be a lot more difficult, because on this road we have to meet the unknown again and again and we need to let go of the old.
Existence is filled with and made of this living daylight, this living goodness. In fact it is the only thing there is in all its different appearances. On a physical level it feels as if we are surrounded by an atmosphere of goodness, warmth, light and space. Some people say they feel like they are held in the arms of God when they sense it, others say they feel safe and supported when they experience it.
This is also dependent on through which of the three main centers we experience it.
In the head we call it also the light of awareness, in the heart is feels more like love and in the belly more like a presence.
In the east they call it Sat Chid Ananda when all centres are open.
Most of us have surely sensed if before.
But if our early experience was one of fear, then we keep our doors and windows closed for this warm light. Often we close ourselves to many other things as well that come from the outside and mistrust becomes a way of life. We create an energetic barrier that can start already on the level of the skin. And the loving daylight cannot reach us anymore. We are locked up in our self-created prison.
The way back to this basic trust is not without pain or fear. The contradiction is however that the more contact we have with this light, the more we also come in contact with the barriers and the old fears.
Someone who has a lot of basic trust is particularly capable to allow the deepest fears to surface from the depth. On the surface it can then look as if that person does not have any trust.
De deeper layers of mistrust can however only be allowed and felt when there is a certain amount of trust present. Trust is like the bedding for it. The more light, the more darkness.
In this way deep wounded parts of our psyche can be felt and through this a letting go of old ego structures can take place.
This means a letting go of our identity. This can be felt as disintegration, a sense of falling apart. Again this can be fearful because the old falls away while we don’t know yet if there will be anything to replace it. It feels more like the famous jump or fall into the abyss.
If this falling or jumping is easy, then the original family settings was usually fairly healthy and the transformational process will be relatively easy.
Was the trust very disrupted or disturbed, then we don’t jump so easily but rather clamp or hold on to our old safe ego identity.
What could ease this falling or jumping?
As I said before, the absence of this light is felt as a hole. As a lacking, a missing of something that should have been there. The more we can tolerate and accept this hole (often it is filled with all kinds of unpleasant or fearful memories), the more the loving daylight can stream in again. From there, the passage to our basic trust is restored and letting go will be less hard. This takes place step by step. Each time we notice that our true nature DOES show itself when we let go, by itself, we open a bit more.
The disintegration of our ego structure is not a matter of one jump or one fall. We would not be able to let go of this structure in one go.
If we did, we would not know how to function anymore. Just like Meher Baba who was in coma for months after the kiss of Babajan. When he came to, it took years before he finally could manage to live from his new essential and healthy structure.
The good news is of course that whether or not we feel it or know it, the goodness of the universe is always here. It never left, it never diminished and it can never leave because it is intrinsic to existence itself.
And on that we can always count.
*Meher Baba ( Indian Guru from Pune 1894-1969)
*Babajan ( Hazrat Babajan, a Persian guru who became 141 years old and who lived in Pune under a neemtree, 1790-1931)
*Faisal Muqaddam is the founder of the DiamondLogos work and co founder (with A.H. Almaas) of the Diamond Approach.
*A.H.Almaas is the founder of the Diamond Approach and the Ridhwan School