Basic Trust
In time, you develop basic trust and you learn to trust the dynamism
of the inquiry. This will happen as result of several things:
first, clearly recognizing the optimizing force in the dynamism
of your own unfolding; second, truly seeing that optimization
is the nature of the dynamism; and third, having faith that the
optimizing is occurring even when you can’t feel it in the
moment. Then you are trusting the guidance and the unfoldment.
Basic trust – the knowing that you just need to relax and
things will work out fine – is an automatic result of this
developing knowledge of reality. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 122)
Basic trust is the soul's way of attuning to a fundamental law
of reality, the fact that our sense of existing as a separate
and isolated entity is false, that our ego experience of isolation
and helplessness is an illusion based on identification with the
world of physical manifestation. Knowing that we are all part
of one reality means that our true nature is not defined by ego
experience in the physical body and cannot be fundamentally hurt
or destroyed. If the individual soul is in touch with this reality
of non-separateness, then it will reflect that by functioning
in a way that expresses this knowledge. (Facets of Unity, pg 24)
When you have a lot of basic trust, you are courageous and authentic.
You take risks. You don't sit on your capacities. You engage in
life wholeheartedly, doing what feels appropriate to you with
the confidence that it will work out. Without much basic trust,
you are paralyzed with fear of failure and fear of rejection.
(Facets of Unity, pg 28)
Basic trust and the ego
The presence of basic trust indicates that you have the innate
sense that life is fundamentally benevolent, and that benevolence
exists independent of you and your actions. You will have this
sense to the extent that your grounding in the universe has not
been disturbed. The relative presence or absence of basic trust
is a belly quality, something one’s whole being is either
grounded in or not. The disturbance of basic trust is a significant
factor in ego development because the perspective of ego is diametrically
opposed to the sense of basic trust. The ego’s perspective
arises out of a lack of this trust. It is based on distrust, on
paranoia, on fear, on the conviction that you're not going to
be adequately taken care of and that the universe is not there
to hold and take care of you in the ways that you need. This conviction
causes you to believe that you have to engage in all kinds of
manipulations and games to get your needs met and to make things
work out. (Facets of Unity, pg 25)
Now we can see how the presence or absence of basic trust is
crucial to the initial step in the process of the transformation
of any sector of the ego. This step is only completed by giving
up the particular structure we have been holding on to. Basic
trust gives you the capacity and the willingness to let go of
the images, identifications, structures, beliefs, ideas, and concepts
-- the remnants of the past that make up the ego. Implicit in
this initial step is the second one: If you are able to surrender,
then you are willing to be. You are willing to not try to change
things, to not manipulate them, to not push and pull at them.
You are willing to just be present, which is a sort of realization
itself. First, then, is the death of the old; second is the realization
of Being. If you don't have basic trust, you will react to what
arises in accordance with your conditioning and will want your
process to go one way or another. You won’t let yourself
just be present; you’ll be tense and contracted. So basic
trust is needed for you to be able to allow the ego to die, and
also for you to be willing to just be, without reacting. (Facets
of Unity, pg 26)
Basic trust and living our life
If basic trust informs your experience, your psyche is relaxed.
Your soul is at peace with itself and with your situation, resting
in the unquestioned confidence that the universe provides, that
you have, and will receive, what you really need, and that things
are workable. If we really have this trust, this deep inner relaxation,
it becomes possible to live our lives out of love, out of an appreciation
of life, out of enjoyment in what the universe provides for us,
and out of compassion and kindness for others and ourselves. Without
it, we live our lives defensively, in conflict with others and
with ourselves, becoming self-centered and egoistic. To find our
basic trust is to reconnect with our natural state that we have
become separated from. When we are innately infused by reality,
our soul or consciousness is completely transparent to the truth
that we and the universe are one, that we are supported by reality
and that reality is by its very nature good, and that what happens
is inevitably right since it emerges out of that inherent perfection.
When you understand this, it becomes obvious why it is so difficult
to relax and let go, and why it is so important regain our basic
trust. (Facets of Unity, pg 32)
Basic Trust and will
As we have seen, when you are trying to make something happen,
you are not trusting the natural order; you don't trust that Essence
itself will manifest in the way it is needed. The first point
of departure from this trust is always a rejection of the now.
To apply the perspective of basic trust, of true will, you must
have the complete confidence that staying completely with what
you are experiencing in this moment, will result in what needs
to happen, without your having to think about a certain outcome.
When the confidence is there, your awareness of exactly what is
happening in you will allow you to see that your organism will
do the best it can in the situation. Your mind, however, doesn't
allow that complete Presence in the now; it thinks it knows what
is best for you, but of course it knows only what has happened
in the past, and can lead you only in ways conditioned by your
history. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 118)
