Trust is essential. It is the foremost quality for cultivating heart-based, meaningful relationships, both with ourselves and with others.
To many people, trust is an elusive quality; it isn’t easy to know what true trust really feels like. This is understandable if we look at how trust, as we commonly know it, developed.
At the beginning of life, a newborn child has to rely on caregivers to satisfy its physical and emotional survival needs. When care is delivered and needs are met consistently, the child feels safe and secure. This sense of security and safety and the stability they offer are essential for healthy development and provide a major source of happiness. Through this process, expectations are developed. Trust grows when expectations are met.
However, this process also contributes to the development of the pattern of seeking externally. This is a pattern that dominates our lives through adulthood. We seek externally to satisfy our needs and to have our expectations fulfilled. Likewise, when things are not going well, we look externally to find the causes of our problems and also their solutions. As we grow older, our expectations not only expand in number but also become more complex. It is as though we are sitting in a room with thousands of levers that we use to control everything in life. Each lever has to be set at a certain level for the reality we create to be acceptable.
Is the trust that is developed in this way real trust? Or is it just a sense of comfort and security that comes when expectations are fulfilled? No wonder trust can be so elusive! So many things in life are not under our control. And even those we believe to be under our control can change at any moment. Trust can be lost so easily! And the loss is often accompanied by feelings of disappointment and hurt. But who has disappointed or hurt us?
Although this external way of developing trust is necessary for survival, when it has become a dominant pattern, it has serious consequences – our natural inner abilities and qualities are neglected and over time become inactive. Take the five essential heart qualities as an example. These qualities – trust, openness, love, gratitude and Gongjing – are innate, natural qualities of a healthy heart. They exist in their purest form, constantly present in the heart. In other words, they manifest in an unconditional way. When the externally conditioned trust is dominant, the unconditional, pure trust simply cannot manifest. It has become a quality we aren’t even aware of.
Unconditional trust is a state of being. It enables our hearts to fully embrace each and every thing exactly as it is. We feel relaxed and natural no matter what. There is no urge to control anything in order to fulfil our own expectations.
Unconditional trust is not only the foundation for unconditional openness, love, gratitude and Gongjing, but also the foundation for making true heart-to-heart connection with ourselves, with others, with nature and the universe. This heart-to-heart connection is a cornerstone for building a healthy, meaningful relationship. I would like to encourage you to reflect on the way you trust and how it is related to your expectations. Gaining clarity on this can help you shift away from trusting conditionally. I would also like to encourage you to awaken the unconditional trust in your heart. When it is alive, your whole being will come alive!
Experience this message as a meditation on REN XUE TV
If you would like to learn more from Yuan Tze about building heart-based, meaningful relationships check out our Learn REN XUE website for the Replay of his online workshop about Relationships that was six-part of the Living From the Heart workshop series run in 2021.
