lack of trust

It seems to me that we are often rather untrusting in our approach to life. I mean by this that we try to control everything, that we have to try and make the future certain, and understand everything that is happening. All this takes a lot of energy. Huge mental effort is required to stay on top of things. And there is a completely different approach which we could take and which is part of the spiritual way, and that is to live in trust. And when I use the word trust here, I don’t mean a trust in a specific thing, for example a trust that my current job will last for the rest of my working life, or I trust that the perfect relationship will be provided for me, or I trust that some handsome or beautiful partner will come into my life. These are quite specific requirements coming from our desires. No, I mean a deeper trust. A trust in the whole process of life. A trust in existence itself. That whatever happens, it will be for the good.

With this deeper trust we don’t need to worry about the specifics and we don’t need to understand everything that is happening. Our mental understandings are only stories anyway – something we make up to console ourself, to feel good, or often the opposite, to feel bad and fearful. We don’t need to live in those stories. We don’t need to pay any attention to them at all. And if we don’t give them energy, then they cease to come into being, and we are free of them.

But this can only happen if we can surrender to existence, accept whatever life is offering us in the moment, without needing to know where it is leading, what it means, what we are going to get out of it. We can let go of all of those thought patterns and trust. Find this deep trust that life is flowing the way it should. We don’t need to fight with it. We don’t need to struggle against life. We can surrender to it and flow with it.

But all of this needs this trust: just a deep trust in the whole process of existence and our small part in it. If we can just trust that everything is unfolding as it should, then life becomes effortless. And we can sit back a little, take a few slow deep breaths and start really enjoying life in all its unpredictability with everything that life offers us. All of this comes when we trust.