To Trust or not to Trust

Whether and to what extent to trust life is one of the earliest lessons we learn as infants. According to psychologist Erik Erikson, to trust or not to trust may be our most significant issue during the first year of life. Taught to us by our care-givers, it is a lesson we never forget. Even though we did not have words for it at the time, it remains in the subsoil of our souls. Were you loved consistently, unconditionally and in ways you needed to be loved early on, or were you merely tolerated, or worse, abused?

Trust is like the system of roots of deciduous trees, consisting of a vertical taproot, the major receptor of ground water, and many horizontal roots providing balance and nourishment from the surrounding soil. As go the roots, so goes the tree. In times of stress and drought, only those trees with healthy roots will prosper and prevail.

What does it mean to trust? The word “trust” itself comes from the Old Norse “traust,” meaning “firmness.” The word trust shares this root of firmness with the term “true” – and the two concepts are intricately related. What we trust, we take to be true; likewise, who we trust, we take to be true. And upon these trusted truths we build our lives. To trust then means to rely on, to have confidence and belief in – with some personal risk involved. What we trust we stand on, or at least are willing to, should the need to hold firm present itself.

The reality is, without radical, unconditional trust, it is impossible to have peace and prosperity of heart, mind and life. Such trust is the foundation of our relationship with the Absolute as well as with others. If you cannot trust God, whom can you trust? To trust in God is to trust in life itself, without which you will have difficulty trusting in anybody else.

There are three stages in the development of trust, whether trust in God, life or another person. You must let in, let go and let be. Above all, trust is a “letting,” a giving of permission to yourself, to another and to life as such. The permission is for the other to be there for you in a personal way involving risk and vulnerability. If you have nothing to lose, trust is irrelevant.

In the beginning is the letting in. It’s best to do so in stages. You give the other time, opportunities, maybe even little secret tests; you gauge whether and to what extent the other is reliable and trustworthy.

After letting the other in, you have to be willing to let go. You need to let go of mistrust, fear, anger, resentment and unforgiveness, callousness and defensiveness. You have to be ready to let go of what you harbor from your past. You must let go of anything that would hold you back from moving into a full and open stance of trust in God, in another or in life. If you refuse to let go of doubts and defenses, you will not attain the freedom and peace that trust alone offers.

Finally comes the letting be. The letting be of today and tomorrow, the letting be of expectations – and of yourself. To let be means to say, “Yes, I would have things be the way they are.” It means to live in peaceful accord with life as it is. Trust enables you to accept and continue to face life unafraid, come what may. If that is not freedom, nothing is.