Trusting

By Les Kaye

Fundamentally, I do not think it makes much difference what spiritual practice we choose. What is important is that our expression of spirituality be founded on trust; in particular, trust in something very great, something that we cannot see or explain, but is inherent in everyone and everything. It makes little difference what name we assign it or how we address it: God, Allah, Buddha, Great Spirit, Ground of Being, or True Nature. To be authentic, our spiritual life must be based on learning to put our trust, without limit, in what exists everywhere, what is expressed in every life.

In the affairs of daily life, the nature of trust between people is very complex. It is based on both our direct experience of each other and what we carry around in our mind, such as another person's reputation and our own beliefs and prejudices. Yet despite its troublesome politics, everyday life is the only place where we can express our spirituality. If we truly want to feel our spirituality, we have to trust everyone; even those individuals whose everyday behavior we cannot always rely upon. We must place our trust in the fundamental purity or True Nature of humanity. But how can we find that deep trust with someone who we feel cannot be trusted in the affairs of daily life? We can begin to nurture this trust only by first trusting ourselves.

In high school, I had a good idea of what kind of work I wanted to do when I grew up. Even though I was very certain about this, I was obliged to meet with the guidance counselors anyway. They said: "You can do anything you want." I was shocked to hear them say this and did not believe them. I felt that I could do one or two things with my life, but not "anything." I thought they were giving me false encouragement, that it was their job to say such things. Simply put, I did not trust them.

Many years later, I understood that they were right, and came to recognize that it was myself I had not trusted. As a young man, I had various ideas about myself and saw myself in a limited way. I could have trusted my teachers if I had trusted myself and not held on to limiting ideas about myself.

Trusting requires us to let go. My own spiritual practice of Zen Buddhism stresses this point: let go of opinions, attachments, and desires; those self-orientations of the ego that limit our lives. If we cannot let them go, they create walls around us, separating us from one another. It is impossible to trust ourselves outside these walls and we certainly will not trust anyone we believe wants to "attack" our walls.

The mind can be very stubborn. Old, ingrained habits make it difficult to let go of limits we have imposed on ourselves. Usually it is not very helpful to say to ourselves, or to someone else, "Just get over it!" Instead of trying to force our minds to let go or change, we can simply engage our spiritual practice with an attitude of trust. We can pray, meditate, or chant to express something very great and without limits, with no expectation of gain for ourselves.

Trust depends on accepting things as they are, letting go of fixed ideas of good or bad, like or dislike. This is the best way to let go of the habit of limiting ourselves. It is a matter of simply expressing our spirituality in the midst of things as they are, trusting that our unlimited True Nature will express itself through our activities of daily life.

The foundation of trust and spirituality is the recognition that untrustworthy people are suffering from a misunderstanding about themselves; they do not trust their own True Nature. Trust includes forgiveness when we feel harmed by someone else's behavior. In this way, forgiveness is an expression of letting go of limiting ideas about ourselves. It is also an expression of not putting limits on others, and instead trusting in their True Nature.

Even though we may limit a relationship with someone because of the complex nature of everyday trust, we can continue to trust the fundamental True Nature that is always with us, present everywhere.