Trust

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live. ~ Goethe

As with so many other elements of relationships, trust plays an integral part in developing a mutual, win-win experience. We travel our life path and discover, through those experiences, what it feels like to have been betrayed or the genuine thankfulness that arises when we know that someone “has our back.” For most, we refine and develop our trust muscle in direct correlation to how the world has treated us.

From the spiritual perspective, we are encouraged to trust one above all others – ourselves.

Shakti Gawain writes, “When I am trusting and being myself….everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously.”

So what does it mean to trust ourselves?

For one thing, it is taking the time to get still enough to hear the incessant whispers of guidance that are forever instructing. Call it the still small voice inside, intuition or Divine Knowing – that inner guidance is your unfailing barometer in making optimum choices. Trusting what we feel guided and directed to do may not unanimously match the outer world’s agendas but it will find a match in others whose guidance is in harmony with our own. Therein lies our tribe, our family of choice. By trusting one’s own inner convictions, we draw to us other mutually trusting souls and the quality of our lives continues to get better and better.

In my current experience, I am navigating myself through new terrain in my career.

I recently accepted the position as Senior Minister for a large, dynamic New Thought community in Atlanta, GA. The environment, the people and the energy is a perfect synthesis of old and new; (old) equated to energies that love the way things were and the style and approach that they are accustomed to - (new) equated to energies that are desirous for and ready to embrace change - change they obviously see me representing.

Both, in existence by themselves, certainly serve a purpose. But for me to attempt to be all things to both energy spectrums is simply not feasible. That's where my own personal opportunity to trust me - to trust David, to do my vision AS David and not what I feel others think David should be, comes in to play.

Choosing that self loyalty can result in all kinds of earthly reaction.

Each day as I open my e-mails or respond to phone messages, I am greeted by the variety of feedback - feedback that may contain praise and gratitude for what I am bringing to the table or a demonizing rhetoric directed at me for what they feel is the loss of something held sacred.

It's a position we all find ourselves in from time to time. It is seductive to try and attempt to please everyone - to take responsibility for the happiness of the masses, as if by doing so, we are justifying our very own existence. We bend and twist our yes responses in so many ways that we forget what an authentic yes even feels like because we have lost our ability to say no.

Trusting yourself requires letting go of the need to be popular.

Imagine what the life of the master teacher Jesus would have played out as, if his intent was to please everyone? His example of personal trust shows how some will follow and some will not. Some, in our life experience, will gravitate to our convictions and some will not. True healing and greater awareness comes when we can release the label of right or wrong on either decision all the while embracing and acting on what feels true for us.

I knew that I had made progress in my own personal journey with self-trust when, after experiencing both types of feedback, I didn't bring either energy home with me. I did my best to respond with well-crafted care and moved on, continuing to implement what my inner guidance leads me to do.

That was this week. We'll see what the weeks ahead bring.

Yet for now, I am feeling the peace that self trust offers and keeping my eyes, ears and heart open to the ease and synchronicities that are appearing as a result.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION: I devote time to the practice of stillness. As I approach this practice, I do so with great expectation, knowing I am about to be given loving guidance. Ask the question, “What is it you would have me know regarding ________?” Listen. Trust. Let go of second guessing yourself. Follow instructions.