It has been since 1864 that the words “In God we trust” were engraved on American coins. And since 1956 you find the words as a national motto also on all dollar notes. It seems that trust is a vital life principle. And the words “In God we trust” emphasizes that trust in God is the base from where our ability to trust comes from. It is from this original trust where we gain the strength to trust life, to care, to love and to manifest our values, regardless of the outcome. Trust also accommodates us in making our life more pleasant, since we identify love and friendship as aspects requiring a high level of trust. It seems that this life principle has an important part to play in spiritual development, too.
However, it seems that the words on the dollar bills are no longer remembered and no one seems to care much about them. Trust as a vital life principle has apparently deflated which you can experience worldwide and on all levels. (politics, communities, medicine, news media, sport business etc.) Fake news abound on the internet and people don’t know whom and what could be trustworthy, anymore.
How can we find our way back to this vital life principle of trust?
The word trust stems from the Middle English noun “trewe” which is related to the word true. In German the word “Treue”, is a high moral value which has much to do with trust. In respect to relationship between man and wife (fidelity), but also in the relationship to your home country, its leaders, traditions and culture. Trust gives you security and strength and confidence.
In common usage, the word “trust” refers to relying on someone or something for a future action. The dictionary defines trust as having a confident dependence on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something. Building a sort of reciprocal trust is named transactional trust: you have to give it to get it.
Even when understood in its profoundest sense as character and community building, transactional trust does not lead to liberation of fear and that peace profound which is sought in all spiritual traditions. Transactional trust does not bring ultimate clarity of mind and peacefulness of heart, although it is a necessary foundation for an inner sense of freedom. True transformation is only found in committing yourself to what may be termed “innate trust”. Innate trust is based on the understanding that if you live mindfully and have the intention to act according to your values even in difficult or confusing situations, your life will unfold harmoniously. Innate Trust accepts the hard facts of life that things are always changing, the future is uncertain, and wants and fears are endless.
It is this innate trust (in the end it is trust in God) that allows you to be true, to love and respect unselfishly to live from your heart, to follow your true Self.
This sense of being is the real basis for freedom in life. It is not that transactional trust is abandoned, you continue to function in this matter. But as your inner life matures, what matters more and more is how you are being with whatever life brings you.
Buddha referred to that innate trust as “the best relative”.
T.S.Eliot captured the essence of innate trust in these lines from the “Four Quartets”: “Love is most nearly itself when here and now ceases to matter”
Where we have guaranties and proof we don’t need to trust.
Every human interaction even the smallest piece of cooperation would be absent without trust. The rationale for a person/s to put themselves in a position of vulnerability and dependence is that they may achieve improved cooperation and/or benefit from such an exchange.
Trustworthiness goes beyond both benevolence and integrity. It requires a higher level of consciousness. It is a spiritual practice, a longing for our human ability to love, to develop the art of living with our fellow men and women in one humanity.
If you can arrive at that level of innate trust, then you also lose the fear of dying, you live in peace and harmony knowing that you are a child of God, who is almighty, who is in you and knowing that you can never be separated from that One who is Light, Life and Love.
And when we think of the future and of our children. Which future do we envision. One of suspicion and mistrust and isolation? Or a future of trust, of hope and vision.
May it be, that human beings, created in the divine image, discover enough confidence and trust to embrace the hope, the vision and the potential with which we all have been endowed.
Trust in God as character building posture may become your stronghold in and towards life and you might discover that it is a gift of love which can change the world. Without trust there is no love.