The Shadow of Trust

I have before spoken on popular notions and one notion that has attracted my interest lately is the notion that “trust must be earned” and that furthermore, as a result of the biblical “original sin”, we, as humans, are not born with the quality of trustworthiness. While all of this sounds reasonable, trust is not an issue of reason, it is an issue of emotion. In fact, the fundamental defining moments for trust in a child’s life happens well before a child reaches the age of reason, considered by child development specialists as around the age of seven.

So, if trust can’t be earned, then how does trust happen? If there is nothing that I can have or do that will gain the trust of another or if there is no particular way of behaving that can earn for me that trust in another, then where does trust come from in the first place? How can this be? Think about this a moment with me. Is there a person you so profoundly trust that nothing they could do would betray your trust? Or, is there a person who, no matter what they do, even though you just can’t put a finger on it, you just aren’t willing to trust that person? I believe that if you look long and hard enough, I trust you will find examples of both.

From where then, does trust originate? When I was born into this world I was living in the realm of trust even though I was too young to be able to know trust as a concept but rather I might have instinctively known it as unconditional benevolence. If I cried, for whatever need to be fulfilled, as I was yet to be able to understand about when and how my need would be fulfilled for I knew not even the concept of time, I would cry until my need was fulfilled or until I fell asleep in exhaustion, in which case, my need for the moment was fulfilled. This reciprocol behavior/response was wired into my growing brain as a survival mechanism. In a sense, if I could conceptualize this experience as an infant, would I not call it trust? And if I can know this unconditional benevolence on some level as a child, and since I survived into self-knowing and into reason, is trust not my birthright?

Just as the bibilical Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of gruel, at what point did I sell my birthright of trust for survival? It probably began somewhere in my second or third year when I realized that the source of my unconditional benevolence, my mother, no longer could or would provide for me unconditionally and that now I had to work for my needs, therefore, I had to earn this benevolence, this trust. Instead of having this trust be a part of who I was, I forgot it in the lesson learned in the stirrings of my sentience, my self-knowing, that with this self-knowing came also the sense of who I am as a being separate from everything else. Trust was no longer who I am but something outside of myself that I would get or not, conditionally, as it were.

With all that I have said, I can begin to get to the point of all this by saying that trust is part of who I am as it is a part of who we all are. It has been wired into our brains since childhood and yet, as we move out of our childish innocence into our reason, we forget that because we have survived thus far, that we have been able to do so only by none other than the benevolence of the universe, unconditional and all inclusive, unwavering and loyal, to put it into human terms. This unconditional benevolence, or trust, has molded me into who I am as an ego as it also exists within me as the cornerstone of who I am as being. Herein lies the Shadow of Trust. It is in this unconscious belief in a non-benevolent universe on which most of us hang our belief in our survival. It fosters fear of any future event where we have an attachment to a specific outcome, an outcome that favors our belief that if it turns out a particular way, our survival is assured, just as if it doesn’t turn out a particular way that our survival is in serious question.

How do I get out of the trap, the trap of trust equals survival? As I have postulated in previous posts, I turn trust into a mirror of who I am rather than as someone or something that must somehow prove itself to me as being trustworthy. I turn this mirror back on myself and as I do that, I look in the mirror and tell myself that I trust the person or thing, despite my incessant mental chatter that is telling me otherwise. I turn my distrust, inspired by all the reasonable assessments that I have devised for myself and fed by my made up need for anger and revenge, into love and well-being for all involved. I thus turn my problem into the solution, and as I already know for myself, I can’t find a solution with the same level of consciousness that saw the situation as a problem. If I go to bed with a problem, I can know in my awakening to the new day that I have survived yet another day and night, and in that process, I can also remember that whatever the problem was the night before, that my consciousness is one day closer to the solution and that I can let it go and let it be, in the meantime.

The Shadow of Love

I know I’m embarking on a perilous journey to speak now on “The Shadow of Love.” I think that some readers might even be ready to lynch me for even suggesting that love would have a shadow side to it but in the realm of unconscious belief and behavior, which is what I call shadow, I am saying that love has probably the most going for it in this realm of human unconsciousness.

From the microcosm of the infinitesimally small quantum realm to the macrocosm of inter-galactic space, love is the force which manifests all that we know as sentient, that is, self-knowing beings. Like “the Force” which is spoken of in the universe of “Star Wars”, this force literally binds the universe together. It is the tendency of all matter in the universe to connect with all other matter in the universe and which is universally called gravity. It is also the force in the smallest realm of matter whereby negatively and positively charged protons and electrons are attracted to and repelled from each other and which is called electromagnetic force. That leaves only the other two forces or interactions referred to as weak and strong interactions which also have the effect of attraction and repulsion. In many respects, physicists would probably debate long and hard on such a simplistic explanation as mine, yet I think you can get my point that love is the force which binds all that we know, together.

So what of love in the realm and on the scale of human interactions, this tendency of human beings to connect to one another that involve both interactions which attract or repel?

There are many definitions and distinctions made of the word love. In Greek, there are four. There is first eros, often thought of as passionate, sensual love or longing, even unto sexual desire. Secondly there is philia or philos, which means friendship or dispassionate loyalty to family, friends, tribes or nations and is the source of the word philosophy or “love of wisdom.” Thirdly there is storgé, or affection, such a love of parents for their children.

And finally there is agapé, a holding one in high regard, even to the idea of “true love” as one would have for a life partner or spouse or even a love of God. Agapé is the word that would be compared to the French “amour” and translated in our English phrase “I love you.”

In addition, in the European Middle Ages came yet another distinction of love, called romantic, chivalrous, even sometimes courtly or platonic love, which implies both a longing, but yet also a sublimation of the erotic or sexual desire of eros. This distinction of romantic love is the source of much of our old and modern literature on the subject of love.

There is this popular notion that we often hurt most the ones we love the most. This may be a clue to what I am talking about when I speak of a shadow of love, for it is in this realm of social interaction where much of the unconsciousness around love resides.

For myself, I have seen and known love in all of the distinctions I have mentioned and I have noticed that in all these distinctions a common theme emerges, the theme of attraction and repulsion, which I mentioned before is the Force of the universe. This means that, in the realm of ego, with love comes its opposite, which is hate, although for some, a less stronger word might be intense or mild revulsion.

So in this realm of ego, I want to be clear that hate is not the shadow of love. The shadow of love is in the unconscious belief that I can know of love beyond the boundary of my own ego, and this is the shadow of love to which I have finally reached in this post.

The fallacy or shadow of love is that beyond the boundary of my own ego, love is only a projection. Let me repeat that. Beyond the boundary of my own ego, love is only a projection. I can say this with conviction because there have been written numerous how-to-books about finding happiness and contentment in a relationship and all of them are hot sellers because of the fact that beyond the initial feelings and longings that come from “falling in love”, love actually becomes a high maintenance activity for most of us, and I am certainly no exception.

So how do I get out of this trap of love being a projection? Can I actually consider that the way out of the trap is to step out of ego, even for a second, to see love not as a projection, but as a mirror? As before, when I have spoken of traps, the answer once again is YES!

So how does love become a mirror, instead of a projection? Asking the question that way still involves an ego to ask it so instead I will pose another route out of this trap and step up to the level of Causal being and say that when I am Love as Cause, everything else is a mirror of who I am. At the level of Cause, I get to see in the mirror of Love the reflection of who I am, in the smile or loving words of my partner, in acts of random kindness of a stranger, in the pain expressed by a dog upon whose toe I just stepped or the dismay of the owner of a car I just backed into. I can see Love reflected also in the hatred expressed by ones I would call my enemy, which allows me to forget for a moment that their hatred is a reflection of my own revulsion which is the other side of attraction, two sides of one coin, which is love. When I am Love as Cause, I can no longer fight against anything, I can only lend my support for something. I can’t fight against hate, I can only support love. When I am Love as Cause, I am connected with all, whether or not my ego can see it.

The Shadow of Obedience-Compliance Revisited

Back in September 2009 , I posted about my shadow of obedience or compliance. In that post, I never really addressed how that shadow was keeping me from living a life of authentic, empowered self-expression, only how my resistance to that shadow keeps me in a world that is unworkable.

I want to start using a different term for shadow, because I have noticed how that term can be confusing to some readers, even though I have addressed and re-addressed my definition countless times here on this blog. I define shadow as simply “unconscious belief or behavior” so I will use that term “unconscious belief/behavior” to see how it might clarify what I am trying to do with my life in examining the multiple layers of my unconscious belief/behavior, like peeling away the layers of an onion to get to my core, that is, who I am. And to be clear, I don’t mean “core values” because values is just another word for belief and that means I have unconscious values that can block my access to my authentic self, as well.

The unconscious belief/behavior that can be found in obedience or compliance is a reflection of my own resistance to being a fully realized, responsible, human adult. It has been showing up or has been appearing to me all of my life as resistance to authority, whether it be political, social, religious or even moral authority, that is, a definition of what it means to be a “good” or “just” or equally a “bad” or “evil” person by the way I behave towards others.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to say that acting in obeyance or compliance to an authority outside myself is a bad thing or that it is a good thing either. I am, however, trying to say that unconscious belief/behavior in the area of obedience or compliance to an authority outside of myself can be a trap that keeps me stuck in the idea that I really have no freedom and that if I act or react in any way against an authority of some kind, that I am, in fact, a rebel.

How did I get myself into this trap, because I did get myself into this trap all by myself even if I believe that others helped me, others like my parents, my teachers, my bosses, or the cop who pulled me over for some reason, or just in the idea that I must listen to authority “for my own good.”

The answer is “I got myself into the trap of obedience or compliance when I identify both with whatever authority I have established for the moment and when I identify with the idea that this authority is right and therefore I am being made wrong. This is the shadow of obedience or compliance, where my ego creates an identity and when it does that, it creates separation between myself and that which I objectify as authority.

What happens then, when I identify with authority outside of myself as an object or as effect?  Can I be authority as subject and cause instead? The answer is, of course, YES! Is it that simple? YES! Does it mean that it is easy? Heck NO!

So now I will bring us back around to the difference between obedient or compliant as a way of belief/behavior and obedience or compliance as a way of being.

When I am obedience or compliance as a way of being, I shift from reacting to authority “out there” to choosing authority as a mirror of who I am. When I do that I become authority. When I am authority, I have nothing to resist or rebel against. When I am authority, it is easier to see the lesson that I created for myself to learn. When I am authority, I am also obedience and compliance, which is a way of being, not obedient or compliant, which is a way of behaving. When I am obedience and compliance, the world is workable, I am authentic and I am truly FREE.

The Freedom in Authentic Self-Expression

I spent most of my life trying to disown my parents and now that they are passed, I have discovered how much they were simply the mirrors I chose in this incarnation to learn the next step toward perfect freedom. As to my own son, I realized very soon after he was born that I needed to humble myself in the experience that I had nothing to teach him, that I was merely a tour guide, pointing out this and that, along our short path together. Only now, as he is moving away to follow his own path, have I allowed myself the freedom to know that sharing, without attachment or the expectation that what I have to offer is of any interest to him whatsoever, is the greatest lesson I have left to teach, not only to my family or with anyone else with whom I share a path, but also to myself.

From a discussion on freedom and family with Domo Geshe Rinpoche on Facebook

My Shadow in Avoiding Inauthentic Self-Expression

For a very long time I have not been able to laugh. As I have watched others laughing themselves silly at the simplest remark or the stupidest of jokes, in my opinion, I have not even been able to squeak out the littlest chuckle. I have struggled to find something to laugh at, despite all of my efforts to do so and, except on the rarest of occasions when I am loosened up with liquor or a little “smoking mixture”, as they euphemistically call it in smoke shops, nothing happens. I have even tried forcibly to laugh, which has angered some because they believe they can see through my forcefulness.

So, can I find a shadow by looking for a need of why to laugh, as I discovered in my last posting?

One need I can think of right away is the need of fitting in and being accepted. Another is about my need for authentic self-expression or perhaps my need for avoiding inauthentic self-expression. Either way, if I mirror this need what I get is that I project on people who laugh at everything my shadow of inauthentic self-expression. This is a big shadow for me because it puts me in a position of distancing myself from people which is surely a mirror to my need to fit in and being accepted, if only I could laugh spontaneously and genuinely. And while I’m making it my business that other people have often been showing up for me as being inauthentic in their self-expression when they laugh, I am forgetting that at the same time, this projection of mine is keeping me stuck in my presumptuousness and being right.

In other words, the joke has been on me all of this time.

My Shadow of Righteous Indignation

I got an email last evening from a friend which he also sent to a larger list of his friends and which, in my judgment, contained ethnically inflammatory remarks directed from one ethnic group towards another. Now as this friend of mine is a dear one to me, I was both disappointed and angry with my friend and replied with my righteous indignation and asked to be removed from any list with regards to future communications of this type. As I write this, I am both angry and sad to have received this from a person who I felt had unresolved issues in his life in areas for which I could only offer compassion and yet to whom I had promised to be commited to his well-being regardless of my feelings, and then I receive this email.

So, I ask myself, what is my friend mirroring in me that I’m supposed to get in this situation. After all I spoke of earlier yesterday morning (see Celebration Reading 2/21/10 - A Shadow around Being Inspired) about mirroring and humbling myself to being inspired, am I to suppose that I might have to humble myself to being righteously indignant?

I don’t quite know what the answer might be or if there is an answer, but I know that if I look hard enough that I will see in the mirror a reflection of something I really don’t want to see. I am not going to resolve this before a night’s sleep intervenes so I am going to wait for the light to cast my shadow in this and that requires the light of day, in this instance. Yet as I sit here I’m beginning to feel a rush of tingly energy in my back, arms, legs and chest, really breasts, and my heart is pumping faster, I’m feeling agitated and somewhat sexually aroused, all at the same time. If my friend really believes this as truth instead of propaganda, he has crossed the same line that he once said I would cross if I used one particular ethnically charged slur towards him, even in jest. I feel that even though I am of neither ethnic group in this case, I still feel violated in the same way.

Well at least I have my mirror and yet this issue still generates a charge in me. Again I will have to wait to channel the rest until light shines on the world.

Wow! It just dawned on me, no pun intended, that I didn’t realize that I had this line that I am not willing to cross to see that what my friend is doing right now is expressing a need, and that I just can’t see what it is yet, even though I know that his need is there.

So then, what is my need? Maybe if I can see that, I will able to mirror my need to his. I know that I need to be able to really get past my shadow long enough to listen and hear. Am I mirroring his fear and anger from his forgotten past? I certainly do not feel safe with him, and maybe that is all I need - to look at how I can make myself feel safe with him again. So now the ball is in my court to play and I’m no longer agitated though I’m still feeling aroused. I’m also actually relieved and humbled by my experience that all I have yet to do is to feel safe with my friend again because now I can see that needing to feel safe is what was being expressed by the email that had started this match in the first place.

And I’m also wrong about needing that night’s sleep to discover what is so for me.