Trusting Trust

Scott Bradley

I concluded the last post with the assertion that we are born into "connectedness", that "in-ness" is a given. If this is true, then no assertion is required, for if it be 'true', it is already true in us.

Kierkegaard required "a leap of faith" for truth to be true for him. Why? Because, despite his understanding that "truth is subjectivity" and his railing against the belief that spirituality is obtained through assent to objective truth, he still had something objective to which to leap. There was something that required belief.

Trust requires no leap, for it is a "normal function" of life. We can nurture trust and grow in trust, but only when we have discovered it as already in ourselves.

What might hinder awareness of our native trust? W. Giegerich's criticism of Jung, who sought it in the unconscious, demonstrates what is probably the attitude that most alienates us from life's natural trust. "The end of meaning" is a crisis of faith precipitated by the triumph of reason; the old objective cosmologies can no longer stand. We are now devoid of a raison d'etre, a reason to be.

Giegerich criticizes Jung for looking somewhere other than to reason for a sense of belonging in the world. Yet it is he who sunders the human experience and insists that the exercise of reason, the "understanding consciousness", is the only valid and "adult" way by which to orient oneself in the world. As wonderful as the gift of reason is, however, there is a lot more to the human expression than this. Nor should we think that reason stands opposed to our other, more visceral, dimensions. When, as Zhuangzi says, "the understanding consciousness rests in what it cannot know", it has reached its fulfillment. Its fulfillment is found in its harmony with the fullness of the human experience.

Does this mean that reason must give superstition its proper place? Not at all; for what is superstition but belief in objective ‘truths’? Superstition belongs to reason, not to trust. Trust has no content; it requires no belief.

If trust requires trust, then it is only that it trust in itself. It is to trust in life, because life is trust. The process and the élan that is life is trust. We see it everywhere in Nature — trust unaware. It is the human privilege to find and awarefully nurture trust in itself. Or, we can be ‘more’ than life, and nurture despair. This, too, is life.

“To put your trust in the Heart-Mind [where trust abides] is to live without separation, and in this non-duality you are one with your Life-Source.” (Hsin-Hsin Ming; Clarke) In the end, trust is gladly being who you are.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.