Trust

 

 

It’s one little word at the center of so many of our personal issues.  Spirit teaches that we are eternal, divine beings creating our own physical lives for our higher learning and understanding but even the existence of the word “trust” implies that someone else can hurt us by betraying our trust.  That puzzles me.

And, the statement “I can’t trust you” implies that there’s something wrong with the other person, and that puzzles me because Spirit teaches that whatever we see outside ourselves is only a reflection of something within ourselves.  The other person is merely the mirror we are using to highlight something for us to learn.

But the other day, I was ‘listening’ and heard an explanation that ended my puzzlement.  See if it makes sense to you.

If I have a trust issue with another person, it’s because they have behaved in a way that I didn’t expect – they have broken our implicit or implied agreement about how our relationship will work.  There are two steps to rectifying the situation. 

1.     Release my stubborn attachment to my expectations of the other person and realize that they felt they had a good reason for whatever they did.

2.    Re-negotiate our agreement so that no one has to break it.  Sometimes that’s not possible and then it’s time to go apart, but often it’s a matter of one or the other of us not being awake and aware or there’s an underlying issue that needs discussion.

The ego loves the statement, “I can’t trust you.”  It has a noble, long-suffering ring to it that is ever-so-satisfying to the ego who believes that no one can be trusted except itself.  Because of the ego’s tight grip on the situation, sometimes the “I can’t trust you” energy dominates a relationship (or lack of a relationship) for many, many years.

So, to begin to release attachment to the status quo, it’s helpful to realize how, over time, feeling bad has turned into feeling good.  “I wanted to love you.  Truly I did, but I just couldn’t trust you.”  That leaves you feeling like such a “good person done wrong.”  In reality, you were just a good person looking for something that someone else didn’t have to give.  You made an error in judgment.  Let it go.  Let go of shaming the other person and let go of blaming yourself for “looking for love in all the wrong places” as the song says.  Once you realize that it’s really not about what the other person did but rather what you expected them to do (rightly or wrongly), then the equation begins to come back into balance so that healing can begin.  You can then forgive yourself, forgive the other person, and start to move forward – with the other person or without them but definitely WITHOUT the ‘stuck’ energy of “I can’t trust you.”