TRUST AND LOVE ARE INTERCONNECTED
The main requirement for trust is self-confidence within yourself. Let us take as an example a man who might think he is sexually weak, which could be one condition why he does not trust his wife, although his wife could be a pure goddess. Therefore, self-confidence is something significant, and to create self-confidence in oneself, one must know oneself, to quote the Scriptures, “Man know thyself.”
When you know yourself, what part of you do you know? Man thinks he knows himself, and he believes that he thinks, but he stinks. You think that you feel, but you are not thinking because of your little conditioned mind that, through all the various experiences you have gone through, all the impressions that have been created in your subconscious mind.
When I say you think that you know yourself, in reality, you do not. Because a tiny fraction of the conscious mind is set into motion, and that tiny fraction of the conscious mind can never encapsulate or capture the totality that is required for trust, and when you do not have total trust, you distrust and you mistrust. You see how you have missed it all?
To have trust is to be able to function, not only with a small section of your mind, but with the entire mind. But that is still not enough. Because a mind can play various tricks upon you. So, we come to the crux of the matter: trust is a matter of the heart. You trust with your heart, not with your mind. The mind will tell you that Jamie is such a good man. However, you can only truly appreciate and understand the goodness of Jamie if you experience it. Here, the heart and the mind must be combined for you to experience trust. As you start to experience trust, your self-confidence grows and grows. And with that very growth, like a flower from a bud, it blooms into its full beauty, and that beauty in the growing of trust is expressed through love. Because trust and love are inseparable, if you do not love a person, you cannot trust that person, and if you cannot trust a person, you cannot love the person. So, they are interconnected.
IF YOU WANT TRUST, TRUST FOR THE SAKE OF TRUSTING
We have covered three points. Self-confidence, which comes about through trust and trust through love, and love through trust, and trust through self-confidence. You see how they intertwine. When the mind starts doubting, which is opposite to trust, because trust and doubt are at opposite poles, in polarity. There are some methods to convert mistrust or distrust into trust.
Firstly, you start using your mind and you analyse. You say, “Jamie did this, he kept his promise. He was going to see Gururaj at nine o’clock, and he came there one minute to nine. He was given some duty to do, and it was done punctually, on time.” So, the mind would rely upon those factors of the person’s history; if he has done nine things perfectly right and as instructed, then I am sure the tenth one will also be right. There is an old philosophical saying that if you have a chain of twenty links and if nineteen links of the chain are the same, then the twentieth link will also be the same. However, the mental analysis that needs to occur is determining how trustworthy a person can be, and based on their record, you will start to trust the person.
That is not enough. That trust, that mental analysis to repeat, must be filled with that heart quality, which we call feeling. So, feeling is also brought into play, and when feeling is brought into play, one’s emotions naturally come into play. So, here trust would include self-confidence, love, emotions, feelings, the heart, but that is still not enough. Why is it not enough? Because of the feelings you have for the person, all the emotions still have to be filtered through the mind. The mind is so devious that most of the time, it does not express the true feelings of a person. It can distort. It acts like a filter. So, you put on green glasses and everything looks green, or if you have jaundice, everything looks yellow.
So, apart from the various mechanics of the mind, the heart, and feelings, genuine trust must come from a different area. That area is the core of the human personality, which people usually call the heart. You can call it spirit, call it whatever you want to call it. These are labels. So, if you wish to have genuine trust, of course, do not analyse the person that you want to trust or the object, or the question on hand. No. You do not analyse it. You just trust for the sake of trusting. Like love for the sake of loving. You do not analyse.
WHEN YOU TRUST, YOU FIND GREATER PEACE AND YOU TRANSFORM YOUR ENVIRONMENT
Any one of you here can pull out a gun and assassinate me. One of our meditators in America had a dream on my last trip to America that Gururaj was going to be assassinated. For example, anyone here can pull out a gun and shoot me. But I say no, I trust that no one is going to do that to me, and if they should do so, I will say Bless you, you have taken me away from a lot of misery, sufferings not of my own but the sufferings of all of you that are so close and dear to me. I can feel every thought of yours. My only suffering is your sufferings—none else.
You trust for the sake of trusting, and I will tell you what will happen as a result. Say, for example, a man is married to a woman who might not be very faithful, or the man might not be loyal. By trusting the person totally and completely, you change that person. Because when you have genuine trust within you, you emanate a certain force, and that changes the life of that person. So, two things happen here: your mind and heart are at greater rest, at peace, and at the same time, you are transforming the other person who you think is not truthful.
LIFE REALLY SHOULD BE LIVED IN TOTAL TRUST
So, everything in life depends upon us. Trust is a virtue, and every virtue depends upon us only, not upon the object. You trust so many things in life. For example, George believes that so-and-so is his father. Why does he think it is his father? Because his mother told him. Who knows that his mother did not go for a walk, or his father, the other way around? When I mention the male, you know I mean the female as well. You drive your motorcar. Are you driving your car all the time, thinking that you are going to have a puncture? No, you do not believe that. You drive your car, and if a puncture should happen, you might have a spare tire in the car, and you just drive. Of course, you always keep your vehicle in good condition, with all the nuts tight. The only nut that must not be tight while driving a car is the man behind the wheel. That is the only nut that must not be tight.
So, all these qualities depend entirely upon us. Everything we do is based on trust. How do you know that you are going to be alive in the next five minutes, or I would have a heart attack, but we trust. And that is how life should be lived in total trust. If you cannot trust yourself, then you can externalize the trust by trusting in God.
EVERYTHING HAPPENS BECAUSE OF THE FORCE OF EVOLUTION
It is not easy for everyone to delve deeply within themselves to develop that trust in themselves. So, if you cannot do that, the alternative is to trust in Divine energy, call it God, or anything you prefer. Trust that Divine energy because you are in the flow of evolution. Everything that happens to anyone is because of the force of evolution that is pushing you on, and the flow of evolution will never push you in the wrong direction. At first, you may find things challenging, but the result will be beneficial. It is like a greasy pot. Can you imagine that the pot, which, by the way, has feelings too, if it is greasy, you have to use steel wool, you have to scrape, scrape, scrape, and the pot becomes clean? Many people in their current state of evolution have to go through more effort to clean the pot, and every time they use steel wool, the pot becomes cleaner and cleaner; that is an inevitable law of evolution governed by that Divine force.
TRUST AND YOU WILL BE TRUSTED
So, if you cannot trust yourself or your guru, trust in God. Once you develop the habit of trusting, you become a trusting person and will trust everyone. If, for example, someone does me any harm, the only thing I would say is the words of our Lord, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” Even if someone is doing something wrong to you, forgiving them requires spiritual strength and self-awareness, which can be achieved through individually prescribed meditation and spiritual practices that we teach. One of the purposes of our organization is to help you achieve a more integrated state, where you function as a whole and become more trusting.
TRUST IS ONE OF THE GREATEST VIRTUES A PERSON CAN HAVE
This has happened to me many times, where I have trustingly given shelter to someone in need, only to find that some belongings have disappeared from the house. Someone else would have been distraught, perhaps, but I was never upset. I take it to myself that maybe this person needs it more than I do. That little ornament on your mantelpiece is just an ornament. When you receive the ornament, you look at it sometimes, and this, that, and you appreciate it, but afterwards, you will ignore it. You will not even notice it. Ask yourselves how many ornaments you have in your home that you go and study every day for an hour. It is there and it is there. So, if it goes, so what, let it go, a better ornament might come, and the most fantastic ornament is the openness of the heart to be able to forgive.
So, all these qualities are mixed up in trust. Trust is one of the greatest virtues a person can possess because it encompasses sympathy, compassion, love, givingness, and forgiveness. All these things are there, and the result is that you become a better person. Being a better person means that you are at rest within yourself. You are at peace within yourself. You find the peace that passeth all understanding because understanding has a lot to do with thinking.
LIFE IS MADE TO GIVE AND NOT TO TAKE, BUT TO BE ABLE TO GIVE, YOU NEED TRUST
When you think, “Oh, that beautiful ornament that I had on the shelf there, it was given to me by Auntie Matilda or whoever, and now it has disappeared.”
I am sure most of you must have read the story, “Les Misérables,” written by Victor Hugo, the French Author. His family was going hungry, and he stole a loaf of bread because his children were dying of hunger. But because of stealing that loaf of bread, he was haunted by the police, so much so that even after he changed his situation and went to another place and became established in business and became a well-known man, he was still caught up in the end, I believe. I read the story many years ago, I think when I was in Standard Five or Six or Seven. Then he took refuge in a church, and as he was leaving the church, there were two silver candlesticks, and as he was going with them, the Padre, the Pastor, the Priest, whatever, came out and said, “My son, life is made to give and not to take.” And you can only give if you have that trust within you, because trust is also closely associated with faith. You can never have trust without faith. You can never have love without trust and faith. You can never have any of these without self-confidence. You can never have any of these qualities without knowing yourself, “Man know thyself,” which of course means nothing else but integration of mind, body, and spirit.
THERE IS ALWAYS A COMPENSATION IN EVERYTHING
So, you see the far-reaching effects. Say, for example, John Doe says something to me. I will believe him. It could be a blatant lie; I would believe him. Who am I to doubt? Perhaps there is some energy or some power that made him tell me this lie, and through that, I might learn a lesson. So, here we come to attitude and perspective, the way we look at things. If you tell me to go and jump in the lake, I will do it, because you told me to do it. It might be good for me. It might give me a little cold, so what? However, the slight cold I will catch will be well compensated by having two days’ rest in bed. So, everything has its compensation, and you know the well-known example: if a person does not see well, their ears will become more acute. There is always compensation in everything.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1985 – 02
