This is one of those Not-all-it's-cracked-up-to-be unblogs.
I'm not big on the idea of trust. I'll concede that there are some people on this planet that can be trusted. It's my belief that the vast majority of us are untrustworthy.
It's not that I'm cramming ALL the world's untrustworthy into one place. There's a difference between being untrustworthy and being criminal. You go out of your way to take advantage of people and circumstances? There's a cozy spot waiting for you in Hell, and I'm not addressing that kind of behavior here.
I'm addressing those who are untrustworthy because they themselves don't actually understand what it is they want. The people who have integrity but are handicapped because of poor communication habits and/or personal foibles. I'm not sure I believe that trust is required to make the world go around. I'll always come down on the side of the bhagwan who offers acceptance is the desired process, not trust.
Perhaps a little thought experiment might help?
I tell you I have a secret and I'll share it with you if you promise not to tell anyone else. You promise. Now, in that moment, you are making a promise…for a reality of which you are not in control. You step off the Essential Moment and go flying forward in time, and I say flying because such decisions (an agreement to keep a secret) so often take place instantaneously. The brain is blindingly fast, but the ego and other identities can't keep up. The brain presents a stimulus, the agreement, and the identities all abdicate and default to yes—because we are not trained to consider the inputs of all identities. That would take time, say, five seconds? What the hell, what's ten seconds in an ocean of seconds? If you waited to agree to keeping my secret, you just might not agree.
And what's really important about the ten seconds is it keeps you in the Essential Moment! You're not projecting yourself into a non-existent reality. You take however long it takes to make the decision. And then respond with full integrity. "No, unkillbilly, I won't keep your secret."
I know, I know—it's not quite that simple. Hey, it's my experiment. (I'll try not to be as sloppy as our current administration.) There are all kinds of dots to be connected psychologically, such as people pleasing behaviors and other pathologies and social rules about how long a silence can last in a conversation, that would affect our specific experiment.
But.
The fundamental understanding is that the key to trust depends on a person's ability to stay in this moment. If you are mindful, you'll peruse your boundaries, check past recollections and learnings and formulate an accurate response—because you are wholly present. Your surrounded by reality, which defaults to support. Reality is your friend in the Essential Moment.
A little vocabulary exchange wouldn't hurt: Stop tellin' people, "if you need anything to let you know". The problem with this one is obvious. You put the word 'anything' out into the Universe and you deserve whatever boomerangs back! You say that to the wrong/right person, and they will make a note and when they get to rock bottom, you know who they're gonna call. The guy who promised anything. We say anything because it'd be impractical to run down a menu of things you will, thoughtfully, agree to. We're lazy in our conversation, so we plug in anything, even say it with great sincerity, until the moment the agreement shows up at your front door needin' a place to live. Not browbeating, just sayin'…
It is perhaps not fair that the receiving party has all the responsibility in the experiment I've suggested. Asking someone outright if they can be trusted is one thing—what usually happens is people create trusting relationships with little real thought about what they are asking/being asked. They are indulging the cardinal sin of assuming. In those inexplicit situations, the receiver has to do the rundown on themselves, with no understanding of the thought processes the sender may have gone through before asking. I think it's incumbent on developing human beings to learn how to be more explicit in the process of establishing trust.
It's time to rewrite the rules, and when I say it's time? I mean it's due AND also that the world that will be left behind by the coronavirus is gonna have the opportunity to rewrite the rules.
Please be my guest and use this or your own thought experiments to check the reality around you. 'Cause I don't trust much of anything in the current environment, least of all the information coming out of the White House. In the time of coronavirus, trust is a fragile thing, and what's been done to it by politics is inexcusable.
Watch out who you trust. Think about learning to accept.
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