It’s Not About Trusting the Process (Part 1)

The Origins

In the beginning, there was nothing, ancient Hindu and Buddhist scriptures cite, except stillness, all-pervading darkness… a black void. Suddenly, a deep reverberating sound emanated from the depths of this void- A-U-M (also Om or Ohm). The vibrations of the sound caused movement, and forms began to take shape and burst out. Creation began. Time was born.

The Biblical texts cite – “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. [2]And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. [3] And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

Now imagine another scenario.

In the beginning was utter blackness, a void. And the void or Creator/Consciousness considered saying A-U-M or considered saying out loud ‘Let there be light.’ And then consciousness wondered ‘What if I can’t say AUM? And why AUM? What is AUM? I’ll sound mad if I Say AUM!’ Or, ‘Can I say, Let there be light? What if there is no light? Does the light exist at all? Oh! Do I exist?’

The second scenario sounds like a bad story and definitely a story you wouldn’t read. Actually, you wouldn’t read because if the second scenario had occurred, you wouldn’t even be existing!

Thankfully that didn’t happen! And here you are. Very much existing. Alive.

There’s just one difference between the first and second scenarios.

Consciousness/God/Source/the Being or the Force field did not ‘consider’ or second guess. An intention was born within the Being. Then from a space of absolute self-trust, self-confidence, and self-assuredness, the related sound/command emerged. From the sound/words, movement or action burst out in the form of worlds, universes, and galaxies. The movement was the beginning of creation.

The seed from which creation erupted was Self-Trust.

Trust in Self, in the love of the Self, is the web that holds universes and galaxies in space.

It is this Trust of the Absolute or God in HimSelf/HerSelf/ItSelf which keeps existence in all of creation going. The basis of life in any form is Trust. All else is a reflection of that Trust.

How to Enter the Pure Self-Trusting State?

Truly I say to you, unless you change and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 18:3, The Bible

‘I do not trust myself!’ This is a common thought that most people engage with these days.

This could be you if you have conditioned yourself into trusting the sensory experiences of the external world above your inner world. In that case, you have forgotten “As within, so without.” You’ve forgotten that everything happening around you originates first within you. Too much entanglement and attachment to the world of forms, has shifted your Trust from the Self to the temporal forms. 

What was earlier a natural trait is now covered in layers of conditionings, beliefs, and mental programmings, so much so that Self-Trust now seems to be something far away. 

Some people even conclude they don’t ‘have’ Trust! That is not possible because every Being’s existence is proof of Trust and Self-love.

You’re born of Trust. You cannot exist without it. It is inherent in you. The very body you live in operates on Trust without you having to manage its functions like breathing, blood flow, etc.

But, towards which direction is your Trust pointed? Where have you placed it?

Most people do not realize that they chose to direct their Trust where they do not want to go instead of where they want to go. That their Trust is coloured or contaminated by the fears and doubts born of the external world’s conditionings.

Similarly, Self-love is also very much present within. It is just that weighed down by layers of fear, anxiety, overthinking, and limiting beliefs, it expresses itself distortedly.

For Trust to surface in its pure, potent, childlike, unconditioned form, all that you need to do is take two steps.

The first one is letting go.

Letting Go – The First Step

Freedom means letting go. People just do not care to let go of everything. They do not know that the finite is the price of the infinite, as death is the price of immortality. Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything. The giving up is the first step.

Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj (I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Letting go or giving up includes:

• Letting your thoughts pass by: Stop trusting your thoughts, especially those your mind clings to. Let the thoughts come and go. If you try clinging onto floating clouds, you’ll fall anyway. A cloud’s job is to float by. You don’t run after clouds. You simply observe the clouds floating regardless of what shape they take. Similarly, observe the thoughts pass by. Do not engage.
  
  
• Not Believing your conditioned Self: This includes societal and cultural beliefs, the voice of your ego self, overanalysis, overthinking, etc. With daily meditative and mindfulness practices, let go of the belief that you are the conditioned self. In fact, that is not the Self at all! Based on the stories you have concocted about who you think you are, all your logical reasonings take you further away from the Self and  Self-Trust. Logical reasoning and beliefs do not make good companions for Self-Trust. In their presence, the Self and Self-Trust fall silent.
  
  

• Not Believing your wavering mind: Your mind is your minion, not your master.
  “The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.” – Robin Sharma
  The mind constantly wavers. Its job is to plan and calculate based on what it has already experienced and is familiar with. It gets disturbed when it encounters something unknown. That is when it starts spinning stories based on prior familiar experiences to satisfy itself and the Ego-self with explanations that it can believe and is comfortable with.
  Understand that the mind needs to be in a familiar zone. But your dreams, your desires do not reside in the familiar. They reside in the unknown.
  If you follow the mind, you’ll never be able to get close to your dreams because the mind will keep you stuck in the familiar. But if you lead the mind by directing it to plan out the action steps you need to take towards your goal then you’ve given it the right job. Left on its own, the mind will question everything, inject you with fears of the unknown where your desire resides, and become a blocker.
  
  Since the mind is a follower of the familiar it will drag you around repeatedly in circles all your life. This happens because you choose to identify with it and run after it in circles, much like a hamster in a wheel. In doing so, you summon the same experiences in life over and over, again, like the movie GroundHog’s Day depicts. You also term that as “repetitive patterns” and know the patterns as  “abandonment,” “cheating,” “rejection,” etc.
  This is the wheel of time, also known as “Karma,” the wheel of attachment, that you need to break out of. You can do this easily by understanding the role of the mind and the role of the heart and keeping the mind in its boundary. It’s when you don’t understand the roles that the mind gets in the heart’s way and resistance arises. To understand the roles read on below, though I would like to forewarn you that the section below is a short digression from the main topic. However, I felt the need to make the roles clear here.
  If you wish to skip the section below and move directly to the second step, click here: Part 2.

The Heart Shows the Way, the Mind Plans the Journey

Your heart’s job is to let you know of all the unfamiliar, unknown, touchpoints, also known as desires, that you need to experience to awaken parts or aspects of you that are asleep, deep within the unconscious. For that matter, every heart’s desire you have is a calling to unravel an unexplored dormant part of you which the God-self wants to experience through you.

The heart makes you aware of a desire and also knows the way because it is the center of intuition. The mind does not know the way but knows how to plan one step at a time and take one bit of action at a time. The inspiration for the action though, comes from within, from the heart again if you may. The one who calculates and plans the steps is the mind.

Since it is the mind’s job to plan, when a desire arises from the heart, the mind immediately becomes active and begins questioning the ‘when’ and the ‘how.’ This is because the mind only seeks answers based on the familiar. It gets confused about how to materialize a desire that seems so unfamiliar, so unknown! The mind goes into overdrive. And this is where most people slip if they identify with the mind too much. Because then they actively engage with all the doubts and fears that arise.

From here it gets comical.

Chaos ensues when a desire arises from the heart, and people start running after the mind!

It’s like the north star is beckoning clearly from the North, but they’re running towards the South!

They start running after all the hows, the whats, and the what-ifs and get overwhelmed. Then they may as well write an obituary for the desire and finish the story even before it starts! It’s sad but true so many dreams, desires, and wishes get killed this way, and people are left with regrets. And yet the reason is so comical. So, separate yourself from the mind.

Remember, you are not the mind. Drop it. Let it follow you. Let it plan for you.
But you give it the goal to plan for.

Once you become clear and let go of the baggage, you begin your actual journey in pure Self-Trust. You’ll find that Self-Trust was waiting for you patiently all along to catch up!

What is the second step? Let’s take a look at that in Part 2 of this article.

(The featured artwork above is by Chaerul Umam. You can view his artwork @ https://www.facebook.com/ChaerulUmamPhotography/ and also @ https://www.artlimited.net/7332)