QA232 QUESTION: All the times in my life when I begin to believe, are in situations that bring me close to the brink of disaster. I thank you very much for the answer you gave to the other person [Anxiety while waiting for sentencing]. I felt it had a lot of meaning for me, and I know that in areas in my life where I’ve allowed myself to trust, that my life has worked beautifully and I’ve worked beautifully with it. I do feel a lack of trust in having relationships, in knowing that I can think with feeling, and in having abundance and being financially stable. I wish you would comment on this.

ANSWER: Yes. I would like to say to you that this trust I speak about – trust in life, trust in self, trust in a benign universe – is truly the most courageous act imaginable. As strange as it may seem, offhand, distrust and fear are apparently safe because you never have to make that jump into a no man’s land, where you wait for an unknown result. And if that is rejected, the unknown situations will come to you forcefully so that you will have to go through that anxiety.

In other words, when you declare your trust, there will be a time period in which you will not know whether your trust was justified, where you’ll be put to the test, where it will not immediately manifest. Because there is a time gap between the cause of your declaration of trust, the choice of trusting, and the effect of it. And in that time gap, you are being tested; your faith is being tested.

It will then require you to deal with this anxiety and choose again and again to trust, and to do what is the loving truthful thing – for its own sake, regardless of whether it will yield desirable results. For trust can only be established that way to begin with. Because if you cannot be trusted, how can you trust anything else or anyone else?

You demand results because that is more important than your decent or loving or committed act. When you are willing to possibly sacrifice an advantage for the sake of your integrity and the truth of the specific action or incident or situation, you will trust yourself. And out of that, trust in the universe will arise.

But when you do not trust yourself because secretly you maintain the little back doors and safeguards, you can never trust. Then the gap over that no man’s land of courage can never be made, and you must believe in the worst, reflecting your belief of yourself. Do you see this?

There is only one way, my friend, to experience the utter trustworthiness of the universe. And that is when you become utterly trustworthy on the deepest level, even though no one may praise you for it; no one may notice it; no one may have the slightest notion of what you do in the secrecy of your hidden thoughts and intentions. That trustworthiness is the grounding of security you yearn for, and that alone will make bliss acceptable.

QUESTION: [Another person] My life is opening up to my work, but I feel I am at a crossroads right now in my further, deeper commitment to the Path and with the church in which I am very much involved. And it’s causing me a lot of pain. I really would like some comment and help with this.

ANSWER: Actually, the answer I have just given really covers this question too. This double track is really your way of saying, “I want to be absolutely sure I have an ‘in’ everywhere, and I want to avoid investing all of myself into the truth of my inner being. That may be too risky or too costly. So I want to have the assurance of some other ways that may not be so costly.” That is really the expression, and I needn’t say anything further. This is the battle you have to go through, seeing it on that very simple level.

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