Having trust in anything requires courage. This is because it is a leap of faith. You surrender your thoughts and rely on your intuition. You give up the need to justify yourself. You give up wanting to prove yourself to anyone. You accept yourself exactly as you are. You exercise your mind and insist that the internal chatter is to quieten itself. We have the power to decide and do that. You become comfortable with the silence of an empty mind. You know that the ego is the enemy of trust.
You may be wondering, “Why is the ego the enemy of trust?” It is because the ego feels like it knows the truth of anything and everything. In fact, the only reliable truth is that we know nothing. There is your truth, my truth and the real truth. If you believe I have bad intentions, it reflects upon you and your intentions, it does not reflect upon me. If I wish to see the best of each person I encounter without any expectations, I can never be disappointed. If someone wishes malice, their malice will shine forth and breed contempt within them. We all interpret what we wish according to our internal makeup: inner makeup, outer refinement.
Our individual journeys are our own. The people who walk next to us during this journey end up being those that accept us with our truths. We do not walk closely next to those who wish to impose their truths on us. We wish them peace, and we choose to surround ourselves with like-minded people who understand us and who share our notion of freedom and ultimate universal truth. It requires strength not to seek validation from familiarity but to seek it in the unknown, deep within the universe and within us.
Does this mean we do not trust those who do not agree with us? No. It means we respect their opinion, and we respect their boundaries. We trust that each is functioning from the highest good within each one of them and allow them the freedom to be who they are. That is trust in itself. We may observe things we do not agree with, but this does not challenge us. We maintain healthy boundaries. We give them freedom, and we take ours. Why do they have to agree with us? Who are we to claim we have the ultimate truth? We are humble and ever-inquisitive to learn about the realities of others. Would this not be absolute bliss if we could all do this?
Trust at this point turns into intuition. Do people have to agree with us? Absolutely not - we need to find a place within us where we may interact peacefully with those different to us. It does not mean they are not trustworthy. We need to find the areas within which we may interact calmly and respectfully. We regard the differences with deference and focus on the similarities. We allow for the dissimilarities to be a part of the melody that creates a flow between us and create advantages rather than disadvantages. We allow them to teach us about how others may view things with the knowledge of how wide the spectrum of opinion is. We build our tolerance to accept others as they are.
This is where the topic of Ego must be detailed. If someone’s ego is prevalent, his or her focus is on being right. Truth or even ambivalence becomes irrelevant to them. If their agenda is to be right, do we allow them their freedom to want to be right rather than challenge them and just agree to disagree? Should this not be the right manner to handle with respect? Or is it our ego that awakens wishing to impose our truth? What lesson have we learnt if this is the manner in which we get triggered? To be the peaceful person of integrity, we allow them their sovereignty, and we maintain ours. We can still get along, each respecting the other’s opinion.