unseen dimension provides. Trusting your heart space is imperative for the growth of a healthy spiritual life.
This means cultivating a harmony between mind and heart, and for most of us this means terminating the intellect’s domination. The mind must surrender its role as full-time judge and allow the heart to contribute its wisdom. It is with this surrendering process that trust begins to flourish, replacing doubt.
Mistrust begins early in most human beings’ lives. It is helpful to realize why it is that the heart space has not been permitted to be the center of our being. Here are two theories describing our place in nature. I think you will agree that the first theory illuminates why mistrust of ourselves and our divine abilities is so deeply rooted.
TWO THEORIES OF NATURE THAT AFFECT OUR ABILITY TO TRUST
First Theory: Nature as a Mechanism
In the mechanistic view of nature, everything is an artifact made by a boss who has many different names. In the Western view, the boss is called God.
This God is often depicted as a white-bearded male who roams around the sky creating the natural world. In this theory, the world is a construct and God the constructor. This biblical God is paternal, authoritarian, beneficent and, in many ways, tyrannical. He keeps track of all things and knows precisely what everyone does and when his laws are being broken.
One of the operatives of this theory of nature is the idea of punishment for one’s sins. This God/father holds us accountable for transgressions. The transgressions are judged by various interpreters of his laws who throughout history have claimed access to the divine. Essentially, the universe is a monarchy, God the king and we the subjects. All subjects are considered born with the stain of sin as a part of their nature and are therefore untrustworthy.
This theory of nature makes many people feel estranged, creating an attitude of separateness from the boss. The more we feel separated from this God, the more we feel the need to create some way of feeling worthy. So we create an idea of our importance based on externals and call it “ego.”
Reliance on ego ultimately leads to more separation as life becomes a contest and a competition with designated others. But the sense of estrangement is partially assuaged with an ego-directed attitude of “us against them.” People are categorized and evaluated on the basis of “egonomics,” which includes appearance, tradition, language and physical characteristics.
I believe that the most troubling thing built into this theory of nature is the impact it has on our ability to operate from a strong position of self-trust. Once convinced that you are untrustworthy and basically a sinner, you are quite lost. If you are untrustworthy, how can you trust in even your untrustworthiness? You can’t!
Everything becomes subject to doubt when God is a vindictive boss. This leads to the confusion of doubting everything because our opinions, feelings and beliefs are untrustworthy. In this scenario, one cannot even maintain trust in God because of a basic mistrust of ourselves. And not trusting in that God may be breaking one of his laws. It is a no-win situation.
This theory of the untrustworthiness of nature, popular as it is, is absolutely incompatible with the second principle of manifestation. You cannot tune into the power and energy of the universe to create and attract an abundant life if that energy and power is outside you.
Second Theory: Nature as Spontaneous and Nonjudging
In this spontaneous view, God is universal intelligence flowing through everything, inspiring the natural process to unfold. The emphasis is on awareness of the divine nature in everything rather than managing and controlling the natural world. The life force is nonjudgmental and is responsible for all creation.
In this theory, nature is an unforced unfolding of life forms and there is no “boss.” Rather than learning to manage and control the natural world, the impulse is to trust it. God, in this theory, loves all things.
Human beings are an aspect of this God and are, therefore, carriers of divinity. Generally, in this theory, human beings are considered the highest level of life form. Trusting this most evolved natural human includes trusting the paradox of behavior described as good and bad, selfish and unselfish, greedy and generous in the same manner as we respect other life forms by trusting their processes.
There is no need to invent an ego that is separate from the divine if our basic human nature is trusted. If we trust ourselves, we know how to avoid interfering with nature and how to live in harmony. When we know God as an unseen, loving and accepting power at the heart of everything, allowing us to make our own choices, then God is a trusted part of our nature.
I believe that our nature is much more reliable than our thoughts. This second principle directs us to develop an inner knowing so that the natural process of what we desire also desires us. Consider how our biological system attracts what is needed for hair to grow, food to digest, fingernails to be hard or breasts to be soft without our thoughts directing the process. Thinking can often lead us astray, while our nature unfolds in the form of amazingly well-functioning bodies and minds. When you trust this natural process, you begin to trust the nature of all things. The God within all informs your trusting response to life.
The order of nature itself is sometimes crooked and sometimes straight. It is wiggly and unorthodox, as seen in the shapes of clouds or mountains. They are not in any pattern that we can perceive, and they are perfect. When we insist on controlling nature, we are interfering with nature.
The need to straighten out nature shows distrust. But when we relax and embrace the infinite variations of the universe, we are allowing the divinity of nature to flow and unfold through our life. We have tuned in to the divine.
Think of yourself as a consciousness being played out by God just as a wave is a part of the ocean that is being played out by the ocean. This theory of nature will promote the kind of trust that you need to attract to yourself all that belongs to you in the universe. This unseen, divine energy is the ocean that your wave form is a part of. You can call it God, ocean or, for that matter, anything else.
This is a profoundly exquisite realization because with it you bring to your consciousness the inner awareness that you are actually in all things. This leads to miraculous manifestations, in that you are actually connected to all that you desire to manifest, and finally you know this to be your truth.
BEING IN ALL THINGS AT ONCE
Authentic trust is only available through the knowing heart. When you enter this trusting space, everything will come to you that belongs to you because you have created the inner capacity to receive it. The irony is that what you wish to receive is a part of you. This can be a troublesome concept to grasp because of the ego’s attachment to being separate and special.
Nothing in your rational mind could ever convince you that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. It appears to be a fluid that flows and has nothing to do with gases. But when we subject water to scrutiny, its constituent elements become manifest. And so it is with the idea of being in all things at once.
Nothing in our everyday experience gives us much reason to believe that our mind has as one of its constituents something invisible that is in all living things. Yet when we examine our life force, using quantum mechanics, we find that this energy is, indeed, not a particle but a wave that is the same in all life.
You trust in the universal energy when you accept this “irrational” fact: At your basic core you are not only worthy of trust, but you are the life force that
