LEARNING TO TRUST

During my world tour each year as a spiritual teacher, I spend time talking with people who are on their spiritual path. They often mention to me that they are learning to trust. I usually ask them if they actually know what trust is. The honest ones quickly admit that they do not, while a few come up with a variety of answers which prove that they, also, have no idea.

I find this interesting. Most people can give you an intellectual explanation of trust, yet they have never actually experienced it! An encyclopedic description of trust is not trust, just as the jam label description on the jam jar is not jam! This is obvious when pointed out, yet multitudes of people are trying to learn to trust, but they do not know what trust is! They only have the label. How can we expect to learn from this? Surely if we want to learn something, we need to know the basics of it. It is difficult to learn to trust when we live in a world that does not support trust? Society supports suspicion and distrust; laws are based in this. We do not live in a society of people who have lost their trust – we live in a society who have never yet learned what trust truly is.