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  by David Truman |
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| Spiritual growth is built of "leaps of faith." But in a climate of distrust, people are too fearful to be spiritually adventurous. They have so little trust and faith in themselves, others, God, and the Universe Process that they simply will NOT take the kind of leaps necessary for their higher dreams to be fulfilled. They are too distrustful of their own judgment to believe they could live on the basis of their own intuition. | ||||||||||||
| Spiritual enlightenment is a team sport; it takes a spiritual village to raise a spiritual child. Therefore, if distrust is hard on human relationships, it's even harder on spiritual growth. Modern trends toward distrust have not only caused a substantial breakdown of the true comfort and trusting spirit of human association, they've also caused the breakdown of the collaborative effort that spiritual evolution has almost always been in the past. | ||||||||||||
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Human cooperative community -- in virtually every form -- was an early casualty of the modern crisis of trust. Secular cooperative communities -- intentional families of like-minded souls, communes and the like -- are practically extinct, remnants of a HIGHER bygone age -- like Atlantis. Similarly, though a few spiritual communities can still be found, monasteries and ashrams were much larger and more prevalent in the past. Spiritual communities of all kinds will be even smaller and scarcer tomorrow.
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| There ARE still a few good people and places worthy of finding, and worthy of commitment. But that doesn't matter too much if people are too scared to jump. | ||||||||||||
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Viable candidates for spiritual community are also a vanishing breed, because only a person who can trust has sufficient faith -- in self, others, and God -- to make substantial changes in life, and to jump at new opportunities such as joining a spiritual community. As we said, people today are increasingly distrusting even of their own intuitive knowingness, and therefore, MUCH less inclined to make ANY kind of leap. Add to that the fact that there are fewer and fewer spiritual havens to make a leap TO. Then factor in the consideration of how good those places may or may not be, how worthy of trust, how stable and viable they may be, etc. No wonder we see a lot of people LOOKING, but few FINDING.
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| Will a person who is, in fact, Divinely led somewhere actually follow through? Not when you have brain over God, fear over intuition. In that case, people will throw away whatever they are guided to, and continue to do their lonely little thing. Stay at home. Lick their wounds. Watch TV, and count their cash. Take out some insurance. It is completely common for people to say out front that they have been Divinely led to a wisdom source like LoveTrust, and mean every word of it. In many cases, it is probably true. But then, within a matter of weeks, they eat those words, and take off in fear. They have actually overridden the answer God gave to their own prayers. | TOP | |||||||||||
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Thanks to distrust, they miss another chance to be freed of the shackles of their own misunderstandings and led into the love light by the merciful and providential system of their own inner guidance. And that, for the time being at least, is the end of the line, because their own inner voice is completely drowned out by their fearful, habitual mind stuff.
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People who have made a great leap in the past often say that that choice was a big mistake. Quite possibly, they are giving themselves far too little credit for the outcome when they say the leap itself was wrong! They may have been right in making the leap, but then ruined that opportunity themselves with runaway fear and irrational blame. They may never have trusted their chosen situation enough to find out what it really was. Or perhaps they simply exhausted the educational opportunity that it provided; perhaps it was simply time to graduate to a new venue.
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| People don't have to say that a decision which had SOME merit was ALL bad. And even in the rare case that it WAS all bad, the only thing they've lost is a little time. They still have their freedom of action and freedom of choice remaining. But sadly, we live in an age of wimps who doubt they can recover from anything that goofs up in ANY way, for ANY reason. People aren't bold enough to consider that they can change their mind, they can outgrow a DECENT choice, they can learn a HELPFUL lesson. People aren't discerning enough to see that something can be good in some ways and not good in others. | ||||||||||||
| When we live by fear, our insurance has to have insurance; we need redundant protection on anything. When we live in fear, about all we seem to learn from anything is what NOT to do in the future. Every time we do something, we nail down another negative lesson about what to avoid next time. By that method, we become further and further painted into our own corner, gradually ruling out virtually every decent option for our life. There's no real positive advancement in that; it's a downwards spiral. | ||||||||||||
| By these means, people are reduced to relatively meaningless decisions: "What apartment should I rent; what job should I take; what car should I buy; what movies should I watch?" Meanwhile, they avoid, as much as possible, the kinds of real decisions that could change their lives: "Whom should I marry? How can I incorporate the values of spiritual community into my life? From whom can I learn spiritual truths?" THOSE decisions have the fire, the potential, and the force to make a REALLY profound, worthwhile, and positive difference in the person's life. But it's THOSE decisions the usual person today doesn't feel willing to make, empowered to make, or capable of making. In this age of brute paranoia, most people are now thoroughly convinced that ALL such meaningful decisions are profoundly unwise, unsafe, dangerous, foolish. | ||||||||||||
| Now you begin to see what a profound effect the erosion of faith and trust has on virtually all the choices that can make real spiritual/emotional difference in people's lives. Distrust seriously hurts everyone -- even those who do not aspire to intimate human relationships, having focused all their aspirations on spiritual growth. The crisis of distrust handicaps the spiritual evolution of humanity as a whole, and hampers individual prospects for achieving true and lasting spiritual gains. It must be solved. DO IT! | ||||||||||||
| [For more information about solving the problem of distrust, see "In Distrust We Trust?"] by David Truman Please feel free to share copies of this article. |
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