“In God We Trust.”  It says so, right on our money here in the US of A. This statement is actually the official motto of the United States – but you’d never know it based on how we act.

God is often the last person on the trust phone-tree – He’s the break-glass-in-case-no-one-else-can–come-through-for-me guy. Like calling your ex-boyfriend, or the dude who really likes you but you don’t want to ask for help from because he might expect something or want more of a relationship. Like, if you trust God, now you’re gonna owe Him.

Human babies learn to trust by having their needs met on a consistent basis. Like, 24/7 for 9 or so months hanging out in the cozy, warm oneness of the womb – their personal hot-tub – complete with constant room service… and then, boom! The WTF? shock of going from having every need completely taken care of to being unceremoniously ejected into the blinding, bright, freezing-cold world – naked, alone, and with a smack on the butt, no less – having no idea where the next meal or anything else is coming from.

First chink in the trust armor.

Many of us continue to have the experience that our needs aren’t met, and from that we form the belief that they therefore won’t be, and thus learn not to trust.

We learn to believe that we have to protect ourselves, to mistrust others because they have the power to harm us. And will use it.

We somehow also learn not to trust God – we wind up with all kinds of dysfunctional egoic bullsh*t ideas that keeping us from placing our faith in the only power that actually exists.

Before I continue, a brief FYI: I am a teacher who swears. My style is irreverently reverent and spiritually sassy, and my language unapologetically reflects the blue shades of colorful.

When I ask people why they don’t trust God, I hear things like because He either makes bad sh*t happen or allows it. Because he didn’t answer my prayer. He let me be abused. He took my loved one. He didn’t get me out of whatever situation I was in, or let me have whatever it was I wanted.

I also hear it’s because there’s no proof. Proof that there is a Presence, and that that Presence is tuned in to us, is a source for us. Proof that He will be there. That He will help us.

Basically, God makes bad decisions, hasn’t proven Himself, and is never around when you need Him.

So we don’t trust.

We instead put our faith in ourselves, and into what can be “proven.” Like, by using the five senses. Which is really hilarious, because in the thought system of A Course in Miracles, all five of the senses we are supposed to rely on to tell us the truth only exist in a fake body in a dream. The senses our ego minds have made up are just another example of our belief in separation and how it plays out in the body.

In reality we have no need to interpret a world, or to protect ourselves from danger in that world, because there is no danger and there is no world and there is nothing separate from us.

As A Course in Miracles states in lesson 132, “There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach.”

But that is not our experience, it is out of our awareness in time and space. But just because we can’t see truth doesn’t make it untrue, any more than not seeing the sun when it’s cloudy and rainy and crappy out means it’s not shining.

Word, bro. But in order for us to be able to wake up to that reality that God is always with us, that we never left Him or our true home  – we need to get ourselves to the state where we actually can awaken.

Ima go out on a limb here and say that we’re probably not going to awaken to our perfect, blissful Oneness with Spirit and all of our bros if we’re busy distrusting them all, and living in a consciousness of scarcity and aloneness and the idea that we have to protect ourselves all the time. Just saying.

When people tell me that they have trust issues, as soon as I ask why they think that, all I hear an answer that is essentially identifying themselves as victims and blaming someone in their lives. They were abused as children, or bullied by other kids or teachers, cheated on or lied to by someone they were in relationship with, or thrown under the bus by somebody, or otherwise victimized. I am not exempt from this, trust me (ha ha). I did that for years – ex-husbands, friends, bosses, father’s alcoholism, lack of education (parents), relationship issues, family financial legacy, and fill-in-the-f*cking-blank-whatEVER.

 

I am not suggesting that this is not many people’s experience in the world of form. I get it, it totally IS. The projected dream of the ego can seem very real to us.

However, the way out of the dream is to not stay in the dream.

I am reminding us that as students of A Course in Miracles, we are taught that there are two thought systems to choose between – that of fear, or the ego mind, which is false, and leads to the experience of suffering in countless forms – or that of love, or our authentic selves as Spirit, which is Truth, and leads to peace and the release of suffering in all forms.

When we identify with the ego mind aka put our faith and trust in the body’s eyes with regard to what happens in the world, the ego mind takes our experiences and makes meaning out of them, and then tells us that those “meanings” are the truth – about the world, people, ourselves, God.

The only problem with that whole set-up, and as A Course in Miracles teaches, it is a set-up – is that it leads to wrong-minded conclusions that actually have no resemblance to the truth whatsoever. Not only that, but it also sets us up in that if we erroneously believe these thoughts, they will create expectations on our part. As we focus our thoughts – powered by fear – consciously or unconsciously on these expectations, we draw the experiences into our energy field, in our dream.

As the Course teaches us in Lesson 16, “Everything you see is a result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact.”

How this translates is that whatever chronic thoughts we hold in our minds become our belief, and therefore, our experience.

So, paradoxically, the way in which we stop being victims of circumstances in which our trust is betrayed is to stop trusting that we will be betrayed.

If we are putting our trust in the ego world, in a thought system of fear, we are letting a part of our minds that thinks it is separate and alone be the boss of us – and guess what? That will then be our experience. If we are placing our faith in anything that is outside of ourselves, and by “ourselves” I mean the Self that always knows it is part of God – it is only a matter of time before whatever that thing is will betray us. If we are depending on the ego mind – which is itself based on a lie – to tell us the truth about itself, ourselves and our bros, we absolutely will be cheated, lied to, and betrayed. By the ego mind itself.

As A Course in Miracles says, the ego is vicious at best and suspicious at worst. That’s its range. I don’t know about you, but that is so not the guy I want making my life decisions for me.

So how do we undo all of the mistrust, the hurts, lies, heartbreak, betrayal, and the blame of all of the people and circumstances we hold responsible for them? How do we just become trusting, when so much in our experience has taught us to believe that we’ll be vulnerable and subject to harm – not to mention stupid, naive, abandoned, cheated on, screwed out of our life-savings, and probably serial-killed – if we do that?

The answer is, we trust God. Click To Tweet

It’s not that hard. It isn’t rocket science. (I always wonder what actual rocket scientists say when making these euphemisms. I hope it’s, “It’s not that hard…it’s not psychology.”)

What makes it seem hard is our resistance to it. We don’t want to trust. We don’t want to give up our allegiance to the ego mind. We want to be right, and our brother to be wrong. We want to be able to feel justified in our feelings – our anger, our victimhood. We want to see our brothers as guilty.

As A Course in Miracles teaches in Lesson 47, God is the strength in which I trust:

“If you are trusting in your own strength, you have every reason to be apprehensive, anxious, and fearful.”

Jeez, JBro, don’t sugarcoat it – give it to me straight.

Right? But He is basically telling us that whatever you put your faith in determines what will be your experience. If you align yourself with fear, you will have a fearful experience. If you see yourself as a victim of broken trust, that will be your experience. We are not actually victims of anything. As the Course teaches in Lesson 31, I am not the victim of the world I see, and Lesson 32, I have invented the world I see:

“You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up. You will see it or not see it, as you wish. While you want it, you will see it; when you no longer want it, it will not be there for you to see.”

So we trust God. Which means we trust love.

And trusting God and trusting love means insisting on looking not with the body’s eyes or the ego mind – it means looking with Spirit’s vision, over-looking any guilt you are holding in your mind about your bro and why you have trust issues.

If we insist on holding anyone responsible for our trust issues except our own desire to cling to them and keep making our brother wrong and guilty, we will not only never heal, we will continue to draw those painful experiences to ourselves . Put a simpler way, there is absolutely no way to heal our trust issues while continuing to believe we have a reason to have trust issues.

It becomes a clear choice to give it up. To say, “I’m done with this. I don’t have trust issues. My faith is in God, and I forgive everyone and everything else.” The End. Mic drop.

The Course reassures us of the Truth further in Lesson 32:

“God is your safety in every circumstance. His Voice speaks for Him in all situations, and in every aspect of all situations, telling you exactly what to do to call upon His strength and His protection.”

The Voice for God is identified in A Course in Miracles as the Holy Spirit. How we call upon Him is to just do that – in whatever way we can.

Ask to see the situation differently.

Put it on the altar.

Surrender it.

Let that sh*t go.

Say, “Jesus, take the wheel!”

The primary tool that the Course gifts us with in order to shift our perception from fear to love – which is all that is required in order to change our experience – is (you knew I’d get here eventually, right?) forgiveness. Forgiving not another, but our own false perception. It allows us to see with Christ vision, rather than through the guilt-projecting lens of fear. It opens our hearts and minds to remember the Truth of our brothers, so that we can reclaim the Truth of ourselves. When we do this, then we are in perfect Trust, incapable of being harmed.

So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take on the challenge of stopping going through your past to get to your present, and give up your trust issues to Spirit once and for all. It will change your life.

Thank you so much for being on this amazing awakening journey with me!

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And if this blog has inspired you to reconsider your decision to keep believing you have trust issues, I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment below. I love them and I read every one.

I love you, you are the light of the world.

Trust me.

Kelly

Rev Kelly Russell,

Transformational Life Coach, Psychotherapist & Teacher of A Course in Miracles