What it Means to Trust: Thoughts on Growth and Listening to the Voice of Your Soul
There is a space between the pushing and the pulling insanity of the world around us that we can sink into if we trust. A way of living outside of striving and fixing. A form of growth that is natural and cyclical, like the seasons of trees losing leaves and resting, and then blooming again each spring.
Trust creates the place where peace lives.
Trust does not mean faith, although they are related. To come from trust does not mean to believe in God, or the Universe, or another spiritual presence, or even to have faith that everything is happening according to some divine plan, although you may believe in one or more of these things, and therefore trust.
To me trust simply means to peacefully be with and create from what is, exactly as it is. Radical acceptance of the wholeness of life. To trust in the intelligence of things exactly as they are means to trust in how things got to be where they are, and to trust in where they are going.
Trust requires taking responsibility for our own part in the conversation of life. Trust asks us to listen to and live from the part of ourselves that knows how to partake in this conversation. I call this part of us our soul. You may call it your intuition, your inner knowing, or the part of you that can communicate with the divine.
Whatever you call it, this is the part of you that is connected in to all life: past, present and future. It is connected to a deeper truth that flows through everything. We have all had moments when we have just known what to do or to say, or when we have sensed something was wrong, and then found out someone we loved had died. This is the part of us that simply knows.
Listening to this part of us does not mean that we will always get what we want. In fact, sometimes it will mean we get just the opposite: the thing we wanted least. This is because the more surface level part of us, the ego self, that is constantly shouting at us all of the things that we want, is not connected in to the deeper conversation of our soul. If we are willing to let go of our expectations when we don’t get what we want, and to move through whatever thoughts and emotions come up for us, we will likely find that what we got was exactly what we needed to become more of who we are.
And that is what this is all about. Our soul simply wants us to be who we are in the world. To be and to do and to experience all of the things that only we can in this lifetime. Our soul came here for a reason, and that is it.
The more we learn to listen to and to create our lives from this deeper place, the more life will align with what we seek to create. Trust is what creates space for us to access that deeper voice.
Yesterday I was at a talk by David Whyte, a poet and philosopher I follow, and prior to reciting a piece by the late poet and activist Antonio Machado, he said, the poem “was so deeply private it actually belonged to everyone in the end.” The poem is called Last Night as I Was Sleeping” – a heartfelt piece written by Machado after years of self-imposed exile following the sudden death of the love of his life. It is beautiful, and timeless, and if translated, would likely resonate with most people on earth.
The deeply private place from which Machado wrote that poem is the place I am speaking about. It is the place I believe that all great writing, all great art of any form, and all great ideas come from: a place that belongs to us all.
This is the place that shook me awake and reminded me that I love to write. This is the place that took me on a journey of self discovery and healing. This is the place that had me leave law and pursue life coaching and poetry. And this is the place that had me return to law and sink into all that is my life. This is the place I often write from, especially when my writing is poetic. This is the place where I find peace when life gives me the opposite of what I want.
This is the place we can all access when we trust. The place that knows what to say or to do or to create despite that our conscious mind may not understand it. To listen to that voice when we don’t fully understand, requires trust.
Trust offers peace. It creates space for joy, and it holds the invitation of a way forward, in painful and uncertain times. Trust is a beautiful way to live, one that I am practicing more deeply all the time.
xo,
Danielle