The Personal Side of the Shadow of Broken Trust
Not everyone who’s present at our group conversations is having these issues of not being able to find the ability to discern what’s true for them. There’s a section of us who are centered in our own knowing, accessing our own information. While outside sources continue to interest us, the last word on all things is coming from inside us, telling us what is and what’s not important and/or true for us.
While I can’t speak for anyone else, what follows is my personal journey of how I myself found my broken trust and the roots of it. This section is sharing that journey with you. May it find some of you out there and give a hint on at least one way that this can be viewed and resolved on a personal level.
When exploring these questions of trust and access to truth in myself, I’m given a review of my lifespan, even previous lifespans. There’s certainly no problem finding dozens and dozens of incidents of broken promises, manipulations, lies, and betrayal. Is it any wonder that the feelings of betrayal and resentment run so deep?
Yet, I’m looking for the original wound here, the very root of this betrayal, the cause that doesn’t reside outside of me. I’m looking for what’s in way of my ability to know. If the reason that I cannot trust is outside me, then I’m helpless to do anything about it. Instantly, this makes me a victim, and there’s nothing left to do but blame, fume, and despair. Because I’m looking in a way that I can do something about, the buck stops here, with me.
So, what exactly is this shadow? It’s said that our unclaimed, abandoned, unconscious shadow is filled with intense, creative, and potent energies. This highly creative shadow of mine will point the finger at my government, my society, my upbringing, and so forth, but wait a minute… Isn’t this just another round of blame disguised as truth and intelligence?
It’s easy enough to articulate snappy and snarky criticisms without offering any solutions, it sounds intelligent, and yet… Placing blame on persons or experiences that played a part in betraying my trust is not going to remove the problem I have with not being able to trust. In no way has placing blame solved anything, at any time, for any reason, or for anyone. This includes the blame we place on ourselves.
Since this issue is rooted deep inside of me, regardless of where it came from, who is now responsible for dealing with my broken trust, my lack of a foundation for clarity, and my access (or not) to Source and knowing?
In my search for the root of and the origin of this betrayal of trust, what I found was something I never expected to find. It was a truth so hidden, so primal, and so personal that it shook the very foundations of my beliefs, my perceptions, and my interactions with the world around me. What I found was the original betrayal of trust was between me and myself.
The key to the door leading back to trusting myself again was finding the willingness to discard everything that was untrue in order to glean what was left. Leaving off on the blaming made it possible to understand that in order for this betrayal to happen in the first place, I had to be willing to disregard the deep knowing within me for some outside source. It doesn’t matter what that source was.
So long as I remained willing to mistrust my own ability to perceive what is real, what is true, what is actually happening, both within me and in the world around me, then there is no trust possible at all. Not for me. Not about anything. I wasn’t consciously aware of this, and masking this reality inside me were the beliefs that there was someone or something else to blame. Attached to this root were other beliefs as well.
What I’m talking about here are the beliefs that foster the idea that it’s intelligent to for me to remain stuck in my head, with the polarity of ideas rolling around, without the slightest hope of ever having enough information to know decisively whether they are true or not. (Right here is where the masters of disinformation have the last laugh.)
After spending decades in miserable frustration, even depression from doing this, I found what I consider to be the biggest untruth of all, the idea that truth can be known from the mind at all. Within the mind there’s always another swing from one polarity to the other. There’s no pathway mentally to come to a feeling of certainty. What there is is a mental loop going around and back again, with no way to dispel doubt.
It amazed me to find the level of rage, grief, and boiling resentment that was released behind the surrender of this belief that my mind could know with certainty, without doubt. It took a time of sitting with this before it occurred to me to go even deeper in order to see what was behind these feelings instead of just being really, really miffed about it.
It wasn’t a picnic to feel these intensely negative feelings, and it was made even worse by the revelation that I was responsible for them in the first place. The primary betrayal was the betrayal of my own trust in myself.
But childhood must end some time, and there’s no way out of childishness and immaturity other than personal responsibility. Movement has to start somewhere and my own movement couldn’t be generated from outside of me.
The story doesn’t end here with this primary revelation either. This was only the beginning of the work that had to be done in order to heal the breach of trust and the hurt feelings between me and me. Work that no one else could ever do, for who has access to the innermost regions of myself except me? Divine Grace only, and there was and is plenty of that I can tell you.
Rebuilding the trust between me and myself required first the willingness to be done with and release all the beliefs and ideas that separated me from myself. It required that I find the courage to step out of the loop of frustration in my mind and face the feelings that were separating me from my own heart space. The more I gave unconditional love to myself and the more I trusted myself, the more able I have become to know, really know, what it is that I was experiencing. No one can know for me. I can only know for myself.
It wasn’t until I surrendered the untruth represented by the thought that I could mentally figure out everything (or anything for that matter) to any satisfactory level of knowing that I had this revelation, the revelation that it’s my heart that knows, and not my head.
If there’s a question of trust, I check within, deep in my heart. My feelings tell me what’s true for me. Many times there’s a definitive answer, and sometimes there isn’t, but either way, there’s a balanced place in my inner heart space that allows me to observe as I go, without the endless mental looping trying to figure it out.
The astounding truth is that it is only from the heart that I can feel and know anything of any consequence and clarity. After this, if I look for evidence, I always find it.
Once my ability to trust was re-established, the confusion over who’s right and who’s wrong dissolved, as this doesn’t matter. The longing for clarity, for truth, and the question of whom to follow soon disappeared as well. Goodbye to resentment and blame, for there’s no one responsible for my experience except me.