Sunday Contemplation # 44 Help Wanted. Trust Team Building In Progress.

Trust Is A Team Sport

Image by Sydney Michalski. Sydney writes the Nature Moments newsletter here on Substack. Her work is stunning…I hope you will take a moment to also check out her website. This particular picture of a Hermit Thrush comes from this beautiful article on Substack by Sydney.

• This Week’s Quote

• A G’day

• This Sunday’s Contemplation

• A Guided Meditation

• Grateful For

• This Week’s Community Chat

• Upcoming Activities

This Week’s Quote

No man is an island. We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity.

Thomas Merton - Christian Mystic 1915-1968

A G’day

Hello Everyone:

Thank you for joining me again this week. I really appreciate that you take time to read these things I write. My sincere hope is that these offerings are helpful to you and that we can together support the growth of wise communities in our world.

I wish you great peace this week.

I decided to write some more on trust this week. Trust for me is the day to day activity of inner wisdom. We are here to learn to build trust and to acquire the wisdom so that we make good decisions about who and what we should trust. Enduring trust requires us to dig deep into the resources of our inner wisdom, the wisdom of others and the Wisdom that is our birthright.

Of offer the following Sunday Contemplation for your consideration and I wish you peace.

Cheers,

This Sunday’s Contemplation

Who Is On Your Trust Team

I made the point in a recent article that trust is the lifeblood of our human existence. Without trust we cannot survive as a species.

Trust begins within each of us. Most of the work of learning to deeply trust ourselves, to trust others, and to become trustworthy, is inner work.

This work is profoundly challenging and continuous. It is the work of discovering who we really are. For this, we need help. That we need help is a wonderful thing! It is inner work that, without exception, requires us to build a support team.

Perhaps the biggest mistake made by the personal development and self-help industry is the notion that our personal development and the discovery of who we really are as human beings is an individual personal journey. In real terms this means that many millions of people attend retreats, workshops, webinars, follow teachers, read books and listen to podcasts on personal and inner development, and fall into a wilderness of little or no support between each “hit” of personal discovery.

Although it is true that much of our inner work, particularly in relation to trust is, by definition, personal and individual, the depth of that work, and the fruits of that work in the world, cannot be sustained individually. Trust is a team sport.

The first team you and I need to build is what I am going to call our inner trust team.

Each of us need the qualities of support characterised by the fingers on the hand diagram below. We each need someone we can love like a child or partner, without conditions. We need someone who loves us without conditions. We need someone whose wisdom can inform our life and experience. We need a friend or friends who will tell us like it is, because they love us. We each need someone or a belief system or view of life, to guide us when we need it.

These are the supporters you wish you could carry "in your pocket" for all difficult situations, just in case.

Please understand that there is no magic in the number five.

The magic is in the realisation that we need the support of others. This is not a weakness, but a surrender to the obvious. Without support we flounder. With support we thrive.

We need this inner trust team so that we can learn and practice the skills of trust and trustworthiness. We need to practice these skills in the safe container of those who love us and care for us. We can then take that practice into the rough and tumble of life and work beyond the safe container.

Take a moment to see how your trust team looks. Do you see any gaps in the level and the quality of support you have? My experience in this work tells me that the answer to that question for many of us…”yes there are gaps”.

If you are like most of us, and you have gaps, then contemplate the following to build your inner trust team:

• Leave your self judgement at the door. It is usually the first thing to discourage you and it builds the mountain of resistance to inviting these people into your life.

• Sometimes one person plays the part of more than one of these fingers. That is fine and OK, but don’t pretend “I have just one other that gives me all of that support you are talking about”. If I was your friend I would call BS on you.

• In my work I have heard some say…”God gives me all of that support I need”. Again, if I was a real friend to you, I would call BS on you. We are designed to need other humans.

• Take some quiet time to do an honest review of the support you actually have. On each finger, should you have a gap, ask a couple of questions:

  • What is my inner fear(s) that prevents me reaching out to someone for that?

  • Who could I ask for that help? That is, help in providing the kind of support you need, and help with your fears of asking for that help.

  • And…to repeat the essence of the first question….why am I resisting asking for help?

Trust is the lifeblood of our very existence. I urge you to begin, or perhaps review, the work to build or renew, your inner trust team.

Thank you for reading this. See you next week I hope.

I wish you peace.

A Guided Meditation

I have received quite a bit of feedback that a guided meditation connected to the topic of these contemplations has been appreciated. When appropriate I will provide one each week. This week’s guided meditation is called The Field Of Love And Trust. I will publish that recorded meditation in a couple of days.

Grateful For

I include this section because I found that when I read or hear about what others are grateful for, I tend to think more about what I am grateful for. Feel free to share what you are grateful for in the comments. I think it is a beautiful service to others.

I spent a day yesterday with a good friend who has been struggling within. Human stuff. I felt grateful for and moved by his willingness to share what was going on, and to face it head on. He had spent a week facing it head on, looking at it from many many angles, and not shying away from his own shortcomings in dealing with it. I felt really honoured to know him, to love him and to learn from him.

This Week’s Community Chat

The theme in the chat this week is:

How is your “inner trust team” doing? Which part of the team would you like to strengthen?

Thank you.

Upcoming Activities

Please stay tuned.

Should you want to message me directly, please feel free to do so.