Last Sunday Yujin spoke on Healing Collective Pain. He talked mostly about racism & slavery, but mentioned other abuse, including abuse of women. [youtu.be/ih7_Z6fI6SY] In February 2018, Statista.com reported South Koreans considered domestic abuse against women and girls the number one social issue. Recently we’ve seen the rise of the Me Too movement, around the world but notably in Korea.
Today I want to speak about Trust, because it’s an essential quality of spiritual leadership. But how can we trust in such a context of abuse when our own past experiences may have brought us distrust and fear? Fear for countless reasons, not only from abuse we’ve experienced as a man or woman. What does it really mean to trust? How can you trust wisely?
In over 45 years of living consciously, I’ve found there are many levels of trust to explore and open. It takes time for our trust to really land in us. It’s not something we rush. But what we trust & how deeply we trust has a huge influence on our life: on our direction in life, on our creativity and our effectiveness.
One way to see this is: We’re always trusting. We’re always trusting something. Even distrust is really trust in fear. Fear is the opposite of love. Often people say hate is the opposite of love, but underneath hate is fear. So even when we think we’re not trusting, we are really trusting fear. We always have a choice. What do we choose to trust? What is wise to trust? We could use many words to describe it, but let’s start with: it’s wise to trust the power of Life, the power that created the whole universe, and continues to create every moment. Is there anything more trustworthy than the power that brings life & beauty to our world? If we meditate on this, why would we trust anything else more than that?
But inside trusting the creative power of Life is trusting our ability to discern and harmonize with it. That’s an art that takes time to develop. Another way to say this is: we’re trusting the laws of the Universe, the Laws of Being.
Another step inner to that is: we’re really trusting the expression of True Spirit in ourselves—our true character, our True Being. Or our highest perception of Truth, whatever that is in the present moment. If we follow our highest perception of Truth, it will lead us in a creative direction. Even if our perception of Truth is flawed, trusting it and then honestly reflecting on what we learned, will deepen and hone our perception of Truth.
All that is quite abstract. So let’s look at how this can play out. The first example I want to give relates to how do we trust people? Probably each of you have thought a lot about that. Some of you have heard me speak about the mentor I had for 18 years, a man 30 years older than me. Do you think I trusted him when I first met him? No! When I met him, even though I was just 21, I had travelled in Europe 6 months, finished university, been living on my own for some years, and begun a career in social work. So when I met my mentor, I had enough experience of the world that I had concluded: “I don’t trust any man!” I had a boyfriend, but I only trusted him in some ways. How did I move to the deep experience of trust I have now? Step by step.
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One of the first steps was to trust my mentor. I watched him carefully, and noticed what I experienced when I trusted him and when I didn’t. I came to realize he was a lot wiser than me, and his love was far larger and more trustworthy than I had ever experienced with anyone. He enfolded me in a golden quality of love that gave my heart a place to rest. I found a home in his heart. But his love was not just gentle. At times he challenged me, sometimes even fiercely! And that also encouraged my growth. Not long after meeting him, I realized he knew me better than I knew myself. He saw qualities in me—true qualities—that I didn’t even know I had. I learned so much from him, and through his guidance my true qualities and leadership grew and bloomed.
Because I found a place of rest, of sanctuary in his friendship, that helped me develop a firm foundation in myself. So I could push beyond my comfort zone to explore and grow. My earlier conviction, “I don’t trust any man,” changed first to “I can trust one man.” But as my foundation strengthened, it changed my approach to all men, and women somewhat too, although I had not lost my trust of women. I began to understand the challenges men had to overcome to mature into loving, trustworthy and wise men. I realized my friendship could help draw forth the qualities of true manhood in men. So instead of being a warrior that criticized men, I tried a totally new approach: to appreciate and magnify what was right in the men I knew, and to find wise ways to deal with immaturities I saw in them.
Last week Yujin said the rising of righteous warrior energy in many countries recently is ultimately rooted in the rising of the Spirit of Truth. He said how maturely warrior energy arises will be a determining factor in our future. Looking back, I see how the change in my approach to men was the maturing of my warrior energy, growing into righteous warrior energy. Can you sense how that might change your relationships, not only between men and women but also man to man, woman to woman, parent to child, child to parent?
What is righteous warrior energy? Yujin said anger is not the primary quality of true warrior energy. The primary quality is the will to righteousness. Righteous warrior energy is just, compassionate and wise. The impulse of warrior energy not only says “No!” to what’s unrighteous, it also exerts a powerful influence by saying “Yes!” to what is right, to magnify that and help it increase. In our personal relationships, that could be calm conversations about the impact of certain behavior, which actions help and which hurt, i.e. specific and clean communication, which is a primary tool of warrior energy.
So, my friends, when you’re tempted to pull out your sword and slash away at the things you think are not right in people, consider first that righteous warrior energy would have greater creative impact, righteous warrior energy that is just, compassionate and wise. A warrior who knows his or her true strength rarely needs to use a sword. The power of his or her righteous presence is enough to stop others from doing what’s not right. The development of righteous warrior energy in ourselves is one way trust grows in us. We develop confidence in our righteous warrior energy. We begin to trust ourselves, trust our own strength to handle whatever comes. And that trust is based in understanding and practicing Laws of Being.
Before I go on to another aspect of trust, I want to give a word of caution to women, especially in Korea. Women’s warrior energy rose in America in the 1960s, so we’ve had more years to see the effect of that. I want to warn you about the negative impact women’s unwise warrior energy can have on men, especially the men who honor women most. In America many men so abhorred their domination of women that they lost access to their own true strength. They became too soft, too sensitive, too emotional. And then you know what happened? Women didn’t find them attractive anymore! So you can learn from our mistakes.
I described how developing trust of my mentor prepared me to trust myself and men. There was another important shift in my awareness that came many years later. Up to that point, even though all this gave me a firm foundation and confidence, the trust I experienced was as a follower, not a full leader. That began to change when in early 1987 I realized that even Martin Exeter [the Emissaries highest leader] was trusting. He was trusting, not only us, but God, and the working of God in what we call the Creative Process. Up to that point, to me it had seemed that only followers or students had to trust the leader. Then I saw that he was trusting, just like all the rest of us. That realization began an important shift in my life which opened yet deeper trust. I began to understand that, regardless of one’s position, trust is essential to live creatively, and especially trust is essential to offer spiritual leadership. Not only that, but trust is required even at the highest level of responsibility and leadership.
Recently I found something from Uranda (the first leader who founded the Emissaries), titled The Reality of Trust [TSS 7:40]. He was talking about moving to deeper levels of trust. By sharing this I certainly am not implying that you should be at this deepest level. But it will show you something of where you could go. Actually my experience is we often think we’re trusting fully, until something happens when we realize we’re not. Then we have a choice: to go deeper in trust or not. I was really moved by Uranda’s message in this talk, including the personal example from his own life of service. He said that until a person realizes deeply that he or she is nothing without God, he or she has not fully learned to trust. He said this is essential for rebirth. This was on Obtober 28, 1951, 19 years after he initiated the Emissaries. For him to say he is nothing without God when he had already expressed such rare depth and scope of vision, to me emphasizes trust is essential even at the highest level of responsibility and leadership.
This is what he shared of his own experience: “Trust—I have seen the day when that was very nearly all that I had left in outer form, my trust in God, because it looked as if my adversaries were going to take everything away. If I had not continued to trust God when it appeared that everything was going wrong, you would not be here tonight. Because in those dark hours I proved that I trusted God, you have a place to be trained. Everything that has been achieved of reality in our program has come about because of true trust in God.”
I’ll pause to give you a moment to digest that.
He went on to say this: “When we put one hundred percent of our trust in God, we begin to know what it is to have God's power work in and through us. Then something is accomplished. Then we know fulfilment; then we come to know that we are important to God. When all of our trust is in God, we can be trusted.”
That bears much meditation, but I’ll now summarize how you can reach that point. When you know your True Being, and when you know the strength of your righteous warrior energy, and when you know and practice the Laws of the Universe, then you’re ready to deeply realize: “Of myself, I am nothing.” And that’s when you become one with the Universe!
As I said earlier, our trust deepens as we move naturally step by step in our highest perception of Truth and expression of True Spirit, true character. How can you start? Find the most trustworthy people you can. Observe and learn from them, how they express, live and help others. Notice your own experience when you trust them and when you don’t. What happens to your consciousness, experience and even relationships when you stop trusting those who are most trustworthy? Or when you stop trusting God, the power that creates all life and beauty? In which state do you experience greater peace, strength, and creativity: when you trust or when you don’t? Observing this honestly, you begin to understand and know what trust is and how important it is to expressing the creativity of our highest potential. Trust in Heaven, Truth, God, the Creative Process is how we can live most creatively and how we can offer the leadership that is uniquely ours to bring. Trust is an essential quality of spiritual leadership.
