"Trust"

by Dr. Susan Nettleton

Trust is a decision. We all have experiences when our trust in another person or group of people is betrayed. The injury and pain of betrayal makes it difficult to trust again. Sometimes our hurt ends relationships unnecessarily. Sometimes others who come into our life later pay the price of someone else’s betrayal, as we withhold our trust now. Self-protection keeps us from freely entering into close and caring relationships. We can choose to trust again, but should we? No one can prove to us they can be trusted before we give out trust. This makes trust on a human level a very risky thing. When we begin to live spiritually, the issue changes. Spiritually we begin to see all life as Spiritual Reality, which ultimately is One Life, whose nature is Love.  Human personalities will undoubtedly fail us, but the large field of the Goodness of Life will not. Our relationships and interactions are all taking place within the larger field of Spiritual Reality, although our focus on that one betrayal may have cast a shadow that has blocked our understanding of the far greater scope of relationship and the interweaving of Life’s connections. Trusting others again begins with trusting God as the larger field of Life and Love.