Distrust is Not Our Problem
Nearly every client I see has a conscious trust issue: “ I don’t trust my partner any more. He or she violated my trust. I was betrayed. Is it even possible to re-build trust? And would I want to? Or would I just get hurt again?”
Conscious distrust is the primary issue in marital disillusionment. Close on the heels of such disappointment, rejection, abuse, hurt, and disillusionment is what we call falling out of love. “I love him or her, but I am not in love any more.”
This distrust crisis is a Dangerous Opportunity. It is a Danger in that we typically misunderstand its cause and meaning, and draw the wrong conclusions. It is an Opportunity in that it is a necessary step in the enlightenment process.
Trust not distrust is our fatal mistake. Trust was the first step into illusionment. We trusted falsely. We trusted in our story about reality. It seemed natural, comfortable, exciting, and responsible. Then we were “let down”. Someone broke the deal, the contract, the agreement. Someone lied, someone sneaked, someone deceived. Someone broke the rules. Someone made me feel hurt, angry, upset, and anxious. Can we ever recover that state of bliss again? I thought we were a perfect match. You were and you are. Your distrust and its hurt are 100% right on. Only now can you even begin to question the basis of the original trust. Trust was your “mistake.” Distrust is the beginning of your change. This marriage that seemed perfect and now seems to be a failure is perfectly designed for your awakening. It could produce your conscious awareness of your hidden anxiety and its hidden cause. Up until now you have mis-diagnosed your condition and its consequences. What you thought was the cause of your anxiety and suffering (your partner’s betrayal) was only a symptom of a much greater dilemma. Your perfect marriage has brought this greater dilemma to your attention.
This dreadful and painful sense of loss that you are experiencing now consciously was there all along. There is something that you “lost” prior to your marriage for which your marriage was to be a remedy. The expectation that someone else could fix that sense of loss was your most basic mistake. The consequent distrust in that remedy is your first major step toward real change, real healing, and real consciousness.
The Danger now is that you could seek a new partner to “trust” since the first partner was obviously a poor choice. Such an ego-salvaging plan would not be a real change, but a superficial one. The re-bound is just more of the same.
The second Danger is that you could withdraw and isolate yourself, placing your trust now in some other strategy for satisfaction, such as drugs, alcohol, hard work, illness, promiscuity, money, stuff, revenge, skepticism, or multiple other “remedies” .
The Opportunity, however, is that you could use this horrendous distrust experience to inquire into your story, into your mistaken judgments and mis-diagnosis, into the real cause of your pain.
One proper name for this ordeal is the Mid-Life Crisis. Everyone gets one. You’re no different than anyone else, no more special and no more un-special. So don’t take any special credit or blame for it. Disillusionment is a gift of grace. Anxiety and distrust are its earmarks. You are losing sleep, you aren’t eating properly, you are losing or gaining weight like mad, you are going nuts, your mind is racing, you are not “yourself”, Your anxiety is out of control. Everything that was nailed down has done come loose. You are defensive. You are in a fight-or-flight state of mind. You feel like protecting your assets. You want to cut and run, burn bridges, jump into rash decisions. Suddenly you are totally shut down or talking to everyone, licking your wounds, looking for support, justifying your behavior, scape-goating your partner.
Hey, slow down. This is not what it seems. Distrust is not your problem and self-protection is not the answer. Ask yourself why all this is happening. You will find out, if you can be honest at all, that you don’t know. You don’t know. You thought you knew, but it’s a shock to find out that you don’t. That shock is your wake-up call. This “distrust” is your wake-up call. This Mid-Life Crisis is your wake-up call. This “failure” is your wake-up call. This rampant anxiety is your wake-up call.
If you do not use this painful occasion to find out the real cause of your crisis, you will just repeat it again and again until you get it. It is not unusual nowadays to see couples who are into their third marriage, with multiple step-parents, step-children, step grand-parents, unbelievable child support and legal issues, or sexually transmitted diseases. Not to mention various addictions, health issues, and credit card debts.
But don’t dismay, you are exactly where you should be on your path to awakening. It takes whatever it takes to get here. Now is your time, your wake-up call. Regret and guilt do very little good if we just wallow in them. Now is your time for self-inquiry. Fault-finding and blame are very superficial solutions to this dilemma. Whether you blame yourself or others does not matter, it is still blame, and it is still a trap. Blame is just another dreary part of the same old story.
You have a choice: you can remain unconsciously within your familiar story or step out of it into the unknown. The only way you can step out of your story is to recognize that it is a story. You are unknowingly living out a drama, a dream, a script, a character, a worldview that you created. This worldview is also a collective matrix, a state of mind, in which we all have trusted as real, and to which we seem to belong. To question this state of mind is to begin your journey of individuation. To leave the herd mentality. To find inner guidance and support when this outer support is gone. It is your desert experience. You can take it now or later, but you will have to take it. The world as you know it is not real, not valid, not trustworthy and won’t work. You thought this crisis was the fault of your parents, your partner, your bad luck or yourself. It is not.
There is no fault. Everything that has ever happened to you is for your benefit. It was all necessary. The important point is that you got here. You are reading this. All that matters is that suddenly you might be awakening to the fact that all of your judgments were falsely based, and that is good news. For the first time in your life you may begin to see that it is good news to be wrong. You are now in the position of being able for the first time to live on the edge between your assumed reality and reality. You are no longer a victim or a victimizer.
And so, distrust is not our problem. Trust as we know it was really mis-trust in the first place. The distrust experience is our opportunity to re-examine the original mistake we made in trust. What was this mis-trust, this original mistake in trust? Very simply put: we trusted in the visible finite products of our infinite imagination rather than in our invisible infinite imagination itself. Thus through the unconscious use of imagination we created the very things we did not want and cannot be satisfied with. You can only be satisfied with the conscious awareness of and use of imagination itself and not just its products. You used imagination to create a self-limiting story in which you now seem trapped. You came to believe that you are your story, and that the world you live in is not a story. You forgot your all-powerful imagination, and became entranced by its products, the major of which was your self-image. You are not your self-image, you are the creator of your self-image. The world is not in control of you; you made up your experience of the world.
You didn’t create your imagination, however. Imagination was not created. Imagination is the creator, not the created. There is only one imagination, and that is God. You and God share the power of imagination. God is the source of and the content of imagination. You did not create imagination or God or yourself. God is the author and content of all experiences. Insofar as you realize the nature of infinite imagination, you know god and yourself and the universe. Insofar as you are unaware of the infinite power of imagination, you are still entrapped in your self-created story and its anxiety. Your anxiety stems from your unconscious untrue story. There is no way you can get rid of your anxiety without story-awareness and imagination-awareness. Anxiety is unawareness.
Conscious distrust is the primary issue in marital disillusionment. Close on the heels of such disappointment, rejection, abuse, hurt, and disillusionment is what we call falling out of love. “I love him or her, but I am not in love any more.”
This distrust crisis is a Dangerous Opportunity. It is a Danger in that we typically misunderstand its cause and meaning, and draw the wrong conclusions. It is an Opportunity in that it is a necessary step in the enlightenment process.
Trust not distrust is our fatal mistake. Trust was the first step into illusionment. We trusted falsely. We trusted in our story about reality. It seemed natural, comfortable, exciting, and responsible. Then we were “let down”. Someone broke the deal, the contract, the agreement. Someone lied, someone sneaked, someone deceived. Someone broke the rules. Someone made me feel hurt, angry, upset, and anxious. Can we ever recover that state of bliss again? I thought we were a perfect match. You were and you are. Your distrust and its hurt are 100% right on. Only now can you even begin to question the basis of the original trust. Trust was your “mistake.” Distrust is the beginning of your change. This marriage that seemed perfect and now seems to be a failure is perfectly designed for your awakening. It could produce your conscious awareness of your hidden anxiety and its hidden cause. Up until now you have mis-diagnosed your condition and its consequences. What you thought was the cause of your anxiety and suffering (your partner’s betrayal) was only a symptom of a much greater dilemma. Your perfect marriage has brought this greater dilemma to your attention.
This dreadful and painful sense of loss that you are experiencing now consciously was there all along. There is something that you “lost” prior to your marriage for which your marriage was to be a remedy. The expectation that someone else could fix that sense of loss was your most basic mistake. The consequent distrust in that remedy is your first major step toward real change, real healing, and real consciousness.
The Danger now is that you could seek a new partner to “trust” since the first partner was obviously a poor choice. Such an ego-salvaging plan would not be a real change, but a superficial one. The re-bound is just more of the same.
The second Danger is that you could withdraw and isolate yourself, placing your trust now in some other strategy for satisfaction, such as drugs, alcohol, hard work, illness, promiscuity, money, stuff, revenge, skepticism, or multiple other “remedies” .
The Opportunity, however, is that you could use this horrendous distrust experience to inquire into your story, into your mistaken judgments and mis-diagnosis, into the real cause of your pain.
One proper name for this ordeal is the Mid-Life Crisis. Everyone gets one. You’re no different than anyone else, no more special and no more un-special. So don’t take any special credit or blame for it. Disillusionment is a gift of grace. Anxiety and distrust are its earmarks. You are losing sleep, you aren’t eating properly, you are losing or gaining weight like mad, you are going nuts, your mind is racing, you are not “yourself”, Your anxiety is out of control. Everything that was nailed down has done come loose. You are defensive. You are in a fight-or-flight state of mind. You feel like protecting your assets. You want to cut and run, burn bridges, jump into rash decisions. Suddenly you are totally shut down or talking to everyone, licking your wounds, looking for support, justifying your behavior, scape-goating your partner.
Hey, slow down. This is not what it seems. Distrust is not your problem and self-protection is not the answer. Ask yourself why all this is happening. You will find out, if you can be honest at all, that you don’t know. You don’t know. You thought you knew, but it’s a shock to find out that you don’t. That shock is your wake-up call. This “distrust” is your wake-up call. This Mid-Life Crisis is your wake-up call. This “failure” is your wake-up call. This rampant anxiety is your wake-up call.
If you do not use this painful occasion to find out the real cause of your crisis, you will just repeat it again and again until you get it. It is not unusual nowadays to see couples who are into their third marriage, with multiple step-parents, step-children, step grand-parents, unbelievable child support and legal issues, or sexually transmitted diseases. Not to mention various addictions, health issues, and credit card debts.
But don’t dismay, you are exactly where you should be on your path to awakening. It takes whatever it takes to get here. Now is your time, your wake-up call. Regret and guilt do very little good if we just wallow in them. Now is your time for self-inquiry. Fault-finding and blame are very superficial solutions to this dilemma. Whether you blame yourself or others does not matter, it is still blame, and it is still a trap. Blame is just another dreary part of the same old story.
You have a choice: you can remain unconsciously within your familiar story or step out of it into the unknown. The only way you can step out of your story is to recognize that it is a story. You are unknowingly living out a drama, a dream, a script, a character, a worldview that you created. This worldview is also a collective matrix, a state of mind, in which we all have trusted as real, and to which we seem to belong. To question this state of mind is to begin your journey of individuation. To leave the herd mentality. To find inner guidance and support when this outer support is gone. It is your desert experience. You can take it now or later, but you will have to take it. The world as you know it is not real, not valid, not trustworthy and won’t work. You thought this crisis was the fault of your parents, your partner, your bad luck or yourself. It is not.
There is no fault. Everything that has ever happened to you is for your benefit. It was all necessary. The important point is that you got here. You are reading this. All that matters is that suddenly you might be awakening to the fact that all of your judgments were falsely based, and that is good news. For the first time in your life you may begin to see that it is good news to be wrong. You are now in the position of being able for the first time to live on the edge between your assumed reality and reality. You are no longer a victim or a victimizer.
And so, distrust is not our problem. Trust as we know it was really mis-trust in the first place. The distrust experience is our opportunity to re-examine the original mistake we made in trust. What was this mis-trust, this original mistake in trust? Very simply put: we trusted in the visible finite products of our infinite imagination rather than in our invisible infinite imagination itself. Thus through the unconscious use of imagination we created the very things we did not want and cannot be satisfied with. You can only be satisfied with the conscious awareness of and use of imagination itself and not just its products. You used imagination to create a self-limiting story in which you now seem trapped. You came to believe that you are your story, and that the world you live in is not a story. You forgot your all-powerful imagination, and became entranced by its products, the major of which was your self-image. You are not your self-image, you are the creator of your self-image. The world is not in control of you; you made up your experience of the world.
You didn’t create your imagination, however. Imagination was not created. Imagination is the creator, not the created. There is only one imagination, and that is God. You and God share the power of imagination. God is the source of and the content of imagination. You did not create imagination or God or yourself. God is the author and content of all experiences. Insofar as you realize the nature of infinite imagination, you know god and yourself and the universe. Insofar as you are unaware of the infinite power of imagination, you are still entrapped in your self-created story and its anxiety. Your anxiety stems from your unconscious untrue story. There is no way you can get rid of your anxiety without story-awareness and imagination-awareness. Anxiety is unawareness.
posted by Dr. Joe at 6:29 AM
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