Great reasons to Trust Life

The building is burning. You’ve rolled up a sheet which you tied to the foot of your cast-iron bedpost and lower yourself from the window, just like in the movies. Now you are dangling 5 storeys high, flames shooting out of windows all around and becoming more and more violent. It’s only a matter of time before the sheet burns and you are going to fall. Below, at ground level, a group of people have a safety blanket and are calling out for you to jump. As bad as your chances with the burning sheet are, you cling onto it for dear life. How are you to trust that they won’t be scratching tying their shoe-lace or scratching their testicles instead of ensuring your safety? You visualise the outcome, “Oh dear”, one safety-blanket-holder tuts, “she jumped after-all and there I was fixing the hem of my skirt. Just missed her by a few inches. Ah well, at least I didn’t get any on my shoes”.

You want to leave your fate to faith but it is so hard. The only thing that you believe you are in control of right now, though it is disintegrating right before your eyes, seems to be the sheet. How can you believe that everything is really going to be okay? How can you trust life to see you through your nightmares, your challenges and to make everything turn out okay? How can you let go of the reigns, hand over the keys, drop the oars?

Fears are Empty Boxes

Recently well-known lifecoach, Michael Neill, ran a workshop to aid persons suffering from arachnophobia. In measuring their fear, it was found that even asking them to hold an empty box triggered similar anxiety levels to those that would be reached if they had been handed a spider. Whether the fear is real or imaginary, therefore, it has the same impact. Most of our worries are empty boxes – the thought that something terrible might happen has as devastating an effect on our minds and bodies as if the worst case scenario occurred.

The Only Certainty is Uncertainty

There is great comfort in accepting uncertainty. When we cling to the familiar and try to control everything within reach, we do so to limit uncertainty and to avoid risk. While this may prove effective at times, it is really those who sail through life with abandon and trust that all is well that get to experience an incredible life. If we can let go of all those empty boxes, those imagined threats, we may feel a sense of ease and freedom that, in itself, is a reward. To quote actress Goldie Hawn, “If we can just let go and trust that things will work out the way they’re supposed to, without trying to control the outcome, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully. The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experience itself.”

Throw away your fears

Accepting that uncertainty exists whether you choose to cling or choose to let go, can help developing trust. If it is a case that risk exists anyhow, you may as well choose freedom and joy. You have within you the potential for infinite wonderful experiences if you just release some of the fear. At the Ryoan-ji Temple in Japan there is an inscription on a stone that states “what you have is all you need”. There is a beautiful surrendering in that phrase as it implies that all striving, clinging, regulating and demanding are unnecessary because that which we want and need is already within us. To know and experience this in our lives is to trust in its truth.