Video Summary:

There were six of us around a fire doing ceremony in Cardiff Fork, Utah approximately 37 years ago. One of the participants asked my spiritual teacher, “What’s the difference between you and me?” I suspect she wanted to understand the difference between his state of awareness and hers.

I was surprised by his answer. He simply replied, “Trust.” He continued that he trusts himself and trusts Spirit and the universe at an extremely deep level. And that that was the only difference. 

One aspect of this spiritual trust includes trusting yourself. This is trusting your survivability and capability so that no matter what comes along, you find a way through it to survive and manage that experience. And after you do this for a while, you build confidence and trust in yourself.

A second aspect of spiritual trust includes trusting Spirit or the universe. Jesus referred to that as faith. It's trusting that Spirit has your back, and when you offer a prayer or intention, Spirit will open doorways for that to happen. When you ask for help and support, the universe will be there.

You build these perspectives of trust by creating success and proving to yourself that it's true and can be relied upon. To trust yourself you look at how you always found a way to survive and manage your past experiences. With trusting Spirit, you notice how you trusted Spirit and Spirit delivered.

The latter is an aspect of gratitude practice. When you asked Spirit was there. It came through and had your back. We may not believe that to be true in all of our experiences. So the practice is seeing and acknowledging that Spirit and the universe have your back. When you asked, it was there.

I experienced this recently when I moved to Ashland and all the things that I needed and asked for just fell into place. It was awe-inspiring and humbling.

Spiritual inquiry revealed that whenever I asked for something with conviction and allowed it to unfold without pushing it away, it came to me. My truth gradually became that Spirit has always been there for me. I may not have recognized it at the time, but upon looking more thoroughly, I could see that it was.

The practice of walking with trust in your life is realizing that trust is a choice. You can choose to trust yourself and trust Spirit, or you can choose to doubt. My teacher used to say that trust and doubt are both right in front of us all the time, and we choose which one to focus on.

For example, I offered an intention to build and be part of a community this spring. I also put out an intention for a romantic relationship. I've been venturing into the world of dating. Sometimes there are setbacks where you think a date or potential relationship is going in a direction, and then it disappears.

This can be disheartening. So the choice that I make when I'm dating is to trust the universe. When I put out the intention for a relationship in a ceremony, I sensed that Spirit and the universe accepted my prayer. At that moment, my truth was that the relationship was created at the spiritual level.

Now I choose to trust that the relationship just needs to take form. And it's a knowing sense. I can feel it based on doing this work for a while. I can feel it and know it will happen.

When I have a setback, and a person says, “I've decided that I don't really want a relationship after all,” I could easily get discouraged with dating and doubt the relationship will happen. Or, I can say, “I know it’s going to happen, but perhaps it may not be with this person, or with this person at this time.

We're conditioned to doubt ourselves and doubt Spirit. When you see yourself doubting, you can remind yourself to choose to trust. It's a choice to tune into the energy, conviction, and vibration of trust.

You learn to walk with unwavering trust. When we have a discouraging setback, we dial back into the vibration of trust. Despite setbacks and things occurring outside of us, even if they are tragic, we still have this unwavering trust in ourselves and the universe. We become unwavering and unshakeable. 

Perhaps that’s the trust my teacher was referring to when he answered his student’s question.