Trust as a Spiritual Guide in a Safety Obsessed Culture

These darkest weeks of the year always call me to remember my early ancestors. How during these darkening times, they must have learned to be guided by a lantern of trust. Trust that the days would indeed begin to lengthen again, and the sun would again turn its face, and rise higher to warm their days.

Trust is a big word. A sometimes vague or nebulous invitation that is thrown around without any container or experience to foster it. “Just trust me!” or “Can’t you just trust the process?”

But it's not always so simple. Trust is a spiritual practice. It is something grown through experience. And it’s developed by going through unpredictable, untenable, uncertain times, and strengthening your capacity to hand over control to something or someone.

By definition, trust requires a level of unknown or lack of control in order to call it in, just like we require a level of fear in order to call on our courage.

Otherwise it’s not trust, it's safety.

In a culture obsessed with control, and obsessed with using Safety’s name to justify our many methods of controlling ourselves and others, it’s no wonder that the spiritual practice of trust is lacking.

Seeming kin, safety and trust are actually quite different from one another in their energies. Safety implies you are protected from harm or risk. Yet trust implies uncertainty and risk. Trust implies that you don’t know how things will unfold, but you’re willing to take that risk anyway. Trust fosters safety: you can’t truly build safety without trust (otherwise it quickly veers towards control).

Trust is a candle you hold in the darkness; a belief. It is much more spiritual than safety, as safety is anchored in the material known, while trust gains strength from the spiritual fire of faith.

You trust in something when there’s risky terrain, trusting that something will carry you through the unchartered waters (and that “something” can be you, if you’ve developed trust in yourself).

One of the ways to strengthen our spiritual selves is to practice surrendering the false sense of control (often disguised as safety), and lean into trust.

8 years ago I went through a very dark time. A time when life (and consequences of my actions) stripped me of all certainty and belief in myself.

In a somatic therapy session, my therapist asked me what I could trust in. In that moment, the only thing I could come up with was the knowing that there is more to this life and universe than we know. That I could trust. That I could believe in. Nothing else.

So I leaned into that trust, hard, over the next couple of years. Trust that there was more than I knew working around me. Trust that I didn’t, and couldn’t ever, know everything.

I partnered with this spiritual knowing within me. I invited it to be my teacher. And I surrendered into its lessons for me.

It was through this experience of surrender, of releasing my grip of control, when so much had crumbled, that I began to rebuild trust in myself and in life.

In what felt like a precarious time, I began to steady myself and reconstruct the framework of trust within. I also relied on my relationships with Earth, Plants, Spirit, and Ceremony that thankfully, I had already been developing for years prior. I learned to trust in them like I never would have if things in my life felt stable.

This dark night of the soul was one of the biggest blessings in my life.

This darkness gifted me a trusted light.

There's a reason it's cliche to say that only by truly surrendering to the darkness can we find the light. It’s only through our shadow work that we become light workers. It’s only through traversing the landscape of darkness that you can find the glimmering pieces of your soul’s light.

Trust is foundational to spiritual practice. To embodying yourself fully in this world. And only by surrendering our control can actual trust be built.

These weeks of darkness mirror this to us. These weeks of darkness invite us to gently let go of what we think we know, and lean into the practice of trust. Because only when it’s actively practiced, can it grow.

So my dear, what is it that you can truly say that you trust in right now? 

Be honest. Dig deep. What can you actually trust in, in this life? This is a big question to sit with. And for many people the answer is surprising.

Once you have your answer, this is your teacher in surrender. And this is your teacher to help you apply the practice of trust in more realms of your life.

Practice trusting in yourself in the Reconnection Sessions

Embodied spiritual and energetic support to foster trust in yourself, deepen your intuition, cultivate healing, and bring you closer to the truth of your soul.