The attitude of trusting without knowing what will happen, of allowing things to emerge, is needed at all levels and stages of the process of inner development. It applies on the external level, the emotional level, the subtle levels, essential levels, all of them. Any idea of how things are going to be will only work as a boundary. The way things are and the way our true nature works cannot be bounded that way. The moment you have an idea of how things should be, you’re creating some walls, and you’re sitting inside them. There is no trust there in yourself, there is no trust in reality, and there is no trust in the process itself of transformation and growth. Then there is restriction, and you’ll suffer and complain as usual. When we allow the natural process of growth to happen, there is expansion, happiness, and joy.

You see here a very intimate connection between compassion and truth and trust. Hurt, or pain, which people usually link with compassion, is really not as important a thing to compassion as people imagine it to be. People think compassion is for hurt. It isn’t. Only at the most superficial level is compassion for hurt. Compassion is for truth. Compassion, it is true, relates to hurt, but it is in the service of truth, not in the service of eliminating hurt.

There are many connections between trust and compassion and truth. Compassion can lead to truth; truth can lead to trust, and then to compassion towards yourself and others. Some people’s conditioning may make it easier to experience one quality while blocking another, so as the Essence unfolds truth may come after compassion and trust.

First, it seems that trust has different levels and different varieties: for instance, trusting yourself, trusting somebody else, trusting a situation, trusting a certain truth, or certain knowledge, or a certain belief. The experiences of these different kinds of trust feel different. When you trust yourself, you don’t feel the same as when you’re trusting somebody else. When you’re trusting yourself, you’re more surrendered to what is happening inside you, to your own promptings, to your own truth. When you’re trusting somebody else, it feels different. When you trust yourself, you don’t have a feeling of surrender—you just do it. When you trust somebody else, there is more sense of surrender, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, allowing yourself to be there without needing defenses. And trusting a situation means you’re feeling somewhat secure in the situation. There is a kind of security and safety that things will be okay or that what’s supposed to happen is going to happen. Maybe there is a common factor among all these kinds of trust. In trusting yourself, or somebody else, or a situation, isn’t there an implied security? A sense of safety or a sense of no need to protect yourself, a sense that you are in a friendly land, not a hostile one? A sense that you can allow yourself to be whatever you are in that moment without having to be too careful, without feeling paranoid? So, trust has to do with the absence of fear and paranoia. The simplest kind of trust essentially means there’s no need for fear. That wherever you are—with yourself, with somebody else—you’re in good hands.

Trusting the process? You allow yourself to be open. Usually when you feel you don’t know, you want to do something right away. But you don’t have to do anything: you just need to be there. When something happens, you’re there for it. Ultimately, trust is really trusting your Essence. That trust will develop. The trust is not something you have right away. The more you know yourself and the more you see the rightness of your own process as it happens, the more you’ll trust it… Finally, you see that there is nothing you can trust– nobody, no authority, except the process itself. Finally the trust is not trusting in anybody; it is not trusting any theory; it is not trusting any authority; it is trusting reality. It is just trust – confidence in the Essence itself. It will take time for the trust to mature and deepen.