Learning to Trust Ourselves

At this same time four years ago I published a post that introduced what I called The Two Systems, referring to two sets of values and concerns that profoundly shape human culture and our individual lives. These two systems are like the Yin and Yang of Taoism, where the creative tension between them informs our thoughts, feelings, desires, and actions – the very structure of our personality, interpersonal relationships, and our engagement with reality as a whole.

According to the opening verse of the Tao Te Ching, “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.”

What we can know and say about the Tao is only what is manifested in the dance of Yin and Yang (soft and hard, moist and dry, quiet and active, female and male are a few of the metaphors that Lao-Tzu uses in speaking of them). It’s not that one or the other is the ultimate reality of Tao, but rather their interactive unity presents us with an epiphany (an “appearing through”) of what cannot be named.

Similarly when it comes to understanding the Tao of human relationships, it’s necessary to understand and honor the creative tension between two forces, which I call the love of power and the power of love, or supremacy and communion. If this tension should snap, the love of power and the power of love will become pathological, where power devolves into domination and love deteriorates into submission.

Of course I realized even back then that representing supremacy or the love of power as anything but pathological would stir suspicion in my readers, particularly those who are or have been victims of someone else’s love of power. How can the love of power be good in any sense?

First of all, I don’t want to say that either supremacy or communion are good in and of themselves, since this would be breaking their creative tension to exclude one system in favor of the other. Power is not ‘bad’ and love is not ‘good’, but great benefit is to be found in their dynamic balance. My diagram illustrates this dynamic balance by complementary values distributed across the two systems.

At the farther poles of the arc of supremacy are virtue (Greek areté, excellence) and competition, both of which are clearly evident in athletics and capitalism. In competition we test and strengthen our abilities, improve our products and services, and become more proficient in our discipline. The desire for excellence in sport, business, art or craft is what I mean by the love of power; and a competitive drive can push us to always be improving our game.

Approaching closer to the axis of dynamic balance with communion, influence and responsibility continue this accent on power. To have influence is to use our power to effect a wanted or necessary change, and taking responsibility is about applying our knowledge, skill, and authority toward accomplishing or ensuring some end.

At the very center of balance is trust, where power is at one with love.

Shifting over to the side of communion we can follow a similar, and complementary, set of values. At the far ends are equality, which stands opposite to virtue on the side of supremacy, and the ‘working together’ of cooperation across from competition. Closer to the central axis are relationship and connection, moving the accent of interaction more to the bond and rapport between individuals than their individual contributions.

The point of all of this is really to offer a meditation on the critical importance of trust in our personal, interpersonal, and larger social life together. To the vertical axis of my earlier model I have added the dimensions of peace (being inwardly rooted in the ground of being) and truth (being outwardly oriented to the reality beyond us).

When we honor the dynamic balance of supremacy and communion in our lives we are in a position of trust. From that position we can drop below ego concerns for a deeper peace within, as we are also able to look through our constructs of meaning for the truth of what’s really real.

On the other hand, when we choose power instead of love or love instead of power – effectively snapping the creative tension of supremacy and communion – this access point is closed to us. Domination and submission alike block our path to the deeper and higher experiences of the spiritual life. When we lose the balance and fall to one side or the other of the middle way, the flow of our human spirit gets diverted to pathological extremes.

Our ability to trust each other is a function of our individual capacity to trust ourselves.

I’ve written a lot about what makes trusting ourselves problematic. A chronic nervous state of anxiety (or the inner feeling of insecurity) can get set early in life if our environment doesn’t provide what we need to feel safe, loved, capable, and worthy (what I name our subjective needs).

Psychologically our developing center of self-conscious identity (ego) must disassociate from the anxious body to keep from falling into it. Here the body is not to be trusted, which means that we cannot trust ourselves. This self-distrust works out into our relationships as harbored suspicion, withheld love, emotional manipulation, and a negative opinion of another’s nature and intentions.

You might agree with me that this condition is widespread in our world today.

If we are generally anxious and insecure, what can we do about it? Is this ‘just the way I am’? Do we simply need to find ways of gratifying our craving for security and accommodate the same in others? This is what we are doing currently, and it is obviously not helping. So what then?

We could put effort into working things out between us, in the hope we can reach a place where mutual trust is finally established. Using a method of dialogue or talk therapy might help us make some progress, but even here our self-distrust will get in the way.

As my model suggests, our mutual engagement in trust is made possible as each of us is able to verify and correct our constructs of meaning (i.e., our beliefs) so as to be more reality-oriented. Our strongest beliefs, called convictions because they hold our mind captive (like a convict) and prevent us from thinking outside their box, prevent us from seeing anything as it really is.

Or else they cause us to see things that aren’t really there or aren’t true because we can’t feel secure without them. Either way, our convictions blind us to the really real in each other.

But we have to go deeper still and make this very personal, for our convictions are compelled by anxiety, and this profound and chronic insecurity is what keeps us from trusting the grounding mystery of our own body. If we can’t be fully present in our body and relax into being, our security-seeking strategies (attachments and their protective convictions) will only amplify our suffering, as the Buddha discovered.

The self-described “spiritual entertainer” Alan Watts posed a simple question: “If you can’t trust yourself, can you really trust this mistrust of yourself?” Contrary to much popular religion these days, our salvation (literally our healing and wholeness) will not be found in escape from the body, but only as we are willing to let go, free-fall, and become fully incarnate in its warm presence.

When we can trust ourselves again, we will be able to trust each other, and the world will be redeemed.