Trust

As we reflect on the new course that humanity is called to take, we feel caught up between a sense of powerlessness and a feeling of trust. 

Topics like the global economy, climate challenges, wars, pandemics, hunger, migration and overpopulation represent huge issues and undoubtedly arouse in us a sense of powerlessness. 

Problems are evident, global and have a form. Trust instead is a shapeless feeling that doesn’t seem to be grounded on real foundations. 

Problems are tangible, trust isn’t. 

To increase our sense of powerlessness we are assisted by our Country leaders. Despite they are much more powerful than any of us, ordinary people, their ability to cooperate and put at the service of the greater good their best energies and resources is minimal. They are unable to agree on how to tackle the main problems of humanity as that would imply conflicting with their own individual interests. We have seen this times and times again. 

Perhaps it is also unfair to ask them. They have been elected not to be kind to the world but to create more wealth for the citizens of their countries. Translated into actions this means to compete with other economies, other people. So, how can we blame them? 

So, when we look at what we can do as individuals to fix the entire system we feel indeed powerless because we compare our individual possibilities against the whole. No one has ever made it yet to empty the ocean with a bucket. An impossible task.

However, there is a quality that we can all tap in to, that provides us with the evidence that we are not isolated powerless individuals fighting against the whole but we are the whole itself. Of course, life manifests itself through a variety of bodies and forms but that doesn’t mean that life is fragmented. Only the forms are. 

The quality that allows us to experience a sense of unity and that it belongs to the entire human species is our consciousness.

That is the quality that allows us to experience our own existence and that we recognise it as being available to everyone else. 

But how would that work? 

No one is that na?ve to think that all of the 7.7Bln people will be able to take that step simultaneously, however the course of human evolution has never been made as a process of clear cut decisions taken by all humans at the same time.

Humanity has gone through a series of transformations driven by those who were able to influence others on the new course. What is required is not the totality of mankind but a critical mass of people whose consciousness is able to positively influence the masses toward a new direction. 

When we identify with the guy who dresses up in the morning to go to work, who has to grind to make it in a very competitive world and that keeps his head down to connect to the world through his cell phone while sitting beside other human beings busy doing the same, life feels like a constant individualeffort to survive.

However, the other part of us (our consciousness) knows that if we can connect to other human beings is because we are all united through that intangible quality that allows us to recognise ourselves in the others. 

When I “see” that, the whole burden of how enormous is the task and how difficult is to change the world is lifted. Not in the sense that the heavy load is taken away from me by others but on the contrary in the way that makes me feel fully responsible to make that change.

Only if I own it I can do something about it.

No one is required to take the entire world’s problem on its shoulders but each single individual can do its part fully, completely, owning every single action whether big or small without alibi, every single day as best as best as one can.

Responsibility should not evoke another burden but a fantastic and powerful feeling that enables us to feel in power to be “able to respond”, perhaps “response – ability” sounds betters doesn’t it?

Being the masters of our own destiny is a beautiful sensation as it allows us to live a meaningful life.  

If you know that you are not a by-product of a larger system against which you are powerless but that you are the whole as much as everyone else then something big, really big, can happen. 

And yet, why are we not able to take that step yet?

My simple answer is this: it is not true that we are not taking that step as more and more individuals/businesses/leaders have woken up and are acting on it already.

This very article and your interest to read it this far, is the evidence that something is changing, although it is not visible at a mass level yet.

Those who have not understood it yet is because they are lacking in trust and imagination.

Trust, not faith. That “thing” that runs through our veins, that makes us breath and enables us to think without any conscious effort is driven by trust. Life is trust.  

Hence, when we are trapped in this confusion between the reality of the problems and the “intangibility” of trust, and we don’t know what to do, all that we need to understand is that most of the problems that we are facing are manmade. Not that we are the only responsible force that made the planet cycle in such a way to create global warming or the ice age but in the evidence that we produce the actions that we do not intend. We are not able to distribute wealth and education. We consume the planet rather than protecting it. Just to mention a few. Without awareness we make ourselves unable to respond to challenges, not “response able”. 

We have these incredible qualities that we call trust and imagination on which we built all our systems and yet we allowed our products to overtake us to such a point that they became bigger than their creators. Think about money.

Unless we earn money we can die (no healthcare, no food, no home, etc).

One of the best book I read recently is “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari.

He says that, we, the Homo sapiens, have defeated all other human species that populated the planet in the last hundreds thousands of years, because we are able to cooperate in large numbers when we believe in things that exist only in our imagination. I think this is a great realization.

For the same reason we are willing to die and compete when our beliefs separate us.

Gods, nations, religions, human rights, money, political structures and so on are all based on our ability to put our trust on our imagination and identify with our beliefs in such a way that the loss of our beliefs is felt as the loss of ourselves. 

We allow our thoughts to be bigger than their creators.

So if you feel powerless you know what is happening. 

The trick to resolve all of our problems is in the same qualities that we use to get us into troubles.

Where do we place our trust and imagination?

However, before embarking again into another devastating illusion we need to reflect on what is the trigger behind our motivations. 

Motivation is often hidden behind our self-centred thoughts.  

Believing in the self with which we identify is where all our illusions come from. 

Being able to observe the root cause of our motivations will allow us to remove our illusions and use our imagination to solve problems based on a completely different paradigm. 

The awareness of being part of an indivisible whole. 

Only the thoughts that come from awareness are worth pursuing as thoughts that come from a self-centred mind are in fact a by-product of a more complex structure of thoughts based on some kind of bias.

Our predecessors didn’t have the possibilities that we have today. The spread and advancement of technologies, competencies, expertise and education that we have today was simply not available to them and also they were so few that whatever wrong they did wasn’t going to be as harmful as it could be today. 

We are now so many and so powerful that if we farted all at the same time we could bend the trajectory of the earth in space. 

We have got to be more careful before using our trust and imagination to create another harmful illusion. 

The awareness that none of us is an island, that there is a distinction between thoughts generated by awareness and thoughts created by our self-centred minds are key to move from today’s world to a new world tomorrow. 

As David Bohm said, we need to be able to produce the results that we intend and I add, ask ourselves why do we not believe that we own our destiny as part of the indivisible whole.

Awareness is key.

#awareness #sustainability #linkedin #linkedinfam #trust

About the Author: Dino Carella is a former Corporate Manager who spent the majority of his career in the Financial Services. His journey continues as an author/writer and as an experienced leader at the service of communities, organizations and people who want to move from competition to cooperation. He is helping communities becoming more visible and better equipped to offer a quality experience to their visitors. He is a meditator and a planet lover.