SadhanaOriental Meditation and Christian Prayer
Contemplation in action
ーIn relation with othersー
[13] Unleashing the spirit of trust
In our life, we have numerous concerns, anxiety, worries, and so on. But if we think about it, many of these are not necessary.
For example, you are making a business trip. You travel long distance by train and airplane, and many people are waiting for you at the destination. You have an extra time in your schedule, but you cannot help thinking that you may be late. While you travel long distance, you might have a train trouble, bad weather, or unexpected accident…
Here is another example. You are working with others to create a booklet. The deadline is drawing near, and unless a specific division takes care of its job by the designated date, you will miss the deadline. If you have frequently felt that you cannot really trust the people in the division, you may be worried if they would fail again. In these cases, you have concerns and worries, but you could decide to trust them. If you try to trust them while you have worries, and eventually find out that it was a good decision, you would be very happy about having trusted them.
Or when a person made a mistake or error and caused trouble to you, you may want to stop asking him to do a job because of his mistake or failure. You may want to label him as a person who makes many mistakes or who fails often. But it would be good to try your best to trust him without jumping to the conclusion.
Trust does not only exist between people. We trust the soil for fostering plants, the sun for delivering us benefits, the air for keeping sending oxygen to our body, fish for becoming our food and nutrition, and water for being drunk and supporting our body. We can extend our trust to limitless things (while we should be cautious about harmful effects such as artificial contamination).
When our heart extends towards trust, we develop the sense of relief and peace in our general attitude towards life. We thank for more things with the heart of relief and peace. We can develop trust in our entire life.
When we fully develop our trust in life in general, it is revealed through our bodily posture. Before we develop trust, we have too much tension in the shoulders and neck as well as in the jaw and between the eyebrows. And these parts become hard and stiff. The center of gravity in our body moves up closer to the neck. But with the mind of trust, tension in the shoulders, neck, jaw and between the eyebrows is released, and these parts become relaxed and softened. And the center of gravity comes down to the belly button. In this sense of trust, we can feel much kindness of people and benefits brought about by the nature, and experience God’s blessing through these.
And we are actually trusted by God as well. When we base our entire life on trust, we can feel that God trusts us as well. For example, a married couple is trusted to bear and rear a new life. We can feel that God trusts us in such ways.
It is when we extend and strengthen trusts in things delivered to us that we can firmly feel God’s intention and supports, and that we can feel that we are even trusted by God.
We should not be recklessly optimistic in our life. By unleashing trust as a foundation of our life while paying due care and attention, we can often live our life gratefully, feeling that God helps, supports, and trusts us.