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talking to myself

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Cultivating trust


markdohle

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Cultivating trust

I often get confused about the difference between ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions. They can be blurred I guess and in many ways they seem to be the same, yet in reality they are quite different. Of course this is my own take on it and how they affect my inner life. They can both cause me quite a bit of inner suffering and turmoil, of which for the most part I am the main cause. It is in how I relate to them I guess.

Emotions are transitory, or at least they are meant to be. For me the most painful emotions, though I am not frightened by the experience, is anger. Not an uncommon problem this, perhaps one of the most common for people. For me, what fuels the anger of today has deep roots, often lost in some very remote past, making the emotions of anger very primordial. Erupting suddenly and if not monitored can cause a great deal of suffering for all involved. The shotgun approach to anger never works; in fact it only makes things worse in the long run. So I have tried over the years to control it and not let it run amuck.

Rage, deep and if possible, even more primal than my anger is another thing altogether, for it is not a hot emotion, but one that is cold and reptilian in nature, mindless in its desire to strike out. Sort of like a snake that gets stepped on, or perhaps who just feels threatened. So like a lighting bolt from within it manifest itself, at times seeming to rip my insides apart. This rage gets more pointed as the years go on, and I think that is a good thing for the problem becomes more and more pointed, which hopefully points to deep healing going on. This type of healing seems to take a lifetime of struggle to achieve.

I think my anger and my rage shows that beneath the mask that I present to the world resides a very anxious and fearful person. I have always looked upon fear as a challenge to simply face and over come, for once I start running away from my fears, I have an understanding that I would never stop.

When young I had an inner vision of myself in a basement, at the bottom of the stairs looking up at the light outside. Over the opening was a gate made of white bone and I was given the choice whether I would like to keep the gate open or to let in close in on me. I decided to keep it open, hence my need and perhaps at times a compulsion to fight fear whenever it shows its face.

Now fear is a feeling of course, telling me something about my environment, giving me information about what I should do. Fight, flight, or to hold my ground, is what fear places before me. I suppose if I consistently choose one over the others, then I am allowing an aspect of fear to control my life, chaining me to a life that could become ever more limiting as I grow older. Fear is useful only so far, it is not meant to imprison us but to point out what needs to be dealt with or perhaps accepted if there is no escape from it. I guess death, aging, illness are just a few of those events in life we fear but in the end must simply embrace.

Trust for me is also a feeling, but one that at least in my experience must be consciously cultivated; for trust and fear do not go together. As a man of faith, a Christian who believes that my life has meaning in this context, then it is important that trust be cultivated over and against the more easily felt feelings of fear, anxiety and yes despair.

For love cast out fear, often working against what seems to be the most ‘obvious’, for faith and love, at least for the Christian go together. Life can get dark, gruesome at times, when everything seems absurd, useless. Yet trust, fought for, clung to leads to something deeper, a death to allowing cyclic feelings to take charge of ones inner life.

Just as we are not our emotions, the same can be said for our feelings. Both are useful, but left unchecked can lead to endless rounds of ups and downs that never end. Trust in God is the rock that we stand on, the only stable center in a universe that is bound by temporality; everything dies. Each experience that we have, while in the experiencing seems permanent; in fact passes to be replaced by something else, equally transitory and often an illusion in its pronouncements.

The strength that trust brings is the purposeful choice to embrace it in spite of what our emotions and feelings scream at us. For in our faith we deal with the eternal, the infinite, which has been revealed in Christ Jesus as our savior and Lord. In trust we slowly come to understand that what St. Paul says is true; “all things work for the good for those in Christ Jesus”.

Lack of trust leads to despair, the true enemy of each of us. For we are loved and as John says in his epistle: “Love cast out fear”. A death to self is needed in order to cast out apprehension. Trust leads us to look to the author of our salvation and not to ourselves. Self knowledge does not mean being sunk in some kind of inner swamp. No, it leads us to an ever deeper reliance on the mercy and love of God as manifested in Christ Jesus. Which leads us to ever deeper compassion and empathy towards others, for the more we know ourselves, the harder it is to look down on those who are themselves beset with weakness and sin.

Joy is deep; it flows from trust, even in the midst of deep inner struggle this joy is what gives us the inner courage to look up in trust into the arms of our creator.

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