We all place our trust in something. The basic human need for coherence demands it. To make sense of the world, we accrue a collection of beliefs about how things work, including the fundamental questions of why I’m here, whether I serve a larger purpose, and what moral code should guide my decisions.
As is common, my beliefs have shifted over time. In the small-town church where I was raised, my spirituality was nurtured by a loving minister and a community that cared about me. I trusted the explanations I was given. Jesus loved me, and his teachings said to love others as well, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, comfort those in need, and love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus died for my sins. That was important, though I wasn’t sure what it meant. These beliefs explained how the world worked.
In my late teens, my mind grew, and old beliefs no longer fed that growth. I learned new ways to understand how the world worked. Science, logic, and rational experiment expanded my perspective, addressing questions without relying on supernatural qualities. Truth was what we could test, measure, and analyze. The Christian beliefs of my childhood seemed simplistic and irrational compared to these more exacting methods of evidence and proof.
But over time, these explanations also failed to satisfy. If you can’t measure an animating force, a loving intelligence that flows through everything, you can’t prove it exists. It was possible to describe humans as separate entities, small packets of biology bumping into each other, trudging separate courses to separate goals, connecting where our goals align and fighting where our goals conflict.
This view felt alien. It didn’t account for truths that felt obvious to me, even if not provable with our current technology. What about friendship, sacrifice, wonder and wisdom, the healing power of love, the subtle energy of intuition, or the simple, speechless beauty of the world? Were these just the social glue and endorphic firings of brain chemistry that helped our ancestors pass on their genes? In other words, was everything we hold most dear, the things that make surviving worthwhile, just tricks to get us to survive? These explanations did not seem adequate either.
I continued to search, studying religions, philosophies, and spiritual practices, each providing colors that fill out the collage of my worldview. The thirst to understand has been a beneficial force in motivating my growth but it has also led me to cling to ideas out of a need for certainty and control, a fool’s errand, surely. I’ve come to see that the search for understanding is not a march up the Mountain of Truth to arrive at the right answer. It’s more like swimming in an ocean toward a beacon that fades in and out of view, always navigating the currents, pirates, prevailing winds, and sudden storms that help and hinder my progress.
As we grow, the shape of our seeing grows, revealing and polishing deeper facets of the picture. There is an element of choice to my worldview. I can hold it lightly and turn it in my hand to see where the colors match my palette, what pieces truly serve. What yardstick do I use in choosing? These days, I try to rest my intellect and let deeper faculties arise to guide me. Assumptions might be a better word than beliefs. Softer, less rigid. Here are some criteria I find useful in choosing:
Choose assumptions that make me better, not ones that let me off the hook.
Choose what makes those around me better.
Open to what makes me uncomfortable. That’s where learning happens.
Loosen my grip on the desire for certainty and control. They stifle creative inquiry.
Perhaps most important, hold a worldview that lights me up, that inspires. Without that, the hard work of learning and growing in this human tragicomedy can sap my strength.
My current worldview places my trust in a loving intelligence that’s not so different than the love of Jesus from my Christian roots. I trust that I am here to embody this loving intelligence; that my growth participates in the growth of Consciousness; that the fears of my ego are not flaws, just patterns of conditioning I can learn from and transcend; that my fellow beings struggle in their choices as I do and deserve my admiration; and that we will all ultimately make it back together, returning to the home from which we came.
Where do you place your trust? What are your assumptions about how the world works? What criteria for choosing are essential to you? Comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Photo by Azzedine Rouichi on Unsplash