Trust: A Fundamental Requirement for Living in a Human Body
“When you’re sincere about your work, it should break your heart. You should get to thresholds where you do not know how to proceed — you do not know how to get from here to there. What does that do? It puts you into a proper relationship with reality. Why? Because you have to ask for help.” — David Whyte
I’ve been sitting with this idea and sense of sincerity of work — heck sincerity of my life and sincerity of self.
We don’t hear this word often. Sincerity: “the quality of being free from pretense, deceit, or hypocrisy.”
I am finding that as a human being to be free of pretense, deceit, or hypocrisy means, over and over and over again, telling myself the truth about how often I don’t tell myself the truth about myself. I am learning to. I am getting better at it. It also means telling you the truth.
To be sincere about my work, I must go to this edge for my work IS about the mystery. I have tried to make it about so many other things. But at the heart of it, it is about this. This is what captivates me. This is where I feel most alive. This is where love finds me.
The mystery. The unknown. Uncertainty.
My work is about guiding people to it and through it — both within and in the outer world.
I have had to come to terms with my fear of it. I am doing that right here by admitting I still hover on the edge of the unknown and want to shrink back. And yet, I also LOVE it. I love being on the edge and diving over. I love it when I dance and give way to the life force that wants to move in totally unpredictable ways. I love it when I paint and or write and something appears that I could never have predicted. And, I love it when I am on a call with a client, or leading a classroom full of techies and executives into the creative process, and something amazing shows up that could never be planned or expected.
I often think I fear it (ahead of time); but in reality, when I open to it I feel most alive.
A great void
There is a great void. I often hover on its edge — or at least what my mind thinks is an edge. It happens when I know I Don’t Know. Capitalized to separate it out from don’t know — like I don’t know how to balance my checkbook or I don’t know how to make a great risotto. The small don’t know can be figured out. We can gain a skill. We can do research. We can even follow science to see what is being discovered.
But ‘Don’t Know’ capitalized is everything that lies over the edge of that great void…the mystery.
Sometimes I move back from the edge of that great void by grabbing a hold of something I decide I know, something that gives me a sense of ground. I can pretend I know. But at this point in my life, I am much more interested in that place where I ‘Don’t Know’. And even then, I don’t like to ask for help. That is true. That is the hard part. It’s not so much admitting I don’t know, which is the hard part for many I work with. But now I wonder if underneath not wanting to admit we don’t know IS this deeper fear of having to ask for help; having to trust in something other than just oneself, whether that be another human being, a community, or something greater than any one of us; and ultimately having to face the fear of being judged and possibly rejected.
Trust. I think it’s a fundamental requirement for living in a human body.
Think about it. We’re vulnerable in these bodies, born into a world where life is not easy, living on a planet that’s spinning in space. We’re both here together but also deeply, deeply alone. You can tell everyone you know everything about you, even every secret you hold, and no one — not one other person — will then know everything about you.
You are a mystery to others. And you are a mystery to yourself.
You have a vast inner world. Even if you have no idea you do, or you do know and don’t want to venture in, you still have that vast inner world. Not being aware of something doesn’t make it go away.
We live in a vast mystery. Even if we choose to deny we do, that doesn’t change reality. The reality is that we are born into a mystery, we live in a mystery, and we will die back into a mystery.
There’s a lot of human arrogance in our world. Gosh, there’s a lot in me. Arrogance. Self-importance. Self-aggrandizing. I AM very good at what I do, and there is a lot I don’t know and Don’t Know. This is good that I know I don’t know. What I want to do is to guide you to see how good it could be for you to know you Don’t Know. Not just good — truly life-changing.
I’m a coach. I do deep coaching. I also teach courses on leadership and creativity. What I do is hold space for others to discover themselves, their deeper nature, and their own internal creative resource which is the fundamental thing that all leaders need to be connected to. If I am to hold space well for you, then I sure better be able to dance in the unknown, to honestly know that I don’t know who you are, and to honestly and courageously invite you to know yourself.
I must trust in the mystery if I am to hold space for you to trust in the mystery.
What I do know is how to coach and how to guide you to your vast nature. That is a skill I have, one I have honed over many years. What I don’t know is the nature of your vast nature. I can’t tell you who you are. I can give you signposts and some sparse maps for the journey. I have some wonderful maps — but a map is not the territory.
And I am human. I don’t know that I will ever be completely comfortable with the mystery, with the I Don’t Know. Maybe we’re not supposed to be. Maybe some of the most beautiful things we can feel are awe and surprise and amazement. But I do trust it. I know it is loving. I know it is unconditionally loving. And this helps me to be more open, more vulnerable.
This knowing that the mystery is loving reminds me that the mystery within you is loving, too.
Maybe this is freedom. To go over the edge. To let go of the tethers. To ask for help. To be vulnerable. To know heartbreak as well as unfettered joy.
To trust.
To trust broken-open-heartedly.
To know awe, wonder, and amazement.
“What does it mean to embody a soulful relationship with life? To be living as if our place in the world mattered? To listen and respond to that “small bright indescribable wedge of freedom in our own hearts.” — David Whyte
