Trust

During the refuge ceremony I wrote about in yesterday's post, each person taking refuge was given a name. The first word of the name is considered the overall strength of the sangha's generation. For my generation the word is 'Hue' which means wisdom. The second word is the individual's greatest weakness which, if addressed, could become their greatest strength. Maybe conversely, it could be their greatest strength, which if not harnessed and used properly, could become their greatest weakness. Mine is 'Tin' which means 'trust'. When my teacher gave me this name, he said that I should trust with wisdom but also trust in my wisdom.

Who needs a koan when there's stuff like this to think about?

In the energywork I practice, mistrust is held in the third eye chakra, which governs perception. Often, people who experienced betrayal or trauma hold a lot of mistrust in this chakra and their perception of others and the world is colored by that mistrust. I think the more trusting we were when we were betrayed/traumatized, the more mistrust is created.

And it makes sense.

As a kid I went through traumatic experiences where someone I trusted acted in a way that was completely unexpected and dangerous to me. And especially because they were two totally unrelated experiences, my perception afterwards was that pretty much everyone can become batshit crazy and/or violent with no warning, for no known reason. This mistrust protected me from then on, in a sense. Slightly distant and independent became my standard way of interacting with people. Which sucked, because in general I like people and am curious about them and I like feeling close to them. It just didn't seem safe.

Because this mistrust is in the third eye, there can be a habit of trying to read people, intuit how and when they are going to act in a way that will be threatening. But it clouds the actual perception of people, of situations. We end up seeing what we're afraid of, whether it's there or not, so we have a reason to stay mistrustful and keep our guard up.

In 2005, two years before I was officially given my Dharma name, I went through an extended crash course in trust. I was traveling around Europe for two months, working on organic farms. For some reason, the idea of living with total strangers, 1000s of miles away from my home didn't faze me. I was confident in my ability to remain distant and independent, which in my mind meant safe.

And for the most part, it worked. But then I ended up at a place that had been completely misrepresented with a guy who had completely misrepresented himself. On top of that, he was actively antagonistic and creepy. So I left.

I walked for 6 hours through the French countryside, declining kind offers for rides to the train station. Each person who stopped along the road told me, first in french, then in english, that the train was very far. They were correct. But I was not about to let my guard down. I wasn't about to trust anyone, even for a ride to the train station.

When I eventually arrived at the train station, it was 11pm so there were no trains running. I stayed in a hotel and the next morning I took a train to Paris and from there, a train to Prague - the cheapest place I could think of to stay for two weeks. In Prague I kind of huddled into myself. I wrote, I meditated, I walked around and stared at statues. Met people at hostels, stayed distant yet interested. Then, it was time to go to my next scheduled stay - in Girona Spain. I was supposed to stay at an apartment there with a couple - Xavier and Alicia.

Back in Paris, considering the train to Barcelona, my nerves failed me. I called USairways and asked how much it would cost to change my flight home to earlier, like that day. Then, I decided to go to Spain anyway. Traveling south through France, my nerves got worse and worse and I began to get physically sick. My sinuses were a mess, my head ached. The more I worried, the worse I felt. The train ended in Montpellier, where I was supposed to transfer to another train to Barcelona. But somehow I had missed it and the next one wouldn't leave til morning. I was a full on mess at this point. Sick of carrying my bag with me, I left it on a bench while I went to talk to the ticket lady. The French soldiers who were patrolling the station weren't happy about that and asked me if it was my bag when I returned to it. Normally, I might be a little nervous about being questioned by guys with guns. Not then. All my nerves were shot to hell. I looked at them levelly. 'yep. that's my bag.' I didn't care if someone stole it. Didn't care if the police confiscated it. I was exhausted.

At this point two girls from Belgium came up to me and asked me if I wanted to go dancing with them. True story. I can't imagine what vibe I was giving off that said 'ready to party.' I explained that I was sick and stranded in Montpellier til morning, when I'd be going to Barcelona. I further explained that I was exhausted and sick of doing things like travel planning and therefore, I was just going to sit here, in the train station, until the train to Barcelona arrived.

They began to look at the situation differently. 'You can't do that! It's dangerous! You have to get a hotel room!'. Everything is dangerous, I thought. It's exhausting. I'm just going to sit here, on my bag, in the Montpellier train station.

They picked up my bag and ordered me to follow them out of the train station. I followed them to a street of hotels where they spoke to the desk clerk and arranged a discounted room price, since it was so late and they weren't going to fill their rooms anyway. I watched in wonder.
'Ok - you're set. So, now do you want to go dancing?'
I didn't. But I was extremely grateful and thanked them very much for their help.
And then I passed out.

The next morning, I got a bus to Barcelona. The radio was playing 'Should I stay or should I go' by the Clash. Even in my weariest moments, I am always a fan of an appropriate song for an occasion. The further south the bus went, the closer to some unfamiliar destination, the sicker I got. And then Barcelona. I couldn't find a map to save my life. I couldn't find anyone who spoke English. I was about to pull a Montpellier and sit on my bag until something else happened, when I turned around and realized I was standing in front of the 'English as a second language' school. They were very happy to give me directions in English.

But then, the train from Barcelona to Girona. The further north the train went, the sicker I got. What the hell was I doing? These people could be axe murders.

In the train station in Girona I met Xavier and his friend Nani. I was cautious at first, but they seemed normal. Well no, that's not true. They seemed interesting and comical, but harmless. We drove to Xavier and Alicia's apartment in the middle of Girona. Alicia was sweet and welcoming. The apartment was awesome and ancient. I was still sick and exhausted and nerve-riddled. Alicia insisted I go lay down before dinner. In the loft above the living room, I crashed on a bed and tried to sleep. Instead, I felt my nerves begin to unwind as I listened to Xavier and Alicia talk and make dinner. They were listening to the radio - Neil Young's Harvest Moon. It felt the opposite of dangerous.


When I'm thinking about the koan of my dharma name - this trip offers a lot of insight. My belief as a kid was that I had to make a judgement about people, who was safe and who wasn't. And I failed because I trusted people who were dangerous. So I never wanted to fail again and be put in that situation, I wanted to judge correctly - to recognize danger before it go too close. But that perception kept me in a state of distance and mistrust.

As an adult, I had to compassionately recognize that while there was a reason for this habitual mistrust, it wasn't an accurate perception of the world around me, the people around me. And I had to recognize that my definition of trust was too absolute. I trusted people based on the circumstance, their role in my life, their social position. To trust with wisdom, I had to trust based on experience. But to actually have an experience that was in the present moment, I had to let go of mistrust and see what was actually there. It may be that the experience or the prolonged experience of interacting with someone leads me to distrust them. Or it may be that the experience or prolonged experience of knowing someone leads me to trust them. But I'll never know unless I allow myself that experience. And I have to remember that trust is not faith, it's not blind. It's not all-in or all-out. There are degrees of trust.

Of all the people I met while I was in Europe that year, it's Xavier and Alicia that I am still friends with. I visit them everytime I go to Europe. I'm glad I was able to be open to the experience of getting to know them, despite the near nervous system failure I had on my way there.