Tao Tuesday #20
The master has no mind of her own.
Verse 49
The master has no mind of her own.
She works with the mind of the people.
She is good to people who are good.
She is also good to people who aren’t good.
This is true goodness.
She trusts people who are trustworthy.
She also trusts people who aren’t trustworthy.
This is true trust.
The master’s mind is like space.
People don’t understand her.
They look to her and wait.
She treats them like her own children.
The verse regarding ‘true trust’ is one that frequently bubbles up in my mind.
What does it mean to trust those who are untrustworthy? This is a quintessential Lao Tzu paradox. It flies against our ‘common sense’.
Someone is untrustworthy?
Defend yourself! Reject those who might hurt you! Push them away and keep yourself safe!
Yet we know that we resist, persists. That which we push away we entangle with ourselves with, becoming more deeply enmeshed.
This is the same truth that also underpins the notions that “to be resentful is to drink poison hoping the other person gets ill”, or that one must “battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster”. It’s perhaps what Jesus meant also when he said to “turn the other cheek”.
So what’s the alternative? Just roll over? Get hurt and betrayed?
I have contemplated this for some time and this is where I currently sit with it.
To trust in the Tao, God, spirit, the intelligent Universe, whatever you want to call it, is the idea that there is more in the unseen than the seen, that there is a greater force at work and it’s on your side.
If you can believe this, then we have nothing to fear from the untrustworthy, because there’s nothing they can really do to harm you. As it says in A Course In Miracles: “That which in real cannot be harmed, and that which is unreal doesn’t exist - therein lies the peace of God”.
Even on a purely human level, when we accept the untrustworthy for what they are, without judgement or anger, something is transformed. The simple act of recognition that they (like us) are flawed humans who perhaps cannot see things clearly, or love themselves or others as well as they would truly like, helps us to realise the only ones they are really hurting are themselves.
It’s far from easy, but by trusting the untrustworthy, we are in truth building trust in ourselves.