Thoughts on the Trust Project
Sometimes I have dreams that are just words, written or heard. Several years ago I had a dream where these words came to me – “Ride the dragon on the street”. I was so drawn to this phrase that I have it printed on my checks. Trusting, I believe, is a form of riding the dragon on the street.
My project is about investigating trust. Experiments with trust. Embracing engagement and abandon, playing with taking more risks. Exploring the other side of caution and carefulness and thoughtfulness. Exploring releasing myself more fully into things, processes, hands I can trust. Including my own.
At times I’ve thought I need a “flinging” practice. Learning to fling, blurt, uncork, let loose, be wild, be carefree. Speak without having it all thought through. I still don’t know what this specific practice might be, but I like the sound of it.
Starting in mid-December I had a variety of significant experiences over a couple of weeks. These were strong moments – a vivid shared world created in improvisational dance, being deeply seen and responded to by my mentor, a powerful new form/technique emerging in my therapy practice, measurably being of serious help to different friends during times death and crisis, an outpouring of creative work in an audio project that woven together passions of reciting poetry and music, being trusted at a new level with a close friend. So many gifts.
I decided I needed to note these occurrences, to help me bask in them and appreciate the big dose I was being given. The small yellow tablet is right here next to my laptop. At the top of the page I wrote Gifts and then wrote Dec. 23, Sunday, Contemplative Dance Practice with Aaron, Alia, Victoria and others, a world created, free. I’ve kept my Gifts log daily since then. In formulating my thinking here about the Trust Project, I’ve scanned back through the Gift log. These were all luminous moments. Several of the gifts involved an aspect of trust or risk. I hadn’t seen that before.
Thinking about how to document the process in a simple format, I created a template of the basic elements that shape and inform these experiments in trust:
Who/what trusted –
Context –
What I did –
Outcome –
What is at risk -
Type of trust/risk, level –
What does trust have to do with “…that shining something which draws me on, which I feel in the bones of the earth and makes our existence luminous”? I haven’t been able to articulate it completely, although I have no doubt they are bound up together. But it came to me just now – lack of trust impedes, mightily, my ability to experience this aliveness. And the presence of trust invites the shiningness.
