Let’s ask and attempt to answer the following questions to create a context for starting to tackle the main question:
1) Is the universe, is life inherently trustworthy?
If we are starting from a place that we don’t know if it is trustworthy or not, our honest answer should be: ‘I don’t know’.
Second question arises:
2) How do we find out if the universe is trustworthy or not?
This one is big I tell you. We need to understand, figure out what the universe is to accurately answer this question. Without knowing exactly what the universe is, this question can not be wholly answered. All answers will be partial due to the partiality of our knowledge about the universe. The trustworthiness of the remaining unknown will always be in question. (Bear with me if you have doubts starting with my logical reasoning. I will correct the seeming errors at the end.)
Third question:
3) How can we obtain complete knowledge of the universe? Is this even possible?
I am trying to approach from a point where we don’t know the answer. The only logical answer from that point is to seek the answer, by trying to learn as much as we can about the universe. If the answer is reachable within a reasonable amount of time, we will reach it, otherwise we will die and this lifetime will have ended without finding the answer.
Fourth question:
4) Does anybody know the answer already?
This question can not be answered with total honesty unless we can reach the same knowledge as the person/people who may claim to have obtained the complete knowledge of the universe.
Fifth question:
5) What can we do to obtain complete knowledge of the universe, or find out if this is even possible to achieve our objective of discovering whether the universe/life is trustworthy or not?
Actually there are probably infinite answers to this question. But, my answer right now, for the sake of practicality and to attempt to reach the objective of this article reasonably quickly, will be short and in the form of a strategy that one may choose to adopt.
The answer: Seek to increase your knowledge from every source available. I will expand upon this answer once I answer a question that just arose within me:
Sixth question:
6) What is knowledge?
Now, we are starting to go deeper and deeper aren’t we? But I don’t want to do this infinitely. With this answer I will stop and begin to step out of the conceptual stage. So what is the answer to this question: What is knowledge?
The answer: Knowledge is what we experience in every aspect possible to us, including mental, emotional and physical aspects of experience. And if any other state of experience is available, they are also knowledge.
I am returning to answer the fifth question now, after having defined what knowledge is.
The answer: Seek to increase your knowledge from every source available. Seek mental experiences, related to your mind. Thoughts, images, dreams, ideas, intuitive/psychic experiences, astral experiences. Seek emotional experiences, seek to experience every possible emotion. Seek physical experiences. One can sense the physical through the five senses in the body. So seek through, sift through experiences related to your five senses.
Now the answer has taken the form that we became almost like a knowledge seeking machine. This may not fit into a single lifetime, and also our life can become ruined if we don’t do this in a sensible manner. We can’t just chase totally randomly after experiences can we?
Seventh question.
7) But how to guide this process of knowledge seeking?
If we reallly don’t know the answer to this question, we will really go the way that we can devise in the moment. We need to start from somewhere, start with an approach. In fact we have already started haven’t we? We all have a worldview, beliefs, basically a perception that will bias and shape our search for knowledge. So, we start where we are, from our current state of mind/emotions/body. But how to decide? Who decides? The number of questions are increasing. What is a person? What is a human being? The questions are increasing and increasing. Why? If you feel you need to work on the answer yourself a bit, stop here, and contemplate the article until this point. Live your life a bit, search for the answer yourself as long as you like, you can continue on my logical procession, or create a new one yourself, and then come back if you are interested in reading the rest. Or you can just continue reading if you prefer. The effort you put will be a catalyst to increase your knowledge. So, I am continuing:
Now, up to here, I tried to pave the way but I am aware that something more needs to be done. Actually, this article is also a challenge for me because I am creating new knowledge right here (new for myself mainly, but it will impact the readers directly based upon their focus and intention), the knowledge of producing a conceptual map for the answer of the question at the title.
Yes, as I said, something more needs to be done. I have done this personally myself, and I have the feeling everyone can do this. This is transcending the thinking mind. So, from here onward, I am actually getting help from my own experience to aid you in your search because up to this point, I used mainly logic and mental concepts to create a context for an answer to the main question: How to trust the universe, life?
Eighth question:
8) What do you mean by transcending the thinking mind? Why are we suddenly into transcending?
If you have asked this, you have probably not searched enough by yourself. That is why I advised you to seek the answer yourself and then come back. But that’s OK. The answer is: We need to transcend because the answer can not be purely attained by logical reasoning. That is why I have been speaking about the necessity to increase knowledge on many levels, including mental, emotional, physical and if there are other aspects, those as well.
So, that is why, you needed to do this yourself, to reach the understanding that the thinking mind must be transcended for the answer. The reason is, the answer is not in mental concepts, but mental concepts will help to understand the experience thus help you to create the experience, hence attain the knowledge yourself. So I am continuing in my effort of writing this article consisting of mental concepts here.
So what is the answer? The answer can only be obtained when you focus elsewhere other than your thoughts. When you only focus on your thoughts, you will only know your thoughts. You can only know what you focus on, where you put your attention to. Another question might arise:
Ninth question:
9) What is focusing on something, how can I put my attention on something?:
This is an inherent ability with humans it seems. My experience is I can focus on objects in the world, sensations in my body, the senses, taste, touch, sight, hearing, smell. And my emotions, when I feel them, or I can even create some emotions too. Like anger for example. I can get angry if I wanted. Just an example I tried right now. So, I can focus on my emotions. And I can focus on my thoughts. Right now, part of my focus is on the screen for example. And I am also aware of the thought stream pouring out of my mind into the screen. I am writing almost automatically because I type using ten-fingers, which I had learned more than a decade ago, and typing is almost totally on autopilot. So, I am not focusing on my fingers and keyboard that much. And I am also focusing part of my attention on the center of my chest, deep inside, this is a type of meditation I have learned to stay centered. So, you can just play with your attention, focus, see what you are already focusing unconsciously on, and begin to make it a conscious exercise.
10) So where to focus on other than the thinking mind?
Wherever you focus on, put your attention on, you will begin to gain knowledge about. As an answer to question 3, we can put our attention to every aspect of existence to gain knowledge about it through conscious experience. So, up to this point it should be clear that reading only this article won’t give you the complete knowledge of the universe. You will need to put your attention to every aspect of the universe and experience these aspects to get the knowledge. And question 7 enters the picture, about how to guide this knowledge seeking, because you need to know also where to put your attention to, in which order or your life would perhaps be a random.. mess. This will be a personal journey for you, a journey of discovery. But your knowledge will increase just as it has increased up to this day.
Now, I think these 10 questions provide enough context for me to go on answering the main question.
In my personal journey, I lived my life, going through the personal path of focusing on many aspects of life. Since I was born, I have had a family, an education, read many books, did sports, had relations with many people, watched TV, videos, played computer games, surfed the Internet, meditated, contemplated, journalled, got through many emotions, ranging from deep depression to a significant degree of inner peace and happiness and lived through countless untold experiences.
And of course Love. Now after a point, this seeking, this living through experiences lead you into an inner awareness of an inner dynamic called Love. The reason is, you focus outward into the world, and you focus inward into your emotions and your mind, to the depths of it. And you attention is gradually or perhaps in sudden shifts for some people, drawn to your heart. Not the physical heart, but a sensation of Love at the center of the chest region. (you needn’t necessarily be aware of Love exactly this way, it is only my experience, but there is a deep center I have learned, from where Love flows into/ through us, which is located near the center of the chest) A silent energy some call it, now this is up to you to map how Love is experienced by you. You may be aware of deeper states of Love, or not that much. All is OK. This article is to catalyze the learning process by informing you and walking through contemplation and some of my experiences, which I do intuitively, following my heart, as they say.
So at some point, I began to focus on the Love within. But before that I really explored the shit out of other aspects. I remember more than 6-7 years ago, I was heavily into personal development. I read many many books, also did some audio programs. I journalled, set goals, explored a personal egoic lifestyle thoroughly. I was also exploring simple meditations, like 5 mins in the morning. I also practiced kendo very very intensely for 5 years. It was a huge mental and physical effort on my part. I was very very focused on the body and the mind that moved it to go deeper and deeper in the truth of the art of the sword. I was a really inquisitive person, contemplating on the nature of willpower. I remember myself staring at a wall for many hours once to test the limits of my willpower. I committed to like 18 hours of staring at the wall. I did this as if I was going to die if I stopped and I became aware of the body falling asleep after 4-5 hours. There, I saw that the person I believed, the personality that believed that was in control was not in control, and I was something more. So, I put my attention basically on a spot on a wall and really pushed it to the end once. My personal experiences cannot be told thoroughly enough here, it is impossible, it is a lifetime lived. But I am trying to pass on the meta knowledge here to you. What matters about the discovery and learning of information. It is focusing our attention to different aspects of the universe. I am giving examples to indicate that I have focused on many aspects of the human experience. And of course there is the intention aspect. Now, this is something that one also learns through experience. What is intention? Well that is something that moves you and directs your experience within you. So..
Now. To summarize our contemplation up to here. To ensure that the universe is trustworthy from a point of not knowing this, we need to reach complete understanding of the universe, I have stated. In actuality, we can reach that knowledge BEFORE we reach the complete understanding, but we can’t be sure if we will reach this or not before starting. So, we start and work and work and work. My logical reasoning brought us to the subject of attention and focusing on different aspects of the universe to gain more and more knowledge until we know enough that the universe is trustworthy. The third question was just based on the assumption that we needed complete knowledge of the universe to answer our question but this may or may not be the case for a beginning seeker.
Now to my experience. Throughout my life, after focusing on many aspects of creation, I started to become aware of the Love within myself and started deliberately to focus on it. I was already becoming vaguely aware of our deepest aspects, but as I was struggling to put everything in a clear mental perspective, I benefited immensely from the the Higher Self channelings of Lincoln Gergar.
So yes, I started to attempt to focus on this Love. The center of my chest (deeper into it with the intention to feel Love, to know myself, to be centered. This is basically focusing on God, or truth. But you don’t need to believe in anything, you just need to focus and be open to the experience). And I realized my attention would wander everywhere else regularly, and often. I struggled a lot with this for some years, and at last I accepted it as it is. As I continued to focus, without struggling with getting distracted, but of course I continued to get regularly distracted, the peaceful quality that had been already developing within me, the awareness of this Love started to increase. And at this point, I began to feel that the universe was my friend,and trustworthy because experientially I began to see the dissolution of thought patterns that said it was not. My fears began to dissolve as I kept my attention deeper on the center of my chest, intending to focus on the source of Love, the Spiritual Heart as Lincoln calls. This is where I think an emotional healing was also taking place at some level. I was also heavily examining the conceptual knowledge of the Higher Self Teachings during this period.
So how to trust the universe, life?
My answer to you would be seek out knowledge in your own way from as many aspects of the universe you are aware of, until you begin to find the answer yourself. Trust yourself in the beginning that you can do this. Let this article light a little spark of trust within you that can be grown by your effort. You already have everything with you, but you will need to prove this to yourself by trusting yourself first. Then, you will begin to increase your knowledge and begin to find out whether the universe is trustworthy or not.
My trust is also developing. It is not at a total surrender level right now. And focusing on this Love within is making it increasing. But to focus on this Love, I must choose to trust on it at the present moment to be able to stay with it.I can clearly say that I see life/universe as my friend now. I have the understanding and belief that, whatever experiences it brings, are good for me from a higher perspective. This is not blind belief, this is something that developed through conscious effort on my part.
So basically, knowledge by itself may not be enough to learn to deeply trust the universe, life. You need also to begin trusting the universe a bit to increase your knowledge right? Can we say that Love would enable you to trust? Just love yourself a bit, just light the flame a bit. Just open your mind a bit. Just let in some new knowledge. You need a little bit trust to trust the new knowledge, the new experience to come, right?
It depends on you to cultivate this trust. Trust me. But before that trust yourself. Maybe since the universe contains both of us, trusting me is not that different from trusting yourself to cultivate trust for the universe, but.. start with yourself buddy and expand from there. Because you know.. perhaps you have everything you need to sift through this mega buffet of experience called life.