A second aspect of gratitude that I mentioned yesterday was the idea of radical trust; trust even when there are no more handrails to hold us or sustain us. I feel that this is a vulnerable place, in the sense that it means dying to the ways that a person feels more secure in their identity. However, radical trust seems to be necessary in order for a person to be open to receiving the universe as a gift.
If a person is always using their hands to grasp onto something that is familiar to them--such as a sense of inner authority, of knowing, or even of being confident--they are not necessarily able to embrace new things. For this reason, it's sometimes necessary to let go of what one thinks they know to be close to what is not known. This is also a test of dying: how far can a person die to the familiar in order to embrace unfamiliarity? This is a test of radical faith. And I believe that life challenges people to slowly become more practiced in an art of letting go, by providing them with moments of uncertainty and doubt to see how they embrace these experiences.
What allows radical trust to happen? I think that it's trust that there is some higher cosmos that holds all sentient beings, even in the midst of the direst of situations. It holds sentient beings and guides them in their own particular stations in life. No sentient being is "left behind" as all are on a special journey of learning that is unique to their own struggles and conflicts. When thought in this way, a person truly needn't attach to a specific identity: they can see themselves as fellow learners on a journey that is definitely going somewhere in a certain direction, even if they don't happen to know where it's going to lead at this point. And what happens when one embraces this idea is that one sees that life is a gift to them. They are receiving life as a gift in this now moment, and there is nothing else that is needed to qualify it as a gift because this moment has been made specifically for our own growth and learning.
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