As we begin to walk this spiritual path in earnest, we typically don't yet see how we, ourselves, could be responsible for our problems. When this is the case, it's easy to blame someone else.

Often, we blame God.

This makes it very hard to genuinely trust God. In fact, it makes it impossible. For how can we trust a God we believe is responsible for our pain and suffering?

At this point, we don't trust ourselves either. For despite our best efforts, we have not managed to resolve our inner turmoil.

There is, in fact, a direct correlation between our lack of trust in God and our lack of trust in ourselves. It may help to understand more about which part of us trusts, and how to go about becoming trustworthy.

A long, slow, necessary process

The part of us that trusts is our ego. The part of us that's deeply trustworthy is our Higher Self. Between these are layers of highly untrustworthy Lower Self. For the Lower Self is built on hidden untruth.  

To place our trust in our ego is to trust a limited part of ourselves. That said, we need a strong, healthy ego to do our personal healing work. It makes sense, then, that our ego must become more reliable—in some ways, more trustworthy—so that it can perform its intended function.

After all, a healthy ego has many strengths. In general, it learns how to live an orderly life. But even on its best day, the ego is limited. It lacks depth, resources, feelings and creativity. It cannot replenish us energetically, and it can't hold opposites. It makes a great servant but not a good master.

This is why, as we do our work of transforming our Lower Self, our ego must learn to gradually let go of itself. For there is far more to life than our ego can even imagine.  

But letting go is hard for the ego to do. It wants proof, a sure thing, a safe bet.

Over time, though, we can learn to puncture our ego, and in doing so, make space for knowing new things. When we make peace with not knowing—from the level of our ego—we open the door for true inner knowing.  

Finding the key

At the level of our Higher Self, we are each an aspect of God. So each time we let go of our ego and learn to trust our true divine center, we are "letting go and letting God." The key to doing this is to let go with trust.

This means our ego must become willing to trust, in order to develop a connection with the part of us that's actually trustworthy. Before we can take this step, though, we must have done the work of accessing our Higher Self.

These are the steps we cannot skip.

Because the more self-development work we do, the more we discover that all our problems really are self-created. Each of these transformative experiences drops a little more of our Higher Self into our trust bucket.

Starting out, then, we must learn to trust this process. Over time, we can learn to trust the guidance—as well as wisdom, love and courage—that flows from our Higher Self.

There are no shortcuts. This is a painstaking process that takes a long time. It also doesn't happen on its own. We must each make an effort.

We must learn how to fight the good fight.

If our ego lets go without going through these necessary steps, we will land in the arms of addiction. Then the way forward becomes even harder. Because now our ego must pull itself back from our addictions, so we can make progress on our spiritual path.

We can't gain trust any other way.

Yet by doing our personal healing work, we fulfill our reason for incarnating. We align ourselves with our purpose. Further, by finding the roots of our problem—within us—and reorienting ourselves to the truth, we become deeply trustworthy people.

This is how we fill our bucket with trust, working one day at a time, one drop at a time, one life at a time.

In Jill's Experience

I had worked for a large corporation for 15 years when it became time to leave. I was ready to do something different with the rest of my life. The truth is, I just couldn't do that anymore.

So I listened deeply to my Higher Self guidance, and I resigned—without knowing what I would do next. Six months later, I put my house up for sale, not knowing where I would move. A month after that, I met someone with a house for rent in Virginia.  

I set my sails to go in that direction.

I trusted the guidance I was receiving, as well as my ability to hear it and follow it. Beyond that, I didn't know where I was heading. This, of course, was not my first leap into following guidance.

I had been working for years to learn how to take such a step, by making many much smaller leaps. One was through process of redecorating my home. Another was in my career, working in marketing communications. I learned to sense when a particular task was ripe.

In short, I learned what "ready" feels it.

So I moved from Atlanta to Richmond, Virginia. Six months later, I published my first book, Spilling the Script. On it went like that, with my inner compass moving me to Washington, D.C. next. There, I wrote the seven books in the Real. Clear. series.

I was following a clear , quiet voice deep within me. I still couldn't see the greater plan, but I was able to trust this inner voice—and follow it.

I won't say this was easy. And it's not that there weren't days filled with fear. There were even moments of terror. What have I done? What am I doing?

Here is what I've come to realize: If we want to learn to trust God, we are going to be asked to trust God. As the Pathwork Guide teaches, in our journey toward developing trust, we'll need to go through experiences in which it won't be obvious we can trust.

This is not about having blind faith. It's about finding true faith—which is what I strengthened through my not-knowing.

For me, that's where the rubber of all these teachings meets the road.

In Scott's Experience

There was a point some years ago when my life completely unraveled. And I had to sit in my leaky bucket of faith and trust. I had been doing this work with diligent focus for about a decade. And I had made some good progress unraveling knots in my inner life.

I'd stepped out of a 20-year career in gas turbines and a role as an engineering executive to co-lead a sustainability consulting business. I believed what we were doing was critical for the health of both the planet and humanity,

I had faith we could make a go of it.

Unfortunately, interest in our offerings dried up after the 2010 US mid-term elections. Because it became clear that there would be no penalty for a business having a large carbon footprint.

Much of my savings was invested in the business, and little income came in. The US was still in a deep recession, and job prospects were bleak. Then my marriage unraveled.

All this exposed where I could (and could not) stand in relationship,. All of my buttons were getting pushed and I was working to respond constructively. It was like the tide went way out and exposed the seafloor of my childhood wounds, all at once. At the same time, they were being hammered on.

I processed through the emotional pain of all these stuck places in me, day after day, for about nine months. The inner storm seemed so fierce, at times. All I could do was stand in it, face it, and feel all that needed to be felt.

My God Image is that God will be there for me, at times, solid for a while. Then unexpectedly, God will yank the rug out from under me. In other words, sometimes, for no reason, God drops me.

Here it was, my God Image. I'm doing my personal work as hard as I can, try to serve the highest good with this business as best I can. And then the rug is completely yanked out from under me. The fabric of my life came apart before my eyes.

Then one month, it eased. It was a lovely May, and I sat in the deepest emptiness I had ever experienced. There was no income and no job prospects, and everyone was angry with me.

I had little support except one good friend and a few Pathwork Helpers holding space for me. And the deepest, quietest, softest voice in me said, "Sit." What? I have urgent things to do, to take care of this family!

"Just sit."

Other parts of me wanted to jump out of my skin and go find a job. All the angry voices around me were insisting I find a job. "Just sit," is what I heard. So I sat, and I breathed, and I listened. It was among the hardest things I've done.

A month later, the voice of my inner self said, "Now send a few letters." The first and only letter I sent was to an executive in a slightly different field, whom I had worked with before. I asked for a conversation about what he was paying attention to in the world, and if he knew someone I should be talking to.

I sent the email on a Friday at 6:00 pm, the absolute worst time in the business world. His reply was at 6:00 am Saturday morning. "Of course I will have a conversation with you. But meanwhile, please see the attached job description for an opening I have."

It was a critical role requiring an improbable combination of skill sets that he had been trying to fill for a year, without success.

Just that week, he had finished getting executive approval to raise the stature and compensation of the role. And I was perfect for it. A month later, I was settling into a new town and a new life.