Trust is deeper than LOVE. How could this be? Years of studying Tantra and what I call spiritual intimacy have led me to believe that without trust and a sense of safety, fear-based consciousness will contaminate love, and therefore unconditional love (without conditions and protections) cannot be sustained. Without trust and safety, neither will intimacy be sustained.

Certainly, love-based consciousness is a prerequisite for true intimacy, and therefore trust and safety must be paramount for having and sustaining intimacy. Most successfully loving couples will tell us this. Trust is not only the foundation for love but also the basis for harmony and peace.

Safety and trust allow us to treat others kindly and relate peacefully. With trust also comes a sense of certainty, confidence that carries one into each situation and relationship with some degree of optimism about the outcome, an ability to access resources, and empowerment that supports natural creativity and problem solving, etc. On an existential level, trust and certainty pertain to one’s confidence in their life, their individual incarnation.

The trust that engenders love, harmony, peace, and certainty is both a result of and a source of a “win-win” attitude. Maintaining such an attitude creates a “win-win” reality, filled with experiences of mutual empowerment and respect, thus leading to greater harmony, peace, and trust. So the trust creates the mutual win attitude that results in the reality of harmony that further substantiates the trust and the sense of safety. We could call this the cycle of trust – the inner creates the outer which encourages the inner, and so on… This principle was well known in ancient Tantra and yoga, and emphasis was consistently placed on what I call “sacred attitude” – the practice of recognition of the goodness in oneself and in others, especially one’s beloved, and the understanding of how this continually contributes to healing and transformation.

Trust and safety arise from and create a sense of inclusion, a sense of belonging, a sense of ease and being “in the flow”, as opposed to struggling and effort, and a sense of living in concert with and within a friendly, favorably responsive Universe. What naturally emerges is a sense that one will be taken care of by such a Universe.

Such an attitude and intuitive felt-sense will naturally form the container in which love, peace, and joy can and will arise and blossom. The cultivation and strengthening of such a psychic, energetic, and external container is the cornerstone on which spiritual intimacy can be developed – this container is the basis for the “sacred space” of true Tantra and Tantric practice. Trust and safety are indispensable.

Very few of us have escaped the painful experience of feeling betrayed by someone that we trusted – the loss of trust can devastate a connection and prevent further intimacy. Also common is the experience of being attracted to someone who seems untrustworthy (to any degree). Again, deep intimacy remains unlikely in such a relationship. Intimacy requires vulnerability and self-revealing (“into me see”) – it seems very rare indeed that anyone would open up and reveal their fragile or uncertain sides without feeling safe and trusting.

Inherent in creating trust is the ongoing matter of creating safety for ourselves, which is both an internal and an external process. We may need to learn how to establish healthy boundaries. According to a proverb: “If someone betrays you once, it is his fault. If he betrays you twice, it is your fault.” Boundaries and the ability to discriminate are ways to bring safety to our experiences.

Furthermore, as we offer safety to others through our actions and thoughts, safety will naturally be enhanced in our own lives. Safety engenders trust, and safety is returned to us. As Abraham Lincoln said, “The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.”

Conversely, we cannot hold grievances, resentments, and judgments towards another and expect that person to extend safety to us. We are required to think and feel peace and trust in order to have the universe provide us with safety. “As within, so without. You cannot think one thing and produce another,” Emmet Fox. So not only must we create peace and safety from within, but we are also challenged to live it in our relationships with others. Certainly, this is the tradition of Tantra. And it’s meant to be lived day-to-day, moment-to-moment, breath-to-breath, thought-to-thought, in our behaviors and communications.

The challenge, then, is how to live the path of trust making? Clearly, doing all we can do to create a love-based reality is a moment-to-moment affair that extends from the most practical safety-making decisions to the most existential and spiritual beliefs. We have to build trust and safety at every level. As Islam advises, “Trust in Allah but tether your camel.”

The Tantric yogis have long known that one of the camels to be “tethered” is none other than our physical body and that certain unconscious tension patterns and breathing styles exacerbate fear states. Conversely, simply consciously relaxing muscle tension, improving posture, and breathing deeply and fully into the belly can shift a person out of fear and doubt into more peace and trust.

Such yogic practices also enhance one’s ability to quiet the mind and generate a spaciousness that empowers the meditator to become aware of the presence of fear thoughts and release them. Cultivating the ability to be aware of the mind and choose positive, affirming, optimistic thoughts is a cornerstone of Tantric practice and a powerful, necessary way to create safety and trust within.

A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt about a personal issue. He said, “I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one.” The grandson asked him, “Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?” The grandfather answered, “The one I feed.” So it is with the thoughts in our minds, and it is the thoughts that create both the vengeful (unsafe) and the loving “wolves” in our hearts. I have learned from Buddhist Tantra that when the mind is quiet and spacious, a person has the best possibility of choosing positive thoughts.

By cultivating such spaciousness, one can further cultivate positive, peace, and safety affirming “self-talk.” Thus one would learn to practice self-talk characterized by a harmonious, non-adversarial attitude towards self and others. A self-talk is a powerful tool for befriending oneself (vs. terrorizing oneself with self criticism) and for creating inner safety and trust. Tantra and Taoism have offered various techniques for accomplishing this, including the “inner smile” Taoist meditation and the “metta” (loving kindness) Buddhist practice.

Other practices from these traditions are essentially like giving ourselves regular “pep talks” or modeling our thinking after the thinking of great saints and obviously harmonious people. Clearly, the mind plays a huge part in our moment-to-moment creation of trust and safety. Abraham Lincoln put it simply, “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Or, according to Tennessee Williams, “Luck is believing you’re lucky.” Religious Science and other New Thought religions excel at training prayerful positive thinking called “treatments,” and these prayers serve to affirm a safe life and supportive relationship with Spirit.

In addition to the positive thinking and sacred attitude practices that are possible with a quiet mind cultivated by meditation, something else of equal value is possible. The meditative mind is capable of accessing spiritual guidance: the insights and intuitive inner directives that often offer miraculous help in making choices and decisions.

Many have described the guidance as a sense of being provided for and led through the maze of life to safe havens and beneficial situations. Guidance assists in creating safety in the short and the long run, in minor and major situations, and thus spiritual guidance engenders trust. Various traditions of Tantra have taught practices for maintaining dynamic access to the valuable guidance and support of spiritual allies.

Positive thinking, a sacred attitude, and an ongoing connection to guidance orient a person to a trusting, abundant attitude towards life in general. This sense of abundance and overall trust also allows a person to release the need for getting energy, attention, approval, control, etc. from others. In the absence of manipulative agendas and interpersonal games, relationships take on a flavor of safety, and trust can develop. Agendas and games erode trust.

Conversely, this is where the energy meditations of Tantra Yoga and Taoism truly shine, empowering one to tap into the infinite energy of the Universe, the Chi or prana, instead of trying to access energy from others. Conflict and judgment are naturally reduced, as is a need to have relationships manifest in any special way, and people are free to interact lovingly and peacefully in the present moment. And in this atmosphere of trust, the joy of co-creativity can spontaneously arise.

So in the moment-to-moment, day-to-day experience of life, by utilizing ancient and modern practices, we can create a sense of safety and trust. If we regularly apply these practices to the arenas of our mind and thoughts, our relationship to Spirit/God, and our relationships with others, we will surely create a supportive atmosphere in which unconditional love and genuine intimacy will flourish.