Trust the Process: The Wisdom in How it Works – Part 1
From the Future Works Gazette
April, 2005
- Polly B. Berends
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.
- Albert Einstein
“My struggle is how to stay focused and allow the process to work. It’s so easy for me to be able to go in so many directions. I feel myself drawn to my old ways of reacting, managing my life by objectives. But I know that’s fundamentally suicide to my Psyche.” -Jane, 43-years old
“Everyone is telling me it’s a slam dunk. A must next step. It’s between me and a real numbers cruncher. I don’t know if I have a choice. But this new position is rife with dangers. I’d be reporting right to the top. But he’s a known terrorizer and chops people up like ice in a daiquiri. But if I don’t take it, I don’t know what’s coming next.”-Jim, 44-years old
Jane, age 43, is just learning that if we push too hard, then we’ll surely miss out on life as it happens. When we are uni-focused on the end result not the process, it’s easy to get consumed – destined to get lost in the chaos. Then it’s even easier to just not be fully present. Surely not being fed.
Clearly our feeding tube needs to be removed. No more sucking up obsession and hurry sickness. Ending up against brick walls because we didn’t see where we were heading.
Jim, aged 44, got “saved”. He didn’t take the high visibility job. After he pulled himself out of the running, he was relieved. That tell us something doesn’t it? 
I encouraged him to trust that the right and perfect match would come, if he just kept showing up and stayed true to what matters most to him. I told him to Trust the Process.
What came through days after he “let go”, is a far better scenario with all the attributes Jim truly desired. Now he’s the top guy and he can do it his way!
Everything I’ve learned from my work and studied from the Masters confirms the “rightness” of Trusting the Process.
Let me assure you that I am not suggesting that all you have to do is resign to a life of sitting under a tree while contemplating your navel and voila!, the good life will be yours! But rather I am proposing that understanding process and embracing change leads to peace and abundance.
Before we can talk about Trusting the Process, we have to agree on an operational definition of what a process is and how it relates to you, your life, your work and our world.
Everything in our lives can be traced back to a process. Our very life is a process. Getting work done involves many processes.
If we step back and take a big picture view of our universe, everything that exists is a system; a unified whole organized around interdependent sub-processes and parts interacting towards a desired end result. This is true of our bodies, business, the solar system. Everything.
The “divine force” that birthed us into existence, works with energy and force fields that keep us magnetized together — with just enough tension of the opposites to keep us in our planetary path.
Every system tends towards homeostasis, or balance. Each of us is a self-correcting system, always seeking to right itself… to find center and balance. Always seeking to grow and develop towards wholeness.
For me, Luke Skywalker’s “force” is the context for our times. It is what drives every process. It is our innate urge to evolve to a better more improved version of who we are already.
So where does trust come into play? No one questions whether verdant spring will follow the fallow days of winter, or summer will turn into vibrant autumn. Seasons are processes we’ve learned to expect, to trust they will return.
It is this same trust applied to all the processes of our life that I am suggesting. Applying this to our everyday lives and work, instead of desperately trying to control and exploit our life, we develop an attitude and response mechanism that collaborates with the dynamics of the very processes of life.
When we understand processes and how they work, we become alert to the direction in which the energy and movement are proceeding and cooperate with it.
I stood outside in the cold air, watching flames devour our home and my office. Even as the wooden beams and all our possessions crackled under the heat, I knew in every fiber of my body that this fire was my initiation into yet another inward journey… into a process of Self-renewal. I wanted to rail against this intrusion, go on with my life and work as I knew it.
But my hard earned trust in process won over. To find the real “pot of gold”, I would have to surrender control, letting the natural forces of process move me . In a flash of insight it was clear that this was going to be my Big Momma structural change. I “knew” that in the end, I would return from the ashes having met the divine within.
My own greatness was furthered by trusting the process.
Whether it’s the fire, (my current allegory), or the creative process itself, I know that when I trust the process, everything falls into place. Not necessarily in my time frame. My trust comes from my new awareness.
I am learning to be a witness in my own life. When I “groc” the power of transformative process, I re-learn how to be a witness for others. From that perspective, patterns reveal themselves for healing and transformation.
I guess I’m just a process junkie.
And creative process is also teaching me to be a witness. And to trust.
When I write, I dump whatever’s on my mind. I usually find myself sitting in the midst of a tangled pile of thoughts. But I don’t know where to begin. No doubt in the middle. Then I just let go. Fingers on the keys, waiting for something to come through into my fingers. All I have to do is be open. Be receptive to what is coming forward.
I’m learning to trust this creative process even more and more. While I was writing today, I “woke up” out of deep concentration to “see” what was in front of me, as if for the first time. My eyes were fixated on a book sticking out just a bit from the rest of the books on the shelf, which were all about 6 feet away. I almost dismissed what I had witnessed.
Thankfully, I got up out of my computer chair, around some equipment obstacles, to retrieve the out-of-place book. I opened it “randomly”. The page I turned to was the opening of the chapter exploring the Renewal Process as one of several significant transformational processes inherent in human development. It was just the connective glue I needed for all my dots. What a gift!
I lovingly call this trusted awesome mystery, the “X” factor. Carl Jung referred to it as synchronicity.
What’s important for all of us to note is that each system and its processes has an aim, some goal or desired result. Otherwise it doesn’t exist. When it comes to the big picture, this aim or intended outcome falls into the domain of trust for me.
As Luke would say, Go with the Force!
And be a student and witness to the process.
© 1997-2009 Karen Sands/Future Works Institute, Ltd. All rights reserved. May not be duplicated, retransmitted or reproduced without permission. Future Works® is the registered trademark of Future Works Institute, Ltd.
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