Assessing Trustworthiness

"When people honor each other, there is a trust established that leads to synergy, interdependence, and deep respect. Both parties make decisions and choices that become based on what is ethically right, what is best for all involved, and what is valued most highly." --Blaine Lee

Dear ES Community, 

It has been clear that the spiritual and consciousness communities are extremely challenged with confusion derived from the variety of unchecked and uncleared negative ego behaviors when “spiritual” people are speaking in “new age” terms and concepts.  These negative ego behaviors are usually entwined with low ethical conduct which damages building trust between people in order to communicate transparently and honestly about a variety of topics. This is not a subject that can be addressed lightly and requires deep reflective thought, as well, as a commitment to hold accountability to circumstances and the behaviors that each of us choose to demonstrate every day. 

These types of situations which bring “group discordance” may also bring major learning opportunities for all of us to help identify ways that we can improve building trust in group and community dynamics, while developing better interrelationship abilities and conflict resolution skills. 

Trust is everything. Without comprehending the necessity of building trust and consistent trustworthy behaviors, the entire foundation of community structure will crumble and those of the group that contribute a great amount of time and energy to help create spiritual community, will cease to do so. It is important to understand the “divide and conquer” agendas that operate in unconscious ways that will attack spiritual groups, spiritual communities or compromise relationships that are building trust - as a direct strategy of destroying any kind of group cohesion or organization. 

This is why I am spending a lot of time now to discuss components of Trust, Building Trust, and how to recognize behaviors and communications that allow trust and the attribute of “trustworthiness” to be modeled and cultivated within spiritual communities and our personal responsibility in those interactions. 

When one chooses controlling behavior, applies force or harm, or superimpose their personal will upon another person, group or circumstance, they become consensual with the impostor spirit which will greatly exaggerate negative ego behaviors, triggering impulsive instinctual reactions which greatly increase confusion and dark manipulation. 

Building trust in spiritual and community setting is what underlies the strong foundation for opening up dialogues, motivating interpersonal communication and multiple layers of sharing, creating a sacred space for which is aligned with the intention of creating a spiritual community based upon Krystic values. Yet, as we understand others personal boundaries and hold compassionate consideration for their position, it is a requirement of cooperatively participating in a community environment which forms the entire success of collective effort. Without the unified cooperative group effort, building trust together to resolve conflicts, real or imagined, many levels of spiritual community and its light work projects will fail.

It is clear that Trust is a critical component in creating a healthy, open and balanced relationship at any and every level of interaction. It is clear that Trust is critical in a healthy, open and balanced organization. So let’s explore the components of defining trust, building trust and what characteristic behaviors erode or destroy trust. Trust is the primary factor in how people work together in projects, are willing to listen to one another, and build effective relationships at every level. Yet many people are unaware of the behaviors and actions that influence trust. Trust is the critical link to creating all healthy and positive relationships, both personal, professional and certainly within the spiritual  community setting. 

The capacity levels for trusting means that one has developed a current capacity for trust and is willing to risk trusting others. However, when risking putting “trust in others” it is wise to determine first the character of that individual (or leader of a group, like myself), or assess the groups value system, in order to accurately assess if the trust being given is appropriate or it is misguided and misplaced. Only each person can make that choice themselves to determine if what they are building trust in is relative to their personal resonance and spiritual goals. To help with a benchmark in making your own personal and private assessment of the leadership of a spiritual community or spiritual group, and the values which are espoused, I suggest that one applies “trust building” inquiries toward the spiritual leadership and the group’s mission statement. 

• Is there a group perception of competence and ability with the leadership role and is it demonstrated in ways that are competent and trustworthy? Can you place yourself in the leadership position? Are they emotionally and mentally  competent and consistent with the community operation and management? Do you feel your competency level with tasks at hand is any better? 

• Is there a group perception of spiritual community that the intentions, actions, words, direction, mission, or decisions are self-serving or are they motivated by a higher mutually-serving and beneficial purpose? Do you feel you could discern the difference of trustworthiness or not  - by observing consistent or stable behavior in the group? 

• Is there a group perception that building trust may be possible if the markers and characteristics of Trust are duly noted and understood? Are you capable of trusting the community when it demonstrates consistent trustworthiness? What kinds of behaviors can you identify that breed distrust? Can you build better trustworthiness in yourself? 

Building Trust is dependent on the interaction of spiritual groups shared experiences of these three main components of leadership and the goals of community. Trust is extremely tough to maintain and very easy to destroy, which the dark forces know very well. 

Trustworthy people know that trust is gained more by stable and consistent ethical conduct than just thoughts and words. Their daily conduct provides evidence of their intent to be honest, reliable, loyal, unbiased, humble, accountable, cooperative, just and communicative. Our conduct must be motivated by trusting others, in addition to our desire to be trusted by them. Trust is a two-way interaction or mutual exchange. 

Trust is the basis for:

 • feeling able to rely or depend upon a person/group, that they will act in accordance to what they say,

• telling the authentic truth even when it is difficult, being trustworthy in all dealings that impact the group and doing so with compassion,

• cooperating with people and experiencing dedicated teamwork within a group,

• observing competency or abilities in creating a stable and consistent environment that is organized for the spiritual objectives of community,

• taking thoughtful risks of vulnerability, such as expressing ones views with honest transparency to the group,

• experiencing believable communications with good intentions felt between parties,

• Getting past previous life experiences that have damaged our trust,

• Forgiving the misplaced trust one has given to people who are untrustworthy,

• Asking the right questions to build confidence that one is not being misled, misinformed and tricked through another’s duplicitous motivations,

• Caring about the community and group, treating everyone’s right to be here as equal, unless they are intent on destruction of the community and building trust,

If we feel into the above points, we may be able to really see how incredibly important it is to establish trust in any relations and group setting, as well to be committed to building trust with each other as human beings. Without this commitment to build trust and cultivate trust - we will not achieve cooperative or collaborative success in creating an environment that feels safe, loving, compassionate, caring and humanitarian. 

For trust to exist in any organization, a certain amount of transparency must pervade the intentions, direction, actions, communication, feedback, and problem solving. The best way to maintain a trusting community environment is to keep from breaking trust in the first place. So let’s bring to light what breeds “distrust” in our relationships and within the spiritual community: 

• Direct deception of perpetrating a lie for whatever reason, failing to tell the truth, often with the intention to deceive or confuse, 

• Lies of omission, deliberate attempts to deceive another person/group by omitting portions of the truth. Lies of omission are particularly egregious as they give people false impressions and attempt to influence behavior by omitting important details, 

• Failing to walk the talk, it destroys trust if one fails to demonstrate the quality or behavioral expectation that has been expressed directly to the person/group. It destroys trust to not be reliable and fail to do what you said you were going to do. Words are easy; it is the behavior and motivations that are consistently demonstrated in compassionate actions, even when under tremendous pressure, that helps people/groups build trust, 

• Casting blame, insults, put-downs, labels, criticisms, comparisons, and diagnoses which are forms of judgment, as in what is “good or bad” or promoting superior or inferior beliefs on others, 

• Making demands that implicitly or explicitly threaten or intimidate others (i.e. community members, stewards, moderators) with a form of blaming, shaming, aggression or punishment if they fail to agree or comply with a certain perspective,

 • Denial of responsibility via “doublespeak” language that is used to obscure awareness of personal responsibility and accountability to actions, 

• Making comparisons or assigning value between people as in judging them, 

• Actions of self-entitlement, taking over threads, many times without consideration for others, lack of self-awareness and lack of considerate comprehension of the influence one’s words, actions or energies have upon others in the group,

 • Making assumptions based on half-truths or harmful gossip, jumping on the bandwagon and taking sides of division based on no knowledge of facts and details. 

• Asserting that the leadership is responsible for every single group member/persons, actions, motivations, energy sessions, and perceived duplicitous behaviors. Essentially this is a denial of personal responsibility and accountability to cultivate one's own discernment.

First, we have explored the necessary components of inquiry in our process of Building Trust within the leadership of spiritual community and its objectives as a group. Then, we identify the areas within ourselves (individually) that require how to accurately assess how to Build Trust and how building trust is the key to our success as an organization and developing positive and healthy relationships. Further, we are looking at discerning the behaviors that breed “distrust” among people and groups Now, let’s look at applying nonviolent communication exercises to help build trust among us, for what may show up in the variations of possible community exchanges of which we seek peaceful conflict resolution.

When we are observing the group or community experiences, it may help that we focus our attention on four components: 

Compassionate Witnessing: we devote our focus on observing the facts (what we are seeing, hearing, or touching) as distinct from our evaluation of placing meaning, assigning value and significance to the person, place or thing. The process of holding space for observation without casting judgment, while prioritizing our spiritual connection to hold compassionate communication for each person within the group. 

Feelings: we allow the process of feeling emotions or sensations with an attempt to stay free of thought and story. These are to be distinguished from thoughts and from words casually used as feelings but which convey what we think we are (i.e., inadequate), how we think others are evaluating us (i.e. unimportant, unappreciated), or what we think others are doing to us (i.e. misunderstood, ignored). Our feelings about the community may be reflecting whether we are experiencing our needs as met or unmet in the community. What feelings may be projecting “unmet” needs upon the spiritual community or group to be something that it may not be? Is it the responsibility of that community to fulfill a person’s desires and needs? Identifying feelings helps us to more easily connect with one another as human beings, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable by expressing our honest feelings can help resolve community conflicts and group concerns. When we are impacting many other people in a community, the member responsibility is to learn better ways to communicate feelings to the group without aggression or violence. 

Needs: We feel that at the basic levels all human beings share the same needs. Feelings point to personal needs being met or unmet. We feel that all human beings have the capacity for expression and feeling compassion. Human beings enjoy giving and sharing with each other. Human beings meet personal needs of expression through interdependent relationships such as in community. Needs may change or be altered at any moment. All choices we make start as an internal choice we are making, which shape our decisions externally. The most direct path to find inner peace while feeling “unmet needs” - is through self-connection to one’s inner spiritual source and cultivating greater acceptance. 

Request: When we communicate with each other, we attempt to always “request” for a specific action, free of demands, threats or bullying. Every person has the right to make requests in order to maintain a boundary, such as, to request the space or actions which allows for authentic and honest communications between parties. However, when we become a member of ES community we have member guidelines to help make the community a safer and more pleasant space for everybody. We distinguish a request as different than making a demand, in that one is open to hearing a response of "no" without this triggering an attempt to bully or apply force in the matter. If one makes a request and receives a "no" it is suggested not that one give up, but that one empathize with what is preventing the other person from saying "yes," before deciding how to continue the compassionate conversation. Sometimes “no” means “no” and as a spiritual adult we reel in our inner child from having tantrums when we do not get our way or we may recognize we have narcissistic wounds running the show. It is recommended that when we make requests between each other, we attempt to use clear, positive, concrete action language. 

For now, I would like to make a request of our community to start with this study on Building Trust to start asking the right questions of each other in assessing trustworthiness. No person here should feel afraid to be here, contribute and communicate in ways that build trust knowing that we can build the courageous communications together. We are a community of people of which many people come and go at will. It is a very important lesson to assess trustworthiness in our community environment and in all relationships of which we are engaged or entwined. 

To assess trustworthiness is a requirement of having an accurate assessment of conditions, situations and the ethical standards which make up a person’s character or a community’s values. The qualities of trustworthiness will always reveal the deep moral character of a person’s real motivations; hence it is extremely important to understand. In ES community we value all aspects of trust at a high level of which we aspire to model as best we are capable. 

Thank you very much to all of those in the community and group that have held trust in me, for stewarding the operations required here in the midst of many challenges and responsibilities. I greatly appreciate and value each person in the spiritual community for their unique contribution, and for the incredible opportunities we are given to go to higher and higher levels of discernment, which also allows activation into higher knowledge.

With a loving heart, Lisa

(Building Trust and Assessing Trustworthiness section has been supported by the research from many variety of sources on trustworthiness, including Wikipedia, Non Violent Communication methods, charactercounts.org, leadershipnow.com)