Read time 6 minutes. Unconditional Trust is a stand alone article in our series regarding paradox.
Today we turn again to paradox. Specifically, the paradox of being and becoming, and how this dance reveals the deeper presence of trust. In doing so, we must also recall the earlier lesson of simplicity and complexity—because unconditional trust, like presence, does not belong to the thinking mind. It cannot be reasoned into existence. It arises as direct experience, and it dissolves the doubts that reasoning endlessly feeds.
The goal is simple, yet never easy: to invite presence into our lives. And in doing so, to invite the kind of trust that leaps without calculation.
Conceptual roadblocks
Overthinking clouds the very truths it longs to find. We lean on analysis to guide us, but that leaning tilts us away from the thing itself. Consider a traditional Zen inquiry:
“Before thinking, what is the true nature of the present moment?”
The words themselves carry a paradox. The question asks us to direct attention toward the present, while simultaneously asking us to let go of thought. The answer, then, is not in arriving at a clever resolution—it is in becoming the present moment itself.
Here lies the deeper lesson: concepts distort pure experience. Every analysis, every attempt to fix or explain, bends us away from the immediacy of now. The true nature of existence reveals itself only in direct encounter—raw, unmediated, unadorned.
Traditional logic vs. unconditional trust
The past and future are where anxiety breeds. The present moment, lived fully, has no room for it. And yet, our training in logic insists on dragging thought into every corner. Traditional logic claims authority, but its shadow is intellectual doubt.
Unconditional trust has no such shadow. It is not a belief, not an idea, not something one can cling to. It rises naturally when thought and concept are set aside. In abandoning the loop of logic → doubt → more logic, we discover a quiet confidence. Not confidence in outcomes, but in the unfolding itself.
This is Tao. The hinge of the present moment. To meet life from this field is to meet it as the truest version of yourself—clear, wise, and free of fear’s distortions.
Trust as flow
Notice the difference. Unconditional trust does not say, “Everything happens for a reason.” That’s still logic, still bias, still grasping for story.
It simply says, “Everything happens.”
Full stop. Without the need to explain. Without the tilt of preference or the illusion of reason.
And when that truth is embraced—not solved, not rationalized—then the machinery of anxiety and regret falls away. Logic no longer grips the wheel. Doubt dissolves. What remains is trust: a flow that carries itself.
Awareness and the authentic self
What, then, is our true nature? Not the passing emotions, not the chain of thoughts, not the ego scrambling to define.
It is the awareness in which all of these rise and fall.
Such awareness holds no bias. No preference for one outcome over another. If we were to borrow the poetic naming of Native traditions, perhaps our nature could be called something like:
Present Moment–Awareness–Everything/Nothing–Impermanent–Authentic Self.
This is not poetry for effect. It is the pointing of words toward what cannot be bound by them.
Indifference or depth?
A common misunderstanding arises here: that to live in awareness is to become indifferent, passive, detached from meaning. But awareness is not disinterest.
Disinterest numbs. Awareness sharpens.
To let go of control is not to refuse participation—it is to finally participate without distortion. Problem-solving, worrying, strategizing—these belong to the ego’s narrow toolbox. Trust opens the door to something wider: a creativity and resilience that move beyond what the ego can imagine.
Trust and Tao
To be present is to move as Tao moves: spontaneous, flexible, open. Tao is not an external force. It is not an idol to worship. It is what you already are.
So Tao’s creativity is your creativity. Tao’s endurance is your endurance. Its boundlessness is your boundlessness.
Here again, paradox reveals itself. We already grant unconditional trust. But most often, we grant it to the illusion of control. We believe—without question—that control is real, and we place our faith in it.
But control is the ego’s mirage. It draws on fear of the past and projections of the future. And yet, even knowing this, we chase it. Why? Because it promises safety. But its promise is hollow.
Embracing uncertainty
The work, then, is to turn that same faith toward uncertainty itself. To trust what the mind cannot map.
Uncertainty is impermanence. Impermanence is presence. Presence is awareness. And awareness is your true self.
To embrace uncertainty is to let go. It is to fall into paradox with open hands.
The teachings say: “The more you chase, the farther it runs.”
The ego always seeks—attaining, achieving, grasping. Tao does not seek. Tao does not contend. The act of “not seeking” sounds passive, but it is the opposite. It opens space. It makes room for everything, and for nothing.
A Paradox for the road
In I Am That, someone asked Nisargadatta Maharaj: What does it mean that ‘time has ceased’?
He replied:
“It may mean that past and future do not matter any more. It may also mean that all that has happened and will happen becomes an open book to be read at will.”
Time ceases not because it stops ticking, but because it loses its grip. Its hold dissolves. Its meaning collapses into something else.
And once again, words only point. The rest is up to experience.
Unconditional trust is not built but revealed. It waits behind the walls of logic, past the loops of analysis, beyond the grasp of control. It is what arises when we embrace uncertainty with open arms.
Not belief. Not indifference. But a leaping embrace into the paradox that everything happens.
Explore more:
I came across this quote which is attributed to ancient Zen master Foyan Qingyuan. “If you seek, how is that different from pursuing sounds and chasing forms? If you do not seek at all, how are you different from inert matter? You must seek, without seeking.” This is likely paraphrased from his teachings, but the question, nonetheless, remains the same.
This article on The Zen Gateway expounds upon this idea of the perils that come with seeking. Of course we are going to have goals in life. Yet how can we work toward realizing these goals while, at the same time, not being overly attached to them as we do so? “But our problem doesn’t lie out there where the thoughts point. It lies in the seeking or hidden desire behind the thought process itself.”

Karma’s a bitch? Well that can’t be good karma.
🌀 From the GZM Archives – Polished, Preserved, Still Relevant.

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