BY DAVID RICHO, author of Daring to Trust and 14 other books about spirituality and psychology — Annual planting among ancient peoples began with prayer that recalled how the gods performed this same task at the beginning of time. The human lifecycle, thus, became a repetition of a primal religious event.

Whatever happens every year becomes a promise in perpetuity, and thereby the phases of life and the seasons fit into a spiritual framework.

Among ancient peoples this fostered a sense of belonging here on earth.

Repetition and participation give humans roots: “I am real because I am part of something. I have a grander meaning than is outlined by my fragile body.”

Primitive religious peoples lived in a world that had an alternative meaning to the given one.

Pre-Columbian meso-Americans, 400 B.C.

Belief in a mirror universe to this one gives oppressed people a special hope which is missing from the society in which they live. In that other world rank, status, and hierarchy are all reversed.

This is the apocalyptic vision of a future equality in which goodness and justice triumphs. Here the persecuted will inherit the kingdom and will finally be honored. Such an anticipation and hearkens back to a primordial state, e.g., Eden.

The early Christians believed fervently in a parallel kingdom that defied and abrogated the Roman empire and all its power. In the apocalyptic kingdom God will fully approve the unapproved and the last shall be first.

In our contemporary world we do not have beliefs quite like this. But the collective unconscious can weave a web of myth and symbol that reconnects us with our origins. In the Jungian perspective the psyche is a source, not simply a depository of knowledge. This reflects the ancient views, especially those of Gnostics and alchemists.

Psychologically, we all have a need to trust that we are supported by powers that resemble us, nurture us in our life pursuits, and understand us compassionately.

Our modern egos may balk at this. They often drive us to want autonomy and independence at the cost of connection.

Actually, the ego does not have the ability to sustain itself independently. In addition, the ego fears independence and true freedom.

With independence it would lose its entitlement to be taken care of. With freedom it would lose its escape hatch of blaming others for what goes wrong. So we are searching for and demanding the impossible.

Left to ourselves, we homo-sapiens will spiral down into a cycle of destruction. Relying only on what is innate gives humanity no hope for survival. This is why spiritual teachers come along, so that we can survive and open to other wonderful possibilities in our nature. We were born with a proclivity toward spiritual practice just as we were born with an inclination to dance.

Huston Smith says that religions are to spirituality as universities are to education. You can get there without it but you will be traveling uphill. A spiritually-aware religion provides a platform, a framework in which to understand the world and ourselves. Then it can show us a path to love of the world and ourselves. In addition, when crisis hits, religion may not have an answer but when we come to believe that our suffering is shared by God, it becomes tolerable. Faith also promises that our power to love will not be lost no matter what occurs. In the Void, all of this may be hard to believe, but that, like everything, is temporary.

Religious beliefs are meant to help us accept reality as it is—including death and chance. Indeed we can learn from life itself which shows us so much when we use religious teachings as pointers. Our sacrifice is to give up the craving for absolutes and certitudes as our forms of safety and to use religion as a source and treasury of perennial wisdom and as a coping mechanism in a stressed and stressing world.

David Richo is the author of 15 books, including How to Be an Adult. A formerly active Catholic priest who has made Buddhism his personal practice, he is also a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in individual and couples counseling. Dave divides his practice between San Francisco and Santa Barbara, CA.

Adapted from, Daring to Trust: Opening ourselves to Real Love and Intimacy, By DAVID RICHO — A compass is a trusty tool for a journey, and we can see the four directions that trust can take using the symbol of a compass. Draw a diagram to see for yourself.

Place the words “I TRUST” in the center with a circle around it.

In the East position write: “MYSELF”

In the West position, pencil in: “OTHERS”

South: “REALITY,” or “WHATEVER HAPPENS”  — or “HOW LIFE UNFOLDS.”

And finally, due North: Use whatever word that for you represents, “GOD” or a “HIGHER POWER.”

Chart your trust

Draw arrows from the center of the circle to each of the four points on the compass.

Notice the combination: A horizontal plane for people, and a vertical plane for powers that transcend our control. Draw curves around the face of the compass from north to east to south to west, and back to north.

It’s an illustration of how all the resources of trust connect and aid one another.

Now think of your most recent concern or problem — or how you handle things ordinarily. You can examine how you trust in each of the four directions when it comes to handling this, or any issue.

Through my work as a psychotherapist who has counselled thousands of patients over a lifetime — and research that has produced 14 books — I have developed a set of questions designed to gauge these axes of trust in your life.

Let each of your responses start you on a train of thought and feeling that can show you how to trust more fully and more effectively in each of the four resources. See them as allies in your dealing with your present, or any predicament.

An ally is anyone or anything that aids me in evolving, that wants or urges me to succeed, that coaches me toward my best good, that supports my self-discovery, that is my assisting force.

The first of these four dimensions is about self-trust, which is another way of saying freedom from fear.

Ask yourself:

How much do I trust myself?

1. What resources do you find in your body-mind, and how can you use them more?

2. How well can you rely on yourself to take action when you face a challenge?

3. What qualities, skills, and virtues do you trust in yourself?

4. What commitment will you make to stay with this issue by first pausing to contemplate it — and when you are ready, to address it so that it can be resolved?

The next dimension of trust relates to the level of trust in your relationships with those around you.

Next, how much do I trust others?

1. Asking for help is a way of learning to trust. What kind of support will you ask from your partner or closest friend?

2. What will you tell your family or friends so that they can be of help to you?

3. If people do not come through for you, what plan do you have to handle that disappointment?

4. If you fear or are embarrassed about asking for help, can you work on that by admitting your fear to yourself? If possible, fee. your fear fully, and sidestep being driven or stopped by the fear.

The third direction in your compass of trust is a dynamic I call, “core trust.”

What is “core” trust?

A trinity of questions to ask yourself:

How can you say yes unconditionally to what is happening so that you can gain the serenity to accept what cannot be changed?

How can you say yes unconditionally to what is happening so that you can gain the courage to change what can be changed?

How can you say yes unconditionally to your inner wisdom so that you can tell the difference between what can and cannot be changed?

Make a commitment to keep looking for what helps you trust that the universe keeps providing opportunities for practice, that this problem can further your evolution, that from it can come greater self-esteem and love for others.

The fourth quadrant in our matrix of trust is about your relationship to a higher power.

If appropriate to your belief system, use devotion and prayer to build your personal connection to God or to a higher power. Drop down into the deepest place in yourself where there is an infallible source of unconditional love, wisdom, and healing power — and then picture yourself bringing these three qualities to bear on the issue at hand. Imagine angels, saints, or Buddhas representing love, wisdom, and healing attending you now, and in every phase of the problem and its resolution. If these traditional images are not appropriate, use whatever works for you.

“Can I trust a higher power?”

Ask for the grace of trusting a higher power by using your own affirmations or by using the aspirations below. Regarding each of the four directions of trust use these affirmations:

May I grow in trust in myself by granting myself attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing.

May I grow in trust of others by asking for their support, appreciating their way of giving it, and not blame or punish them if they fail me.

May I grow in trust of my present predicament as a path to wholeness and higher spiritual consciousness by accepting my here and now situation with equanimity  — and with some sense of humor, too.

Quindio, Colombia: Photo by David Rickey

May I keep trusting graces from powers beyond my ego.

May I stay aware that they are everywhere and always with me.

May I feel how they guide, guard, comfort, and cheer me.

May I grow in steadfast faith that cosmic powers always and everywhere care about the evolution of all of us.

May I always be thankful for the graces that keep coming my way.

Now I am aware that the words, “I will fear no evil for thou art with me,” apply not only to a higher power.

They apply to all four of my trusty resources:

“I will fear no evil for I am with me.”

“I will fear no evil for others are with me.”

“I will fear no evil for the universe is with me.”

A litany of loving, trusting kindness

May what I go through in this crisis or concern be of help to all people everywhere who are suffering in the same way that I am. May whatever progress I make be of service to them, too.

May I trust that I will never lose my capacity to love no matter what happens to me, and may I always know that nothing is more important than that.

In this practice of recalling and joining with all people everywhere who suffer as we do, we no longer see our particular pain as unique to us. Our sense of comradeship leads to a “yes” to the given of universal suffering. This is what frees us from suffering as a victim rather than as a human among fellow humans.

We can also say that suffering is more than a given. It is a symptom of remaining caught in duality thinking — namely wanting something other than what’s going on at each moment, which is another way of saying not living in the now.

Buddha’s noble truths can perhaps be understood this way: Suffering happens in attachment to, or in avoidance, of the now. Once we let go into the moment, suffering becomes simply part of the experience of being alive.

David Richo is the author of 14 books, including How to Be an Adult in Relationships. A formerly-active Catholic priest who has made Buddhism his personal practice, he is also a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in individual and couples counselling. David’s newest book is Daring to Trust: Opening Ourselves to Real Love & Intimacy. His most recent workshop at California’s Esalen Institute was in June, 2011. His next appearance at the San Francisco Bay Area’s Spirit Rock Meditation Center will be Oct. 22, 2011.

SOUL’S CODE —  Shrunken stock portfolios, canceled checks, and an unemployment rate in the double-digits indicate that couples who are distressed in their relationships today will stick together tomorrow.

Stick it out, rather than walk out is a distinctly anti-Me Generation response to fear and unmet wants — the opposite of the Baby Boomer ethic of autonomy and desire-fulfillment.

The polar-opposite is our parents’ and grandparents’ code for survival — a Survivor-response to love and relationships forged in the scarcity of The Depression’s and WWII.

Will the Great Recession make that the norm? Or will it still be the Baby Boomer way? Either way, is your relationship something to save — even while savings are lost? David Richo offers a checklist.

Richo’s way, is the Buddhist ‘middle way’ between poles of  self-indulgence and self-abnegation.

A triple-threat as they say in Hollywood, Richo is a one-time Catholic priest, who earned a Phd. in psychology — and then went Buddhist. A highly-regarded Jungian psycho-therapist, Richo is also the author of 13 books, including his breakthrough, How to Be an Adult in Relationships.

He may be the world’s most insightful observer of how relationships work, or don’t. And whether you should stay, or go. On that turning point, here is a matrix of the difference between a realized teacher like Richo and daytime-TV, schlock-jocks (come on down, Dr. Phil):

DR. PHIL: I am here to help you fix the story of what happened to you, bolster your personality (ego), and push you to get what you want.

DAVID RICHO: Entrenchment in ego is the biggest obstacle to intimacy. I am here to help you become more conscious of your conditioning, and it is keeping you stuck in repetitive patterns.

OPRAH/DR. PHIL: Have some self-respect, get some spine, and kick him to the curb . . . (just like Oprah did to that one, who wrote A Million Little Pieces).

DAVID RICHO: If the purpose of relationships is to show us where our (inner) work lies, there’s actually no blame to spread around. You’d say, ‘Thank you for showing me what my work is.’

OPRAH/DR. PHIL: What are the things you want in a man to be happy? Tell us (translation: my ratings/audience) your (ego’s) needs.

DAVID RICHO: If you rush into a relationship because of attraction and chemistry, it’s probably best to run the other way unless you can say: “Oh, here is a chance to do my work, and the other person agrees that they’ll do theirs.” But if you think of the relationship simply as, ‘we’re going to satisfy each other,’ the unconcsious will present it’s “bill”.

OPRAH/DR. PHIL: Get over it, girl. Move on, and move on up. Time to close a door so you can open a new one.

DAVID RICHO: What do I have from my own past to take care of before I can enter a healthy relationship?

And here’s a question for Richo: what things should we ask ourselves to discern whether a relationship is worth working on, or a space that we should leave. Richo has distilled what he’s learned from Buddhist devotion, scholarly research and clinical observation down to a handful of qualities: Ask yourself if your relationships has these five “A’s”:

1. Attention
2. Acceptance
3. Appreciation
4. Affection
5. Allowing
   

Richo doesn’t trumpet these in a stump speech of talking points at a Las Vegas convention center like Tony Robbins or Deepak Chopra.

Instead, he prefers audiences like the 200 seekers and practitioners who spent a weekend with him at a northern California Buddhist retreat called Spirit Rock, where he shared more essential relationship ingredients that start with the letter “A.” You also want to ask if you and your partner share:

Agreement (as in, a relationship isn’t a high-concept thing; it’s essentially the sum of a series of kept agreements)

Authentic presence (as in Martin Buber’s “I am thou”)

In a display of spiritual stand-up, Richo sprinkled his talk with contemporaneous references to everything from the Book of Ezekiel and Emily Dickinson to Hollywood romantic comedies during un-scripted Q&A sessions. Memorable lines:

Adults aren’t people who no longer need parenting; they’ve switched the need for parenting from birth parents to a partner, church, guru or therapist.

What is chemistry? It means you have found an apt candidate for transference.

EZEKIEL: “Look how I was wounded in the house of those who loved me.”

“Resent” in Latin means to ‘feel over and over again.’ Resentment is a cover for grieving.

Back to your relationship, and whether you should stay or go. If it has enough of Richo’s five A’s, he prescribes three basic steps for working out any issue — whether it’s about depressed stocks, a failing career, or a depressed soul.

• A) Address the problem. Name it. Articulate an issue in the relationship, without blame: “I am unhappy with how much you drink.”

• B) Articulate how it makes you feel, and relate it to a past. Report the feelings that go with the problem (processing). Acknowledge how the feeling is fueled by your past. How do you know if it’s connected? If you’re experiencing it intensely, and taking it seriously, it’s connected.

• C) Make an agreement with your intimate partner about how to change it.

This is the essence of how to be an adult in a relationship, a loaded term at first glance. But Richo’s defnition of an adult isn’t judgemental. In fact, it’s both invitingly simple and inclusive: An adult is someone who has expanded their potential for fulfillment.

Are you clinging to your mate out of financial fears?

SOUL'S CODE — According to social science studies, couples who are financlally-distressed in their relationships today, will stick together tomorrow.

Stick it out, rather than walk out is a distinctly anti-Me Generation response to survival fears and unmet wants — the opposite of the Baby Boomer ideology of self-gratification and self-indulgence.

So if both your savings and your relationship are in crisis, how can you tell if the latter is worth saving? We offer a checklist, courtesy of the noted couples counselor and author, David Richo. Richo's way is the Buddhist 'middle way' between poles of excessive self-concern and Depression-era self-sacrifice. A triple-threat, as they say in Hollywood, Richo is a one-time Catholic priest, who earned a Phd. in psychology — and then went Buddhist. A Jungian psycho-therapist, Richo is also the author of 13 books, including his breakthrough, How to Be an Adult in Relationships.

He may be the world's most insightful observer of how relationships work, or don't. And whether you should stay, or go. Here is a schema we made up to show the difference between a realized teacher like Richo and mass-media schlock-jocks like Dr. Phil:

DR. PHIL: I am here to help you fix the story of what happened to you, bolster your personality (ego), and push you to get what you want.

DAVID RICHO: Entrenchment in ego is the biggest obstacle to intimacy. I am here to help you become more conscious of your conditioning, and how it is keeping you stuck in repetitive patterns.

OPRAH/DR. PHIL: Have some self-respect, get some spine, and kick him to the curb . . . (just like Oprah did to that one, who wrote A Million Little Pieces).

DAVID RICHO: If the purpose of relationships is to show us where our (inner) work lies, there's actually no blame to spread around. You'd say, 'Thank you for showing me what my work is.'

OPRAH/DR. PHIL: What are the things you want in a man to be happy? Tell us (translation: my ratings/audience) your (ego's) needs.

DAVID RICHO: If you rush into a relationship because of attraction and chemistry, it's probably best to run the other way unless you can say: "Oh, here is a chance to do my work, and the other person agrees that they'll do theirs." But if you think of the relationship simply as, 'we're going to satisfy each other,' the unconscious will present it's "bill".

So what things does Richo recommend we ask ourselves to discern whether a relationship is worth working on, or leaving? The therapist has distilled the following five "

A's" from his Buddhist devotion, scholarly research and clinical observation. How many of these five "A's" does your relationships have?

1. Attention
2. Acceptance
3. Appreciation
4. Affection
5. Allowing

And two more, for good measure:

Agreement (as in, a relationship isn't a high-concept thing; it's essentially the sum of a series of kept agreements)

Authentic presence (as in Martin Buber's "I am thou")

If your relationship has enough of Richo's A's, he prescribes three basic steps for working out any issue — whether it's about depressed stocks, a failing career, or a depressed soul.

• Address the problem. Name it. Articulate an issue in the relationship, without blame: "I am unhappy with how much you drink."

• Articulate how it makes you feel, and relate it to something in your past. Report the feelings that go with the problem (processing). Acknowledge how the feeling is fueled by your past. How do you know if it's connected? If you're experiencing it intensely, and taking it seriously, it's connected.

• Make an agreement with your intimate partner about how to change it.

This is the essence of how to be an adult in a relationship, a loaded term at first glance. But Richo's definition of an adult isn't judgemental. In fact, it's invitingly inclusive: An adult is simply someone who has expanded his or her potential for fulfillment.

NEXT: What Does "For Richer, For Poorer" Mean During a Recession?

Most of all we’re impressed by the power of David’s personal presence, which is why it’s such a privilege to experience it in a face-to-face setting.

David lead an all-day workshop on Saturday, March 8 at Spirit Rock, a Buddhist-oriented retreat in the brown hills of the Marin Headlands – and a short hop north of San Francisco. The theme: “Our commitments to Love and Realism.”

Last year David did a smaller workshop in San Francisco under the theme, “The Archetype of Light”. In his own words…

“There is a light within us that helps us through intuition and spiritual realizations in daily life and in dreams. This light lets us see through the gross appearances in the world to the trans-personal life deep within all things.”

Richo has taken a very deep leap of faith, and is a conductor of that light. It’s hard not to have an illumination in his presence.