Unifying the duality pair of Betrayal and Trust

Liberally quoted from In Search of the Beloved by Jean Houston

“Betrayal, of all the woundings that may be suffered by the soul, can be the greatest agent of growth in the sacred. It marks the end of primal, unconscious trust and forces upon us those terrible conditions that accompany the taking of the next step. In all the great myths, of betrayal, such as Judas and Christ, Osiris and Set, Lancelot and Arthur, we find the loss of a simple and wholehearted faith in the Primal One, God, the bringer of justice, stability and comfort. The condition of this trust has acted as a subtle and powerful binding that blocks the fullness of the greater consciousness needed to respond to new situations, situations that cannot be met within the old conditions. Trust always contains the seeds of its own betrayal. Betrayal allows for the coming of self reflection and therefore of consciousness. And with consciousness one can transcend, transgress, evoke, evade, exit, in short one can evolve. The loss of primary attachments permits the entry of the “gods”, the entry of the Bigger Story, the entry of insights and knowings that could not be assimilated before. The message of betrayal is that things are much more than they seem.  Betrayal marks the explusion from our Eden of complete trust into the evolutionary world of consciousness, growth and responsibility. We only really begin to grow when, through betrayal, we lose our sense of intimate linkage with the other... be it mother, father, God, Goddess, family or friend, profession or ideology and are thrust out into an apparently unprotected existence.

The key to unifying the dualities of trust and betrayal and thus redeeming our betrayals, is forgiveness. Anyone can forgive a petty matter, but if you have been involved in a situation of deep trusting , of mutual flowing into one another, of rich coherence in which you have shared your soul, and then have been betrayed, forgiveness takes on a momentous and evolutionary potency. Only forgiveness will allow you to return to the Garden after the gaining of awareness that opens that gateway into fully conscious patnership with the divine creative principle. Through genuine forgiveness, love is restored and the deeper evolutionary soul potential is revealed...”