When your basic trust deepens, you have an inner sense of relaxation that allows your soul to unfold spontaneously and naturally. The trust affects your mind in such a way that you begin to see that whatever happens is right even if it’s painful, and things that you had thought were bad turn out not to be bad. You have a different outlook, seeing a more fundamentally true view of the universe. You see that everything that exists in the world is just right and that whatever happens is just right, that what is can’t be added to or subtracted from. This is the Idea of Holy Perfection. To see this truth, you have to trust the universe. When there is a depth of basic trust, you perceive the universe through the Holy Ideas. If there is little basic trust, you see the universe through a closed mind, through the filter of the fixated structure of the ego. – Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, ch. 4
When basic trust is prominent in the soul, you not only perceive the fundamental existence of the universe as a presence whose nature is inherently loving, but you also see that it is perfect. This is the perspective of Holy Perfection, the Holy Idea of Point One. Not only is existence seen to be perfect, not only is everything in it seen to be just right, but whatever happens is also seen as right. Being is seen to have a rightness about it, and the way it functions is also seen as right. So the presence of basic trust makes possible not only the acceptance of what is, but also a sense of the perfection of what is. – Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, ch.9
What determines whether a soul has basic trust? Basic trust is the effect on the soul of a particular aspect or quality of Being that we call Living Daylight. We call it this because if one’s perception is subtle enough to visually see and kinesthetically feel the substance of one’s consciousness, it actually looks like daylight, and is felt as an alive consciousness. It is experienced as something boundless, in the sense that it is not bounded by one’s body but rather is experienced as something that everything is made of. It is a universal sense of presence in that it pervades everything and is everywhere. The first level of experiencing it is to perceive that it is everywhere; the second level is to see that everything comes out of it; and the deepest level is to know that everything is made of it. At this deepest level, everything in the universe is seen to be originating in, bathed in, and constituted by, Living Daylight. – Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, Ch. 5
When your basic trust deepens, you have an inner sense of relaxation that allows your soul to unfold spontaneously and naturally. The trust affects your mind in such a way that you begin to see that whatever happens is right even if it’s painful, and things that you had thought were bad turn out not to be bad. You have a different outlook, seeing a more fundamentally true view of the universe. You see that everything that exists in the world is just right and that whatever happens is just right, that what is can’t be added to or subtracted from. This is the Idea of Holy Perfection. To see this truth, you have to trust the universe. When there is a depth of basic trust, you perceive the universe through the Holy Ideas. If there is little basic trust, you see the universe through a closed mind, through the filter of the fixated structure of the ego. – Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, ch.4
Basic trust is the soul’s way of attuning to a fundamental law of reality, the fact that our sense of existing as a separate and isolated entity is false, that our ego experience of isolation and helplessness is an illusion based on identification with the world of physical manifestation. Knowing that we are all part of one reality means that our true nature is not defined by ego experience in the physical body and cannot be fundamentally hurt or destroyed. If the individual soul is in touch with this reality of non-separateness, then it will reflect that by functioning in a way that expresses this knowledge. – A. H. Almaas, Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, pg. 24