A lot of people regard trust as something that is owed to them, rather than something that is earned. Do we ever really owe people our trust, especially when we FEEL otherwise? Is one of the pillars of humility, the recognition that not everyone can or even should trust us automatically?

This shows the greater dimension of this state of belief. It is not separate from reason and judgment nor from the emotional consequences of what it represents. Even when being pondered, there may not be a cognitive purposeful reckoning with the question of trust coming to mind within the thoughts specifically, but the act of assessing trustworthiness will have feelings attached oftentimes and a visceral reaction may be the first clue one is facing a difficulty before the reasoning kicks in to fully understand the nature of the risk and its potential severity. People have a good sense of things intuitively, and with the propensity of the deep subconscious and the other layers of the mind to err on the side of caution, you are primed most of the time to be on the watch for danger and any potential hazard or difficulty that could bring unpleasantness your way. This ability to trust and have the discernment to distrust when there is a good solid reason to do so is hard-won knowledge and needs to be an objective to strive for and to cultivate and to develop within the self. This is a form of feedback that helps you navigate because it forms, in a sense, a kind of boundary to accept what is tolerable and in favorable alignment with your expectations and desires and what might be an unacceptable risk and needs to be kept at arm’s length, so to speak, so the untrustworthy people are avoided and any interaction kept to a minimum as that will avoid many complications. The expectation to be trusted is a healthy reaction in an enlightened person who has nothing to hide because they are treating people fairly and have no ulterior motives, but as people often have flaws and are imperfect, the expectation one will always be trusted can be a consequence of excess ego in some cases, and this is almost diagnostic in the case of the sociopaths who live a life of deceit with the ever-present expectation they can get away with murder and that everyone either will accept them or must do so because they have the power to control others and ride herd on them, and this is a consequence of poor judgment brought about by the inflated view of themselves. Humility results from keeping the ego in check and that, too, can be taken to extremes when people become a doormat for others and do not maintain any boundaries they will defend, so they surrender themselves in advance almost, to the people around them whether trustworthy or not. So there is a delicate balance between not being ego-based but having enough inner strength to keep up one’s defenses and to be discerning and sensitive to signs of trouble in discerning who is trustworthy and who may not be, to keep the self safe and prevent difficulties from arising. So again, this is an aspect of maintaining a proper balance in all one does.