Looking at Despair

[Steppingfeet]

I suppose that despair would be another name for my own inner challenge. I've called it "existential pain" because I've not successfully linked it to any particular past life circumstance, and because it has no narrative. It is simply raw, consuming, energetic pain. It hurts to be alive, to put it another way. Though if there is an associated narrative, it is a profound sense of loneliness, cosmic aloneness and isolation.

I've yet to find its source or permanent solution - even using the steps that proved successful for you on that day, including simply being present and sitting with the pain, experiencing it, allowing it to be, etc. - but, I have found one sure thing that ameliorates it: intimate connection with another, most fundamentally with an intimate partner.

I don't know if that is a band-aid or a cure, but a partner keeps it at bay. My wife's love thus far has been my antidote. : )

Sorry for your rough day, Garry.

And I have felt Despair in my life previously; and always tried to numb it or push it out, rather than being fully overwhelmed by it.

My knee-jerk, animal mind solution has often, also, vainly sought escape through further enhancement of the illusion of self.

The despair spoke to a sense of - 'this will never change. 

I think there is often a sense of "never" in my own pain/despair. The sun sets and the horizon goes dark. This skews one's sense of the future, and tricks one into forgetting that the sun will, actually, return. (And, in fact, never left in the first place...)

so quite often the solution to suppressed Despair is a sense of future Hope; or somehow it will be better in the future.  

That is not a real answer though.  It never solves the root problem of the suppressed experience of that Emotion.

It is funny you say that. I listened to a Pema Chodron talk some years ago in which she talks about giving up the attachment to hope. I forget her exact rationale, but the gist of it that sticks with me is that hope is another way of not being present, of looking to an illusory future for a "better" circumstance.

Yet... hope has a place in the Confederation philosophy as something that both positive and negative entities do, even those of higher densities. Though certainly their attitudes with regard to hope differ along the polarity lines.


Here the Confederation is giving hope:

53.3 Ra: The entities in this and some other vividly remembered cases are those who, feeling the need to plant Confederation imagery in such a way as not to abrogate free will, use the symbols of death, resurrection, love, and peace as a means of creating, upon the thought level, the time/space illusion of a systematic train of events which give the message of love and hope. This type of contact is chosen by careful consideration of Confederation members which are contacting an entity of like home vibration, if you will. This project then goes before the Council of Saturn and, if approved, is completed. The characteristics of this type of contact include the nonpainful nature of thoughts experienced and the message content which speaks not of doom but of the new dawning age.


53.17 If there is fear and doom, the contact was quite likely of a negative nature. If the result is hope, friendly feelings, and the awakening of a positive feeling of purposeful service to others, the marks of Confederation contact are evident.


Here, Ra is hoping:

44.1 Ra: Our hopes, may we say, for long-term contact through this instrument depend upon its maturing ability to be of service to other-selves by accepting their help and thus remaining a viable instrument.


Here, Ra points to hope as a positive function:


102.11 Each entity must, in order to completely unblock yellow ray, love all which are in relationship to it, with hope only of the other-selves’ joy, peace, and comfort.


And then the intriguing similarity between the archetypes typified by Hope and Faith:

80.13 The excursion of which you speak and the process of disassociation is most usually linked with that archetype you call Hope which we would prefer to call Faith.


I think that the idea of attachment to outcome is that which clarifies the question of hope. Positive entities are working through the illusion of time and can use time to envision an outcome, a goal, an objective, or a manifestation of a desire. In other words, they can hope; and hope may, in some cases, be the only thing that keeps them moving forward through trying circumstances, with the faith that such outcomes are possible.

It is the attachment to the outcome, however, that generates the suffering, and the loss of the present moment, and lack of surrender; and if pursued consciously, may lead to manipulation and control of other selves, i.e.: negative polarization.

Despair can be renegotiated into a bright radiance of Joy and expression.

80.15 Ra: Even the most unhappy of experiences, shall we say, which seem to occur in the Catalyst of the adept, seen from the viewpoint of the spirit, may, with the discrimination possible in shadow, be worked with until light equaling the light of brightest noon descends upon the adept and positive or service-to-others illumination has occurred.

I work at a gas station that has a microwave along one of its aisles at about 3 feet off the ground.  Most people just assume we don't have a microwave, when they ask I tell them where it is.  Blows their minds, it's within view within 40% of the store.  I know where it is, I know my store has a raised roof, and that the outer brick wall also makes the edge of the glass window.  A coworker who's been there for 15 years, never knew the ceiling was raised.  She never looked up, never looked further than the face value of the store.  For 15 years.  I mentioned it one day, blew her mind, she told my GM who also didn't notice it for the several years he'd been there.  I worked there less than a year and noticed all of these little things, because I looked.

99.5 As in all distortions, the source is the limit of the viewpoint.