On despair

To Spirit:

Spirit,

Please help me. I feel I am in a cloud of despair. Sometimes this feeling consumes me. I am trying to do my practice. I am trying to watch it with you. I feel myself getting pulled into the narrative though. I think I’m all alone. I think I’m unloved. “Others” should do something for me. I do not want to look at myself. I feel so sad and lonely. A crushing feeling in my chest. And I cry. So many tears. In the midst of it I keep remembering my practice and attempting it, but it feels harder and I can feel part of me doesn’t want to do it.

Spirit, please help me.

From Spirit:

Dear one,

This despair is what you felt when you thought you lost God. It felt lonely and sad and crushing. You have been feeling it ever since, and running from the awareness of this feeling. This is why you find it at the root of all the running. When you finally slow down and notice you notice it. It is the part of you who has believed the ego’s interpretation. It feels hopeless and like it doesn’t want to try because the ego has told it all hope is lost! And so part of you started running with the ego, running out of fear and a need to get away from that crushing despair. And ego’s statements are contradictory, so it has lamented that hope is lost but then suggested that hope can be found in the world. How can both be true? Part of you knows it doesn’t make sense even as it runs with it. And every so often you come upon this feeling in the dream, and you try to connect it to what is going on in your linear dream experience. You try to find the hope where ego has told you it could be found, and part of you despairs because it remembers the sense that all hope is lost. And you find yourself stuck, crying and crying and not wanting to continue.

Consider that there is another option. Remember that you are going to come upon the despair, that it is at the root of this dream experience. This will help you to feel less surprised and devastated when it comes up. Do not try to fight it when it comes. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to the part of you that is in despair. She thinks she is a finite being, lost and all alone, with possibly no way to ever make it home. Despair is justified when you consider her narrative! Do not try to abruptly brush it away. Let yourself notice the despair and try to look at it with me. You are already doing this part, the only “issue” is that you are doing it with a sense of disbelief. Disbelief that the feeling is back. Disbelief that you can practice forgiveness. Disbelief that forgiveness can heal. Disbelief that you will be and are helped. The disbelief is a symptom of having split loyalties. You do not need to judge it, but you can bring it to me as well and let yourself notice how doing so helps to correct the disbelief over time.

You are doing it. You just have a split mind and you still get confused and upset. Give yourself kindness, and consider that it is kind to more quickly come to me and allow me to help you.