IN PRAISE OF HOPELESSNESS

Yes, I mean what I say in the title, and, No, I'm not feeling especially sadistic today. I just can't bear to see worthy people suffer any longer, lost in needless Hope......

I invite you, just for a minute or two, to look at "hope" another way...... 

HOPE – can fuel the spirit and torment it – Hope can lead and mislead.

Hope is an activity of the ego. I feel it as an optimistic yearning for a desired outcome that we identify our spirit with. There's something warm and milky about Hope. Maybe weaning time has come? 

We cling to hope probably because once upon a time we hoped for something and, purely by chance, it came our way. So we put it together in that moment that “hope will get us what we want”. It hasn't worked since (maybe except sometimes), but our egos are never too fussed about being effective – just right, no matter how futile its conclusions, opinions and beliefs may be.

Hope is both a feeling and a way of being in the world. Hope arises from expectations, and is fueled by a parent thought that comes from a ground being of Loss or Lack and Insufficiency. If where you're going to is where you're coming from, there's little wonder that Hope begets more feelings of Missing-Out.

In a fictional gospel according to Judas, one of the Beatitudes could well be “Blessed are the hopeful, for they shall be lonely, but never be alone”. Hope does get you plenty of companions, all waiting for the Lucky-Break bus and agreeing with you that “while there's life, there's hope”, but that's about all. As such, hope is ultimately self-defeating.

There's a covert element of holy manipulation in hoping, too. Dishing out Hope has long been a favoured ploy of kings, bishops, and others who would like you to comply with their agendas. Well, good luck with that one.

If you come from hope, you will produce – yes, more hope, more expectations, and a permanent gap between you and what-is. Hope gets in between you and what you want and, like the carrot on the stick, keeps what you want tantalisingly out of reach.

There's more, much more to life than Hope. 

(I hope you get it.)

[I'm Always Chasing Rainbows – Aust. Girls' Choir _2:07]