Transcending Hope and Despair [1]

I previously wrote a message about hope being an illusion, and it got some rather polarized reactions. Some people enjoyed it, while others felt very threatened by it. It seems this is something that needs to be discussed further, as I feel it's a subject that people haven't fully looked at. Our society teaches that hope is a "good thing" and many people have just accepted this without really looking deeper.

Now a person with an emotional attachment to hope isn't going to see what I'm saying here very clearly. As with other attachments, when it is threatened, the being usually goes into defense mode and is more concerned with protecting the attachment than letting it go or really looking at why it's there. If a person didn't defend their attachments, they wouldn't be there in the first place.

What is hope really? Am I incorrect in saying it's simply a desire for a better future? Is that not all that hope is, a desire? Hope is simply a desire dressed up in fancy clothing, and made to seem bigger or more important than other desires. As many Masters have said before,  all desire is illusion and desire is the root of suffering. Most people desire a "better world", so why aren't we there yet? The problem with desires is that they only manifest the experience of desiring. When you say "I desire this", you get exactly what you stated, a desire for something. It doesn't give you the object of your desire, only the experience of desiring that thing. Desire is the slow and difficult way to manifestation. 

The problems with hope are quite easy to demonstrate, take the predictions we often see from channelers.  People are given a date when some incredible event is supposed to occur, and they put enormous amounts of hope into something happening on that date. Then, as has happened many times before, that date comes around and the prediction doesn't come true. What happens to all that hope? For many it turns into disappointment or despair, and for a few it turns into anger as well.

A Higher Truth cannot be false, yet people frequently have hopes that don't come true. If hopes are so often false, what does that say about hope? If holding on to a hope can easily lead to disappointment, what does that say about hope? These questions are essential to learning the basic nature of hope. How can something that's supposed to be so "positive" easily turn into something "negative"? Such is the nature of a dualistic thought, that type of limited thinking is not what Humanity needs more of.

A truth that disturbs people is better than a lie that comforts, though many still practice this the other way around. The truths that people don't want to hear are usually the ones they need to hear the most. It's simply the nature of being stuck in an illusion, it's a disease where people resist the cure. If they were willing to accept the cure, the disease would be gone.

Keeping with the metaphor of illusion as a disease, where does hope fit in? Hope is the pill that helps to ease the symptoms. It helps people to distract themselves from their current suffering by focusing upon the "future". Yet hope is not the cure for the disease, it simply helps to make the disease more tolerable. People do themselves a disservice by thinking hope is supposed to cure them. Then they become dependent upon hope, and learn to live with the disease instead of learning how to cure it.

You either dissolve your illusions in This Moment, or not at all, tomorrow isn't going to fix your problems. Seeing as how tomorrow doesn't even exist in the first place, putting your energy there is simply wasting it on illusion. Hope is always tied into the illusion of a "past/future". The future is supposed to bring healing to all the unhappiness from the past, yet the past is not healed through the future. The past is not healed through waiting or procrastination, it's healed by letting go of the past, and that healing only occurs in the Present Moment of Now.

Jack wants a better life, so he hopes for a better life. Sally wants a better life, so she works hard to create that better life. Who do you think is going to get there first?

When discussing hope with others, I noticed the topic of hell kept coming up. Now when I mention hell, I'm not talking about a place, hell is a state of mind. It's simply the natural result of believing in the illusion that you are separate from God. If you're not Conscious of Your Connection to Source, all sorts of suffering is possible. I've been told people in hell and suffering have nothing but hope, which is very interesting. Why is hope so popular in hell? If it's the cure, as so many believe, why are all these hopeful people still stuck in hell? If you ask a person in hell to tell you the way out of hell, they're going to say, "Hope".  The people in hell don't know the way out of hell, if they did, they'd leave.

And no offense, but maybe the Universe knows a little more than you do? Maybe you don't need to tell it what to do? Maybe all your wants, needs, hopes, and desires that never seem to come true are actual holding you back from your true creative potential? I see no problem with making requests, or having preferences about what you'd like,  but you have to leave things open for anything to happen. The Universe doesn't just give you what you want, as most people should have learned by now. You have to work with the Universe, and you don't control the Universe, You Are The Universe.

For some, this will be a message of hopelessness, which further demonstrates the dualistic nature of hope. I mentioned previously that hope is always connected to despair, and that one leads to the other. Many believe that without hope, there must be despair, and that a Human Being has no choice but to drift between these two extremes. There is a Middle Path though, and you need neither hope nor despair. Your happiness doesn't have to depend upon a future you have no control over.

For those that may perceive this message as "negative", I can assure you it's not. If you get nothing else from this message, take only this part: Do not put your energy into a better "future", invest it in creating a better Now.  For those who want to view things from a negative/positive duality, my message is very positive. I'm telling you that you don't have to wait for Joy to come in the future, that you can begin creating that Joy Now.

Blessings,

Will & The Galactic Free Press

I, Will, the author of this piece, release it into Public Domain [2]. You are free to share it, and even modify it, without any conditions.

Questioner: Of what significance is hope and faith to living?

Krishnamurti: I hope you won't think me harsh if I say there is no significance at all. We have had hope; we have had faith - faith in church, faith in politics, faith in leaders, faith in gurus, because we have wanted to achieve a state of bliss, of happiness. and so on. And hope has nourished this faith. And when one observes through history, through our life, all that hope and faith have no meaning at all, because what is important is what we are; actually what we are - not what we think we are, or what we think we should be, but actually what is. If we know how to look at what is, that will bring about a tremendous transformation.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh: Hope is not the friend, remember; it is the foe. It is because of hope that you go on postponing. But you will remain the same tomorrow also, and tomorrow also you will hope for some future. And this way it can go on for eternity, and you can go on missing. Stop postponing. And who knows what the future is going to reveal to you? There is no way to know about it. It is an opening; all alternatives are open. What is really going to happen, nobody can predict. People have tried.