Hopelessness means that we no longer have the spirit for holding our trip together. We may still want to hold our trip together. We long to have some reliable, comfortable ground under our feet, but we’ve tried a thousand ways to hide and a thousand ways to tie up all the loose ends, and the ground just keeps moving under us. Trying to get lasting security teaches us a lot, because if we never try to do it, we never notice that it can’t be done…At every turn we realize once again, that it’s completely hopeless – we can’t get any ground under our feet.
Pema Chodron
It seems counterintuitive and counter-cultural because much of our society is based on the assumption that we should hope for a better tomorrow, a better future, a better me, a better you, a better ideal that we can one day maybe attain in the future if we just work hard enough and stay committed enough and do enough and say all the right things. But, the reality is that this is a false premise. It is an illusion and a deceit.
What we should really be doing is practicing giving up this illusion. This is actually the very hopeful message of most religions – giving up hope! Giving up hope (primarily as wishful thinking) that all my insecurities will go away, that I’ll never face conflict again if I just avoid it at all costs, or that I don’t have to ever be uncomfortable. Giving up hope that I’ll ever get it all together at some future time in my life, that my life will definitely be better someday, or that a better version of myself exists just around the corner if I only try hard enough.
There is nowhere better to be. There is no one better to be. Hopelessness is finally accepting who we are where we are as we are.
This is a basic teaching of Buddhism, but it is also what Jesus means when he says to “consider the flowers of the field” and “don’t worry about tomorrow.” Jesus isn’t teaching us to give up on life in these passages. He is teaching us to give up hope, the hopes we keep putting in the wrong places. Flowers don’t hope. They don’t have expectations for tomorrow that inevitably lead to disappointment. Flowers just ARE. They just exist. They just are what they are. Jesus is also teaching us to let go (to give up our hopes, our personal salvation programs) when he offers the Beatitude to be poor in spirit…humble, hopeless…letting go of all the wishful thinking and cheap hope. Being poor in spirit is hopelessness, and hopelessness is acceptance of exactly who we are and the acknowledgement that we don’t need to be “better” or different than we are in this moment.
You cannot build a better you. I cannot build a better me.
And, this is where memories, fantasies, and plans come into play, especially within a shame-based system, because these are the ways we maintain the illusion of our hopes and avoid healing and facing our own shame. We will literally do anything to escape our own suffering, especially when it comes to fear and shame. What we don’t realize is that our suffering doesn’t actually mean we’ve done anything wrong. We don’t believe the truth that we aren’t being punished for something. Suffering is just life. It’s not happening to us because we’ve done something wrong.
BUT, in our fear and shame, we don’t just believe that something is wrong or that we’ve made a wrong choice…we believe that we are wrong…something is wrong with us. Hence, the drive to build a better me, usually by hating, loathing, punishing, and running from the “old” me that I’m convinced is the problem. This illusion is actually one way that we stay addicted to hope. We are all pretty addicted to a hope in a better ME, a better US.
Memories, fantasies, and plans are the ways we just keep trying aggressively to hope (read: demand) for a “better” tomorrow or to build a better us. Fantasies and plans keep us distracted, and memories are what keep us hooked and stuck, in anger, bitterness, resentment, pride, and regret.
Here is a story to illustrate what I mean. Once there were two daughters…
One daughter told her parents, “I need to go out on my own and make my fortune to prove I can be successful.”
Her parents said, “You do not have to go anywhere or prove anything. We love you and accept you just the way you are.”
“Oh, you two. Of course I will go prove myself. You’ll see. I’ll make you proud.”
The parents said, “But we are already proud of you. There is nothing to prove. You are accepted now.”
But the daughter took her inheritance, left home, and went out to be successful.
The second daughter told her parents, “Don’t worry. I will stay. I will prove to you how good and right and perfect I am. You will see.”
The parents said, “You do not have to be perfect. We don’t expect you to be good or right. We already love you exactly as you are.”
“Oh, of course I will prove myself. You’ll see. I’ll make you proud.”
The parents said, “But we are already proud of you. There is nothing to prove. You are accepted now.”
But the daughter took all of her plans to be good and perfect, left the house, and went off to work.
One day, the daughter returned. She had not been successful. In fact, she had failed miserably.
The parents said, “We are so excited you are home! Finally you have come home!”
“But I failed,” the daughter said.
“That’s okay,” said the parents. “You did not fail. You are not a failure. You are still accepted and loved and cherished.”
The other daughter heard this and became very angry. She said, “How dare you welcome her home with a celebration! She didn’t do anything right! She doesn’t deserve anything! I have stayed all these years trying to be good and do the right thing and be perfect to prove myself for you.”
The parents said, “No one deserves anything. We have never asked you to be good or right or perfect. We have never asked you to prove anything. We have only ever wanted you to come home to your true home where you are always accepted and loved and cherished.”
“But I did stay home,” the daughter said.
“You did not,” the parents said, “And when you do decide to come home, we will be very happy to give you a celebration too!”
“I don’t understand,” said the daughter, “I never left the house.”
“Yes,” the parents said, “You never left the house, but you did leave home. You stopped being present with us when you tried so hard to achieve your illusions of being right and good and perfect. Neither of you had to prove anything to anyone, least of all us. You have always been perfect exactly the way that you are. You’ve played these games for so many years now. Please stop. And come home.”
Or, told slightly differently…
There was once a son who didn’t want to live at home anymore and took all of his inheritance and went and lived a life of only comfort and pleasure. He had fantasies of how his life should be. In the end, he ended up destitute, living with the pigs, telling himself that he was the scum of the earth. He returned home with his head hung low, beating himself up and berating himself for being such a failure. His memories of all his poor choices kept him stuck in a cycle of shame and self-punishment.
There was another son who stayed home and worked hard and lived a life of only discomfort and suffering, toiling away at perfectionism to prove his worth. He had plans for how his life should be. In the end, he ended up with nothing but bitterness and righteous indignation. He did all the “right” things and tried to be “good.” He tried to be a superhero but never felt like enough. His memories of all his past “good deeds” and accomplishments, his spiritual ambition, kept him stuck in a cycle of perfectionism and a fear of never being enough and never doing enough.
We are, of course, these two sons. This is a very clever parable because these two sons are the same son. Jesus tells this story to show us what the kingdom of God is like. The father in the story accepts everyone exactly as they are. No one has to prove anything at all or play some sort of merit-based game. Many of us have been taught that this parable is telling us that we are lost and need to be found, but this parable seems to actually be about the reality that we have deluded ourselves into believing we must prove our worth value to everyone and to God. We are trapped within a merit-based game, but this game is an illusion.
The father accepts the two sons exactly equally, and this acceptance is premised upon nothing other than the father’s own love and compassion. His acceptance is not contingent on anything the sons did or did not do. It’s not contingent on who the sons are or are not. It’s not based on status or piety or ambition or achievement. It’s not based on material worth or spiritual worth. It is nothing external to the father’s own heart of love and compassion.
But, Jesus also tells this story to show us what the kingdom of God is NOT like.
In fact, when one son cannot let go of his own merit-based game, he turns away from the father and becomes so angry, and of course, this is exactly what we do when we feel like this world is “unfair.” In our own fear and shame we say to ourselves, “How dare they reward someone who has clearly not proven themselves the way that I have! How dare they not reward me for all of my hard work and all of my piety and holiness! Don’t they know who I am!” The kingdom of God is not like this because it is not toxic religion. Toxic religion is always a merit-based game of proving.
The two sons represent the ways we split ourselves in half when it comes to shame, as I discussed in a previous post – superhero or scum of the earth. Within toxic religion, this split is exploited so as to dramatize and manipulate our own fear and shame of never being enough and never doing enough and never proving we are worthy of love. Playing the roles of superhero and scum of the earth are both superhuman attempts to prove our worthiness. One is a drive towards superhuman perfectionism and the other is a drive towards superhuman garbage, a superhuman slob.
Both of these are fictions we tell ourselves, distractions of fantasies and plans, and we hold on to these lies and keep them alive through our memories as the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves (filtered through fear and shame, of course).
This entire game is delusional, and this is why Jesus tells this parable – to reveal the reality of what we do and what our ego-self does when it plays the game of merit-based spirituality. In both cases, the healthy religious response is the same. God loves you no matter what. Our True Self loves us no matter what. God accepts us as we are with enormous amounts of love and compassion and gentleness. We must also learn to accept ourselves in this same way.
There is nothing you can do to prove yourself. As we see in the parable, the game of proving is a complete fiction. The son that leaves home tries to prove himself by being “successful.” The son that stays home toils away at trying to be “good” only to find out there is no system of “good” or “bad,” “right” or “wrong.” How depressing! This game of piety is the illusion that is his prison because the reality is that there is only ever love and compassion and acceptance. There is nothing you can do that would make God love you more or make God love you less.
So how do we learn to give up hope in all of these superhuman attempts to prove ourselves worthy when we don’t need to prove ourselves at all? How do we give up hope in false security and come to accept ourselves and heal from our shame? How do we do this with memories, fantasies, and plans?
Because, as I said above, memories, fantasies, and plans are the ways we just keep trying to build a better us. Fantasies and plans keep us distracted, and memories are what keep us hooked and stuck, in anger, bitterness, resentment, pride, and regret.
Memories feed the hopes (fears and wishful thinking) that we put into our fantasies and plans.
Walking into hopelessness, then, is the antidote to this pattern we are all trapped within. Hopelessness is what I might call fearlessness because all our cheap hopes and wishful thinking are always based in fear, fear of failure and fear of never being good enough or doing enough. If I give up all those games, then I’m walking fearlessly into something else, something groundless, free, and creative. Hopelessness is what we might call a courage to have creativity, to re-imagine toxic religion with our compassionate and beautiful theological imaginations. Hopelessness is the bravery to re-explore our past with compassion.
God is not a security blanket to make us feel better about our life. God is not a life coach or a workout trainer to give us words of encouragement as we really push through our last set to maximize the burn. God is also not a Santa Claus in the sky checking a cosmic list of who is “good” or who is “bad.” God simply is the Reality of what is happening. Whether we believe we are a superhero or the scum of the earth, we are accepted no matter what, unconditionally, which means all of these conditions we put onto ourselves are all complete illusions and delusions. You cannot build a better you. I cannot build a better me.
When we can truly give up our cheap hope and wishful thinking, then we can finally dive down into trust and surrender, and trust and surrender is a deep hope where freedom lives, where fear begins to fade, and where mercy flows.
One way we practice giving up hope in our own personal salvation programs is by sowing seeds of compassion and loving-kindness, nurturing gentleness and courage in our own hearts each day. We can certainly cultivate seeds of anger, resentment, and aggression, and that will be our harvest. Giving up hope in our own programs, however, will lead us to a different harvest.
The main way that all spiritual teachers tell us to practice sowing seeds of compassion and kindness and courage is through contemplation, whether that is some form of meditative prayer or other meditation practice. This is “the Way” for almost every spiritual tradition and discipline you will explore. It always comes back to sitting in meditation and prayer, being available, and learning to be present to your life as it is.
From my own Christian tradition, I have found Jesus’s teaching on meditation to be incredibly helpful. His teaching on meditation is also one of the best, most succinct instructions for meditation I have found:
Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” (Matt. 11:28-30)
We are all carrying the heavy burdens of our habitual programming, our ego-self programs for salvation, but the instruction of any spiritual teacher is to practice letting it go and to put on the gentle discipline of prayer/meditation. Its effort is light and gentle. It teaches us humility and allows us to release our own burdens and our own habitual programming. Meditation is a rest for our souls. It lightens us, lightens us up, brings us freedom.
In this sense, Jesus is teaching us his form and style of practice, come and walk with me, come and sit with me, let’s practice together so that we will know when we are walking and we will know when we are sitting. This is his practice, which he calls a “yoke.”
He self-identifies as the teacher, but it is clear the teacher is also the practice itself that is both humble and gentle, which brings rest to our heavily burdened souls. You have tried it your way, Jesus says, now try this path of light effort and prayerful meditation.
Here, Jesus is offering his teaching as a practice for prayerful, meditative living in the present moment. He is not teaching cheap hope or futuristic, wishful thinking. He makes it clear on several occasions that the kingdom of God only exists in the present moment – “the time of God is now and the kingdom of God is in this moment, at hand” (Mark 1:15) – so he must also offer us a practice for living in the space of this presence. And, this is his path, a light yoke of gentle practice for remaining in the present moment. Another clue to Jesus’s “yoke,” or form of practice, is here:
The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, the kingdom of God is among you and within you. (Lk 17:20-21)
This practice of nondualistic thinking is a very common teaching among wisdom teachers, e.g., avoiding like versus dislike or this versus that thinking. It is a practice of remaining in the present moment with Reality As It Is, which is the kingdom of God Jesus refers to repeatedly.
Many times Jesus refers to this path as difficult, just as all spiritual and wisdom teachers always do. This teaching on difficulty is also a very common teaching (a common topos) for wisdom teachers. It is an acknowledging that many will begin the path but few will continue:
You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate…the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.” (Matt. 7:13-14)
The way this verse was taught to me in church carried a heavy tone of judgmental condemnation of people to hell who “mess up” and aren’t “perfect” and don’t “get it right” or don’t “believe the right thing” because the gate to heaven is narrow and the gate to hell is wide. HOWEVER, the reality is that this teaching is Jesus’s very gentle instruction that the spiritual path he is offering is extremely difficult and not everyone will stay committed, which is another very common teaching of spiritual teachers such as Zen Buddhist masters. This verse is the notorious “highway to hell” verse, but all it is really offering to us is Jesus telling us he wants us to come with him on a spiritual journey and to try out his yoke, his practice, as we are guided by him (and others) on the path.
This is why Jesus is always saying to his disciples and those he is teaching to come and follow him, come and practice, come and see, come and see for yourself, come and do the practice for yourself, the effort is light and will bring healing to your soul.
I certainly did not grow up viewing this passage as an instruction on meditation practice, but as I go back into my past and reframe, I am able to gain courage, wisdom, and self-acceptance…I am able to heal from my shame. I am able to find my own confidence within my own tradition, and I am released more and more from the triggers that send me into shame spirals.
These are the ways we begin to see our “stuckness” in memories, plans, and fantasies, and re-exploring and re-claiming our past is how we begin to undo what has been done and to wake up.
How can you do this in your own tradition? In your own life? In your own way? How can you experience this for yourself?