HOPE MONTH: DAY 4: “Don’t despair; despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.”― Alain de Botton
This is how I can tell those who are not living within Step 3. If we begin, just begin, to make that decision, we will not despair at ANYTHING. Why, you ask?
Because we will not do what this author is speaking about. We will not make up the story of the outcome of the story we have now and be despairing of that outcome. When we truly practice the “not-knowing-mind”, we are completely at peace with whatever is coming. We KNOW we cannot control life and direct its course to our liking or bend it to our will.
That is what hope tells us. That we relinquish control and let life be life. I know only a couple of people who can do this even SOME of the time. It is the goal, not a given.
Most folks are so balled up in their stories and mechanizations that they just stay in pain and fighting and angry all the time….victims of their own design. Been there, done that, thank God for the bottom we hit with this thinking and the steps we can use to bring us out.
There is a great deal of freedom in just giving up writing and directing and controlling the story. So much freedom. And that should always give us hope. Because there IS another way to live. One that allows a much more qualified entity to run the universe. Isn’t that wonderful news? Yeah…
Dolphin Hug 