Pulling Back from Despair
Despair is an emotion everyone experiences from time to time. By honoring despair as a spiritual messenger that alerts us to the incongruency taking place between the mind and soul, we are more able to move through the momentary mental and emotional anguish of despair without completely succumbing to it.
Courage
It takes tremendous courage to stand still in the turbulence of despair with an unbreakable knowing that things work out exactly as they should, even when fear attempts to convince us otherwise. It takes great fortitude not to lose our sense of self in the mire and muck of despair. In truth, despair is not intended to make us unhappy. It is intended as a learning contrivance. Despair gives us the chance to look at what our mind has been haphazardly thinking and entertaining that isn’t serving us. With a little practice we can train the mind to look earnestly at despair, feel it for a few short moments, and then allow it to simply transition into other thoughts that do serve us. Only by experiencing the discomfort of despair are we able to recognize things differently; to notice something helpful and useful. We can train the mind to use despair as a conduit for strength, tenacity, and creativity.
Beliefs
Believing in our own specialness - the kind of specialness that truly needs no one else’s validation, we give despair only a tiny fraction of our time and attention. Believing in our inherent ability to calmly close the door on despair when it comes knocking on our mind’s door demonstrates our ability to eradicate disparaging thoughts before they enter and settle in permanently. This is not just some pipe dream. Despair does not have to control our lives. Many have testified to this truth. By simply changing their thoughts about despair, they calmly allowed despair to come and go as freely as the breath.
“Nothing lasts forever, and despair doesn’t either.”