Sunday Sermon [Despair]

Hola mi Gente,

So I have two interviews set for this week. I’ll be a little less stressed when I can announce I got a J.O.B. In any case, when life becomes difficult, that is when I most have to apply the principles I claim to honor.

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Hour of Despair by Christophe Dessaigne

Despair

It is a truth that in life there is suffering... 

Your children can become injured or get sick, or die. You can suffer financially or go bankrupt. Right now as I type these words innocent women and children are dying in Iraq -- limbs and lives torn apart forever. And this is funded by our tax dollars. 

There's very little we can be sure of in this life. While reading these words, sharing a cup of coffee, or playing a sport, your heart may simply stop pumping for genetically predetermined reasons.

Just like that -- poof.

While it is true that we experience moments of great joy and peace, as we grow older we develop aches and pain, we lose our friends and loved ones, and our despair can easily grow until we feel we can no longer withstand its pull.

Let me invite you to feel your despair right now, however small or big it may seem. More than likely, you can find a place in you that is despairing because of a loss, some feeling of loneliness, or hopelessness. While feeling this despair, notice something. Notice that everything continues happening.

Your heart still beats, if you are alive. Colors and shapes of light continue to radiate; your immediate surroundings continue to appear. Your thoughts continue as you read these words. Things are happening, inwardly and outwardly. Despair may be happening too.

Along with all this, you are happening. You -- that mix of feelings, sensations, and perceptions you call “you” -- your inner sense of self -- is happening.

If you feel despair, feel it happening. It is an energy that moves and feels a certain way and you call it “despair.” Feel this as energy completely. Instead of pulling away from it, relax into the energy of despair, willing to feel its pain. Carefully, tenderly explore despair as if you examining the most sensitive parts of a recently injured lover.

Notice if you feel resistance to feeling despair. Are you avoiding the hurt, the suffering, and lonely sorrow that lie just beneath the surface of your everyday life? 

Try something new. Relax that resistance so you can feel despair fully. Feel it in your genitals, in your belly, in your heart and throat, feel right now how your whole body has been torn by despair.

Where is the experience of your heart-wounded body? Where are you happening?

While feeling the pain of despair, feel also its buoyant energy -- its living vibration -- throbbing in the space of feeling. 

Feeling-space.

Despair -- if you feel it fully, without resistance -- is like a throbbing wound in space. In the same way, everything that happens is experienced in this felt-space.

Sadness, betrayal, and joy happen in emotional space. Tickles, warmth, sharpness happen in touch-space. Music, birds singing, honking horns, and the laughter of your child happen in aural-space. Your thoughts move in mind-space. Everything is happening in an open feeling-space with no boundaries -- no edge.

All space is awareness, or capable of feeling, full of energy and life: sounds, thoughts, color, and emotions.

Despair can be the object of your growing awareness because awareness is the living space of feeling this openness. Another name for this feeling-openness is Love. Who you are, what everything vibrates as, is Love, including despair.

Openness is the love that is living you right now -- even though you may hurt deeply. Gratitude is the attitude of acknowledging that love's feeling-space is living you. Be grateful, and you are suddenly free.

Despair and gratitude occupy the same space of feeling, regardless of how long your current self and world last.

Risk loving everything, including despair, by experiencing it fully, with gratitude. Hold despair in the same way you would hold a lover. Find out how open this very moment is and you will be free to act with courage fueled by the love that is ever present. The infinite openness of every happening, including despair.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…