Fall to Pieces... (touching despair)

Today in meditation, I unveiled an unexpected emotion. Beyond sorrow or confusion or doubt, there was a deeper feeling of despair. Now I've never been one to despair, or so I thought. I can feel doubt and fear, but despair feels so... ...pitiful. Ahh, but who in truth doesn't feel this sometimes?? I daresay we all do - but we cover it up well with positive thoughts and actions. We convince ourselves that there's really no need to despair, everything's alright.

Well indeed, everything is all right. But so is this despair - whatever it is. When I look at that feeling of despair, what emerges is this sense of helplessness. And as soon as I see that, I get giddy with the okay-ness of being helpless. We all need a little help sometimes! The Beatles said it, "I get by with a little help from my friends...." How many of us can really live this crazy life alone?? A few stoic hermits perhaps... But most of us thrive in community - in reflection, companionship, synergy. We are nourished when we surrender to connection.

I am a strong woman - self determined, all-original, self content. It's easy for me to fall into the delusion that I can do it all my self - make all the money, book my own tour, keep on top of all the nuts and bolts. But it's true that sometimes I have to go a little nuts, let everything fall to pieces... It's from this place of letting go that inspiration - creative juice and love of life - is reborn. Despair leads me to this remembrance of my interconnectedness, my need for tribe, and the okay-ness of feeling helpless sometimes.

On an even deeper, more subtle level, it may be worth remembering also that we're never in control of this thing called life. There's no place of ultimate safety, not within the phenomenological world... Everything is falling to pieces, and being reassembled, in every instant. Ultimately we all dissolve into the boundless ocean... What, then, is left?... Yes, we are helpless should we try to cling to this sense of separate-self, identity, meeeee. Remember, and dive helpless into the ocean of all Life.