Fear and Hopelessness.
These mind-states are a fucking con.
They really are.
But the con works so well
When an emotion is very skillful in manipulating you, you think from it, rather than thinking about it. This is because you are unable to distinguish it from overall reality. So you just include it as an unconscious part of your reasoning and perceptions.
The weirdest thing. Lately, when my mind is going to a darker place, my thoughts start to move to the movies of Ari Aster, Hereditary and Midsommar.
I havenât even watched Hereditary. I only watched a few critical breakdowns of it and a number of clips. That was enough for me to sense the atmosphere and the devastating menace of it. Midsommar on the other hand, I did watch.
This morningâs meditation was a Mindâs Eye Terminus2. Once again, Hereditary kept coming to my thoughts.
Iâve already shared elsewhere my sense about this. The fear originates from within, but it disguises itself as being about something external. The same is true with hopelessness. They are emotional cons. Iâm sure they have their evolutionary value. Probably just protection from risk-taking.
Hopelessness. If you watch what your mind does in the midst of hopelessness, the con can sometimes become apparent. It will make these vague lists of everything that has failed in the past, and it will present this as proof that things will not work in the future.
But if you look closer at the items on the list of âFailures of the Pastâ youâll always find that a lot of them do not hold up. Either they werenât complete failures, they werenât failures at all, or they werenât genuine attempts. The thing is that the hopelessness by itself is so unpleasantly depressing that no one would want to walk up to look at it closely and see how much of it is actually an illusion.
Fear is not exactly the same but itâs similar. Fear is largely based on inaction. It tells you that youâre too powerless to do anything, then it âprovesâ this by convincing you not to try anything. That is its so-called proof.
The truth is that fear comes from within. Itâs not about the overwhelming power of what is outside of you. Itâs about an impulse that arises from within you.
The con of both of these immobilizing states is that they arise from within, but they compel you to focus on what is without. They are largely internal, but they compel you to obsess over what is external. As a result, their true nature remains hidden.
Despite all of this, hopelessness and fear are not evil. Theyâre not even your enemies. Theyâre just âdark guardsâ or âdifficult friendsâ.