Hi Fiest

You seem to have a good handle on how to proceed. I just wanted to add that most people assume they understand what hope is and how to hope. More often then not it gets entangled with existential angst, ego, control, desire for certainty, fear of uncertainty, desire to have life conform to our demands of how it ‘should’ be… Hope confuse as a kind of passive wishing.. waiting for that ‘something’ other then what it is.

Hope is paradoxical. It is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances.

Hope is like the crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment for jumping has come. To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, yet hope is not desperate. Those who hope unskillfully settle down for self comfort (verses self care) or for violence; those whose hope is skillful see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born.

To Hope is a state of being, an inner readiness. “and yet it would not be wrong to say that the tree hopes for the sunlight and expresses this hope by twisting its trunk toward the sun” – Erich Fromm

The Practice of hope is a art.. perhaps related to the idea of Zen’s doing by not doing…  keeping ones eyes open while continuing to engage with life.

• This reply was modified 1 week ago by  Peter.

“Most people think of love as a feeling, but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present.” — David Richo

Hi Jordan

It might help if you define what you and your girl friend mean when using words like soulmate and love. From the what you wrote about your girlfriend who describing Joe as her friend but not having any ‘passion for’ she is likely defining soulmate and love differently then you are.

I am worried that her love for me is not pure. I always thought of love as what’s in the love stories… I really want to understand whether my girlfriend is someone who I can trust completely.

You have answered your own question – you do not trust your girl friend. You want to know if her love is pure and if you can trust her completely and then go that her love is not pure and that you don’t/can’t trust her.

I’ll be honest I had difficulty reading past your concept of love as being ‘whats in a love story’.

Between the lack of trust and romanticized concept of relationships and love I don’t think your ready for anything deeper without out allot of personal work.  Your story reads more about a desire to have control over someone then loving them, writing down our thoughts is a tricky business so if I’m wrong I apologize.

I do not mean to be cruel. This idea of a ‘pure’ love doesn’t mean much to me. I think its something that people just say without defining for them selves what it means to them. And trust comes from having healthy boundaries and sense of self, trusting yourself. If you don’t trust yourself you will never trust another. The idea ‘completely trusting’ to me imply s having boundaries that are so ridged that any trespass will be enough to knock them down, or so week that they don’t exist.

We see things as we are not as they are. If you want this relationship to work you will have to trust her and get over her having any male friends. If you can’t do that , that’s fine, this relationship is not for you. That boundary, that choice/issue is yours. I will say this In partnerships where one gives up (asked to give up) their friends to make the other feel better about the relationship… its not love, its fear and possibly control, not relationship.

• This reply was modified 1 week, 1 day ago by  Peter.
• This reply was modified 1 week, 1 day ago by  Peter.
• This reply was modified 1 week, 1 day ago by  Peter.

Hi Katie

Now I am in a place where I so strongly want to move out of this depression but I feel like I am not sure who I am anymore

The thought that came to my mind when I read that was a question I’ve asked myself when feeling/thinking the same way. Who would I be without this depression? The feeling being that in some perverse way I had attached my senses of self to this experience of depression. The truth being that depression provided a kind of safety net, even a odd comfort, a excuse to remain as I was/am..

My experience of depression has always been rooted in existential angst. Unskillful dwelling on meaning, purpose, loneliness. Eventually I suspect their is a tipping point where the body reacts and depression becomes chemical. Reading your post Its not clear where you are on the scale. A bit of both perhaps, each feeding the other? Have you ever talked to someone about your depression? Medication could help and give you the space to deal with the question of who you are.

I wish you all the best… you are not your depression, you experience depression…

Your Welcome Sky

I’ve found the rule of charity helps in the process of letting go. In the past I would have let a experience in which I imagined the others intentions negatively overwhelm my inner dialog for days. That’s the thing with such inner dialog is never about the person that hurt us, we aren’t actually talking to them, were talking to ourselves through a imagined them.  Such dialog teaches us more about ourselves then about who they may or may not be.  The rule of charity allows us to recolonize that and let it go.

I like your very possible explanation. no victim or villains just people.

Hi Bell
In relationships we will attempt to heal past relationships. Nothing wrong with that however most of the time its unconsciously so it can prove troubling.

My take on what you wrote is that there is some work for you to do.  You may find the book ‘How to be a adult in relationships’ a helpful guide in identifying what ‘stuff’ belongs to you and what ‘stuff’ doesn’t.

Hi Sky

The other day someone held the door open for me and then when I didn’t say thank you said something negative about me. My behavior was rude however I was thinking about a friend that had passed and didn’t notice. Had the person known what I was thinking about I suspect they would have held the door without expecting any response from me.

The point being that we can’t know why someone does something without talking to them. We often think we know, but we can’t know with certainty.  This is where the rule of charity comes in.

The rule of charity states that if there are multiple possible explanations for an event and there is no way for you to determine which possible explanation is the correct one then chose the most helpful explanation. (The one that won’t have you creating victim/villain stories. )

In your situation you have a choice of talking to the teacher about your disappointment. If you make the choice not to then the rule of charity applies.

Possible explanation. The student that the teacher just talked to told them something that triggered them to retreat within themselves. Perhaps not very professional but we are all human.  Have you ever not been 100% present for someone needing your attention?

A question you might ask yourself is what unconscious payoff might you be getting from moving. If you truly wanted to stop this pattern of behavior you would. We don’t do something like moving unless at some level what we get from doing it has a stronger pull.

One of the positive of moving is that we get to start over. Reinvent ourselves. Of course unless we are very self aware most of us will recreate our ‘old selves’ and so no matter where we go we follow ourselves.

If you truly don’t like constantly moving and not having the opportunity to put down root, my guess is that your trying to heal something. Before you move again you might want to sit with the urge to move (runaway?) and see where it takes you.

That said the experiences from all the moving can be a great foundation for future opportunities.

Much of the shame we carry is undeserved.  I like what L.B. Smeeds wrote about it in his book ‘Shame and Grace’

“Shame is heavy; grace is light. Shame and grace are the two counterforces in the human spirit: shame depresses; grace lifts. Shame is like gravity, a psychic force that pulls us down. Grace is like levitation, a spiritual force that defies gravity. If our spiritual experience does not lighten our life, we are not experiencing grace. . . .

“The lightness of grace does not lift all the sandbags that drag the spirit down. It lightens life by removing one very dead weight in particular—the weight of anxiety about being an unacceptable person. It extracts the internal threat of healthy shame. It gives us courage to track down the sources of unhealthy shame, see it for the undeserved pain it is, and take steps to purge our lives of it completely. It sets loose the lightest feeling of life; being accepted; totally, unreservedly accepted. . . .

“I close with a personal statement that sums up most of what I have said about grace and the healing of shame. It is my way of staking out a claim for myself on grace. . . .

“I believe that the only self I need to measure up to is the self my Maker meant me to be.

“I believe that I am accepted along with my shadows and the mix of good and bad I breed in them.

“I believe that I am worthy to be accepted.

“I believe that grace has set me free to accept myself totally, and without conditions, though I do not approve of everything I accept.

“I believe that nothing I deserve to be ashamed of will ever make me unacceptable to G_d.

“I believe that I can forgive anyone who has ever infected me with shame I do not deserve.

“I believe that I may forgive myself for anything that I have ever done to shame myself or another person.

“I am gratefully proud of being who I am and what I shall be.

“I believe that the grace heals the shame I do not deserve and heals the shame I do.

“I believe that grace is the best thing in the world.”