Needless to say our on again, off again history gives me hope that one day she will let me back into her life

Having been were you are I can’t help but wonder if at some level we invite the experience of being abused. Is that karma… as in our actions create results and we ought not be surprised when they do.

Zen Buddhism suggests that suffering arises when we want things to be other than how they are and that where there is hope, there is fear and where there is fear there is hope. Two sides of the same coin where the two can’t be separated from each other. Non duality has us imagine that by naming a pair of opposites a coin we have solved the problem of duality… only we can’t help ourselves from picking the coin up, flipping it into the air and calling heads OR tails and so we suffer. We hope to escape fear and wonder why fear keeps chasing us.

The Way suggests that freedom from fear is to become hopeless, which goes against almost every thing we have been taught. You got to have hope… right? OR maybe, what if, Liberated from hope and fear, we are free to discover clarity and energy in the present moment.

If we think about it our notion of hope almost always involves looking backwards to some unwanted past we wish to change or to some imagined future where where we can get Life to work out as we would have it be (read ego/control). Keeping us stuck flipping  coins, this time for sure, in only, maybe, what if, should of, could of.. so we suffer.

What would your contact with your friend look like without the baggage of the hope/fear coin?

In Zen the notion of hopelessness is not the same notion as despair.  That’s something we have been taught to believe, something I’ve bought into, only now I’m not so sure. Giving up the hope/fear coin is about learning to sit in, leaning into impermanence, groundlessness and uncertainty, which is actually the reality of everyone moment. Without the coin, being in that moment as is,  eyes open.

Without mistaking the notion of ‘hopelessness’ with not having intentions or goals,  Imagine yourself not feeling as if you must hope something… what a wonderful freeing feeling!

Imagine not living in this limbo of hope/fear and being honest with your friend. The history suggests your not going to be happy with the answer but at least you will know one why or the other. If you decide that that is not a risk your willing to take, fearing that you might lose what you have, then enjoy what you have as it is without the need for the hope/fear coin. You suffer either way however at least it would be a honest suffering.

Reading over the last I suspect I have been advising myself with regards to my own situation.. a exercise which I find oddly cathartic…. If I come off harsh I apologize.