Hope : The Final Illusion
My friend, these words may be very difficult for you to read, let alone accept. On first appearance you may read these as rather negative for isn't hope supposed to be a positive characteristic of living? We all hope for world peace, freedom from hunger, pain and fear. We hope for security and a planet safe from destruction. No, the hope I am pointing you to as illusion is much deeper, much more psychological. This is the hope that you may have as a human being who believes there will be another time or place better than just this moment. The absolute ramifications of this are extremely important for your psyche. There is tremendous freedom here if you are open.
We spend much of our day striving to do things, to make things, control things, buy things, all with the implicit purpose of granting ourselves or those close to us happiness and peace of mind. Our wish, our "hope" is to become better. We wish to become more intelligent, more wealthy, more loving, more trusting, more popular, etc. We hope to become more healthy, more enlightened, more holy, more at ease, more at peace. If you can look at this closely you will see that we exert a mesmerizing amount of energy just hoping, dreaming and wishing. That energy which is wasted could be utilized and more valuable to us in dealing with current reality as it is with all its travail rather than dissipating it on some future state of heavenly bliss or the illusion of a better tomorrow. Please wake up now - today is all you have!
As we have seen in other chapters on this web site, instead of living and being in the newness of this moment, as it is, whatever it brings, we try to move from this reality either towards memory (the past) or hope (the future). In hope, we hold up to our eyes some future reality, some time in a tomorrow, when everything will be marvelous. And so comes the mental construct of heaven - the ultimate illusion of hope. In other words since our lives here and now are filled with so much pain and tragedy and suffering, we believe that perhaps there will be a time or place in the future when all of that will cease. How sad that so many have traded this real moment now of compassionate love for the unreal illusion of a better tomorrow!
John Lennon told us to " Imagine, there's no heaven." There is great wisdom in these words. I call you to go one step further. Stop everything this moment. Let everything in your mind which is telling you to hope, to dream about tomorrow, about some heavenly abode where you will finally be happy, be free. Relax into the pure silence at the core of your being and abandon this illusion of hope, once and for all. In that surrender you will see that you are already free, already at peace, already happy NOW! Despite all the negativities of life - you are already that future, that hope. You are heaven. That is your core. All you need to do is let go of the illusion that you are not this very moment. You will be filled with an energy, so loving, so caring, so gentle, so enduring your mind and heart will explode in bliss and perhaps for the first time in your life you will understand who you really are - pure love, pure silence itself.
Christianity speaks of the three last things: faith, hope and the greatest being love. I offer, there is only love and with that there is no need for anything else: not faith in the past, not hope for the future, just love, right here and now!