Where do you stand in relation to hope? Are you hopeful? Or is it hopeless? Both of them are traps. Best place to stand is half way between hope and hopelessness. Standing nowhere, being everywhere. Doing what you do.

— Ram Dass

This winter was hard. As identities and roles fall off, and uncertainty becomes the only constant, it is easy to get stuck – in self-pity, emptiness, inaction. Becoming a monk or a nun seems to be the only way to escape the reality of the marketplace but of course escaping is not a solution and always leads back to square one…

I’ve not been feeling so well. Emptiness and darkness got to me again. Yesterday I was watching Ram Dass’s Soul Land Music Series and heard Londrelle talk about something I knew but forgot – as you open your heart to more light, you also release more darkness. Of course! What I am going through is grappling with my shadow. And of course, the only way to go through it is love it.

Spring brought hope. Moments of hope fill the heart with sunshine, uplift and reassure, however hope is also an expectation, an outcome and hence being in the future that takes you out of the Here and Now. Hopelessness, on the other hand, is emptiness, the void, the depression, the darkness, another extreme where you are stuck and suffering.

Living between hope and hopelessness. What is this place then? The answer comes in meditation. It is the place of knowing. It is the “next level” from trust and faith when you don’t have to believe, you know that it will be fine, or rather that it is perfect as it is already. You don’t need to hope. You don’t need the methods. You don’t need to achieve anything or go anywhere. It is all here and now, exactly how it should be.

PS: the picture is my first ever paint-by-numbers kit. Like I said, the winter was hard.