So, I came across this article on Psychology Today and am very interested in responding to it and posing some questions and statements on the differences between Western and Eastern philosophies that makes acceptance of mindfulness so difficult for us at times. But before I do that, I thought I'd give you all a chance to read it so you'll know what the heck I'm talking about!
Happy reading! (Also, I have no idea at all why the lines of the article following are highlighted. My limited technical skills have been trumped on this one, my apologies if it's bothersome! Just head straight on over to the article, it's much more pleasant to read there!)
The Life Saving Power of Hope
Hope is a metaphysical power, the breeze stirring in the darkness
Published on September 17, 2011 by Mark Matousek in Sex, Death, Enlightenment
One rainy afternoon in London, under an ominous mackerel sky, I find myself in a back corridor of the Tate Gallery, standing before an 18th century painting I have never seen before. It is an oil-on-canvas portrait of Hope, the allegorical goddess, as depicted in 1886 by George Frederick Watts. This is no triumphant, trumpeting Hope (no hope springs eternal let's sound the trombones!). Instead, this Hope is a waifish thing stranded on a lonely cliff, tempest torn, barefoot, eyes concealed behind a blindfold as she reaches her empty hand out toward a harp with only one string.
I'm mesmerized by this beautiful picture, the supplicating pose of the girl whose face is almost hidden from view, fingers straining toward an instrument that offers her only chance of music, yet is, with only one string still intact, as likely to snap as it is to play. This is how life feels at times. You've been blindfolded and left in the dark, knowing even as you reach into your next moment the string may simply snap in your face? But that if you don't reach you're not really living.
I learned this the hard way during a routine visit to my onetime doctor's office. This was years before HIV treatments appeared on the scene. With great excitement, I showed him a magazine article announcing a new prophylactic drug trial that I might be eligible for. I waited nervously for his response. The doctor glanced at the clipping and handed it back.
"Listen," he said with a patronizing smirk. "Whatever makes you feel better...." His voice trailed off without bothering to finish, as if he were wasting his breath on a child.
I took the clipping, opened the door, left his office and never returned. If I was on the verge of checking out, I decided, it would not be while staring into those cold angry eyes. My posse questioned the hasty decision but I knew that it was the right thing. If I lost all hope, I was a goner, whether my body survived or not. Souls survive on hope in the absence of physical evidence. Not the naïve hope that everything will be hunky dory, exactly like life used to be, but the hope that assures us, when things seem darkest, that although it doesn't look that way now, something else is also true, as a survivor put it to me recently. That there is a hidden face to this moment. Hope such as this must serve the same survival function as faith and denial, preserving a space in the shrinking mind for all that has yet to be revealed. Leaving a chink for the mysteries. "The function of intelligence in extremis is not to judge one's chances, which (may be) nearly zero, but to make it through that day...without thinking too much about tomorrow," as one veteran from World War Two said. Even when we lose hope for a particular outcome, we may find ourselves experiencing a more general hope in the power of life itself.
Continue reading the rest of this article at: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-death-enlightenment/201109/the-life-saving-power-hope
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