“We must surrender our hopes and expectations, as well as our fears, and march directly into disappointment, work with disappointment, go into it, and make it our way of life, which is a very hard thing to do. Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence. It cannot be compared to anything else: it is so sharp, precise, obvious, and direct. If we can open, then we suddenly begin to see that our expectations are irrelevant compared with the reality of the situations we are facing.”
― Chogyam Trungpa
Disappointment is one of our most visceral, intense, and real emotional experiences.
It comes on so strong and powerfully — and it has an emotionally crushing quality.
If we can feel where disappointment gets directed within us and understand how this inner conflict is known and experienced, we can discover that profound gifts are hidden within as well.
In many ways, disappointment is the essence and heart of authentic tantric practices.
Tantric practice Is when we enter a crazy, chaotic situation that we immediately want to escape from, but instead, we learn how to be fully present within it.
We learn how to see, hold, and understand the energy of the situation, crackling with intensity and possibly our desire for it to be different.
This desire for difference is centered within the self. That’s why the pain of these situations is often so intense — it pulls on us in areas that aren’t often visible to mind and emotion.
We tend to think we need hope. We believe that hope is a form of optimism in a dark or undesirable situation, but there’s something dissociative about that. There’s a desire for escape from a profound sense of inadequacy and disappointment, and that’s what hope arises out of.
Hope judges the present situation as less than acceptable.
If you say you’re hoping for the best, you’re talking about a present situation where you’re not happy. Therefore, hope is a dream or vision placed somewhere in the future. So in that instant, when we move away from the present and into fantasies of the future, we’ve surrendered our power and authority over what we’re experiencing right here.
This is the act of dissociation.
Hopelessness springs from the perception of separation and suffering.
People believe they need hope because they perceive themselves as individuals awash in an uncaring, disconnected universe. We are disconnected from where we want to be, and this causes intense stress — examining that stress can help reveal another way to encounter this experience.
The stress of hopelessness is visceral; it has a sensory quality to it. Hopelessness is something we can all relate to. It’s a state of overwhelm. It’s stagnation. It's the third leg of the fight, flight, and freeze response. When we become frozen under stress, we lock onto the worst possible scenario and we quickly give up, overwhelmed by what we're experiencing, either waiting in fear for an opportunity to escape or longing for the circumstances to magically change.
At its core, hopelessness is a feeling of being alone. It is an admission of vulnerability, which suggests that we, the ego, are not all-powerful and have limits on what we believe is tolerable.
We use hope in conjunction with punishment
Now, an evaluative mechanism seems to arise reactively and instinctively when we engage with hopelessness — we use hope like a carrot in front of a donkey, balanced against a vengeful stick held in our other hand. This confusing situation can cause the donkey just to give up and sit down, refusing to move altogether.
This is when such an approach's cruelty and manipulative nature become apparent. We often treat our bodies, minds, and emotions like they're a donkey, and after a while, the donkey wises up to this game of little reward. The little tricks we’ve used to distract ourselves don’t work anymore. This “I” that we’ve used to separate ourselves from the world as a defense is the source of our suffering. But we can't see that it's the illusion of separation that sustains the whole feeling of hopelessness.
The world is as it is; it’s a living, dynamic system with a lot of natural chaos built into it. We can't live separate from our environment; all our food and water come from this integral biosphere. We rely on a vast web of humans, animals, and plants to feed ourselves. To forget this, and to live in disconnection from our visceral awareness, actually fuels our loneliness.
So what can we do with this?
First, recognize that bodily, mental, and psychic dissociation is initially an emergency response to perceived overwhelm and a threat of death itself.
Therefore, the path forward is to enter ever more fully into the situation and try to feel the force of every emotion and sensation, whether positive or negative. Don’t pay any attention to your thoughts. Stay right with your emotions and sensations. Emotions are just energy, and they won’t kill you, despite what the mind seems to believe.
There is energy to be found and experienced in these situations if we can tap into them and be with that energy.
If we can establish a place of safety within, we can possibly even wrestle with it playfully. We can find freedom within what is happening around us by being attuned and present with it, both emotionally and physically.
By feeling the force of emotion compelling us to do something, and by watching this force and noticing where it arises from, we can find freedom and space to interact with it, without tension or unnecessary fear and reactivity.
From the tantric perspective, this is the beginning point of deep practice.
Being with the compulsion for action, and witnessing it while doing nothing, momentarily opens up a gap.
This small space of awareness will expand the more you notice it and rest within it. Rest as it. Rest as love without any resistance to what is already the case.
The mind will do what the mind does.
You don’t have to believe everything your mind thinks or act upon each thought.
You're actually not the same entity as your mind.
So allow a bit of space between what you think and what you're experiencing through your body and emotions. Don't deny them, just slow them down a little bit, and allow them to be there. Don't jump into thought trying to solve the problem. Just relax.
Remember that whatever happened to get you into this situation has already happened, and the vast majority of your life events will generally not require you to do anything right in that instant. Don’t become lost in the analysis of what to do; just acknowledge your feelings and sensations as you teeter on the edge of overwhelm. There’s profound power in seeing and acknowledging that you don’t know which path forward to take and letting that be okay.
Soften your focus on the problem and shift awareness to your body.
Now that you’ve acknowledged your feeling and acknowledged your uncertainty in moving forwards, check in with yourself on a molecular level. What does your body need?
Try to start small: do one action that will move your body in some way and invest three or four minutes in those actions. Move your limbs. Breath. Relax into the sensations coursing throughout your body. The goal is to move into action and allow your awareness itself to be the activity. Immerse yourself into the activity, not the thought. Attend your body's needs and bring it back to something you can touch.
Then, notice if your energy and emotional state shifts in any way. Do this consciously and intentionally. Notice whether the act of shifting your focus away from mental analysis to physical activity changed anything. Ask yourself what’s different about the feeling compared to before.
The way to overcome hopelessness is to turn away from the act of being lost in thought and analysis, and to bring awareness back to your body instead. Ground yourself in your body. Hold on through the physical realm. Be in awe of how your heart beats without you controlling it. Be in wonder about what you actually are.
Remember, even if the event you’re moving through is profoundly tragic, helplessness doesn’t mean hopelessness.
Helplessness is an admission of truth about our relative insignificance in controlling anything in life.
There is freedom in that.