What to Do When Earnestness meets Desperation

It's at some point in your search that you'll discover the difference between earnestness and desperation.  The distinction between these two approaches can easily get lost when a seeker is in the midst of dogged inquiry.  It's a difference worth fully grasping, though, and here's why.

When you're earnest, you'll look at everything a guide asks you to examine because you fully trust that they've been down the same path with others who've come before.  You'll find yourself working with any pointer given, and from every angle imaginable.  You'll focus on finding the gem that it might possibly reveal, no matter how simple and inconsequential.  At this stage of the game you understand that any small crack in the façade could expose the entire secret.

When you're desperate, you're a drowning victim awash in spiritual concepts.  In a hurry to hold onto insight, you grasp harder and faster at the surface of the water even when you realize that it continues to slip through your hands.  I've even seen drowning seekers attack the guide out of an overwhelming sense of frustration, even as they recognize that the guide is there to show the way.  Why does this happen?  It stems from a basic lack of trust in the process, in the guide, or in yourself.  Looking for a belief to cling to, none is found.  The shore seems farther away than ever.  Panic begins.


Don't grasp at the water.    Instead, stop.  Grasp at the pointer itself and be earnest in using just one pointer at a time.  Keep true to that pointer.

"Look" is a perfect pointer. 

Do it now.  Look.

Point to the things seen.  Point to the thing seeing it. Then do that again.

Scour the list for what is found and what is suspiciously but utterly absent.  Then trust that the answer is as ridiculously simple as it first seems.


photo credit:  treading on glass by katelizabeth23