I used the phrase "spiritual despair" in my last post and in past posts as well, but I'm unhappy with the phrase. I think it paints an inaccurate picture. Spiritual despair sounds like hopelessness, which is not the feeling I'm attempting to portray. It might be more accurate to call it "spiritual unrest." I'm trying to describe a feeling whereby one perceives, through a sensibility that is not entirely conscious, that things are not as they should be, if all were well. Now, this can be a personal perception but it can also be a sense of the culture in which one is rooted, or even the world at large. In this case, I actually mean all of the above, because I believe this unrest, this discontent, is rife and covers every level of life, from top to bottom, from the external to the internal.
At odd moments in my life, things have seemed to miraculously align, and I've had the strangest sensation that I am walking along a thin beam of light. It only lasts for mere hours, or a couple of days at most, because the least wayward or inauthentic thought or feeling wipes one off that path. This is, of course, an entirely internal and subjective experience. Be that as it may, it perhaps offers a useful contrast to the sense of being out of alignment, which is more common, or certainly out of step with a culture or a world that both seem quite mad.
Though I am concerned with the world at large and hope to address many of the broad issues over the next year or two, through focusing on various writers, artists, or thinkers, all of this seems a house of cards if one hasn't taken care of one's own internal house, first and foremost.
Anyway, I wanted to address the use of the aforementioned phrase because I'm not happy with it and feel it gives a false impression. I do not feel hopeless. Angry at times, frustrated at others, but primarily, I feel determined to push on and walk the path I intend to walk, come hell or high water. So be it.
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