"Only there did Hope stay inside, in the jar that did not break, on his lips, and did not fly out, because with the will of Zeus, the cap came in again.
(Hesiod Works and Days, 95, for Pandora) "
According to the legend of Pandora, princess of ancient Greece, the gods gave her a mysterious box of jealousy for her beauty. But she had been warned never to open the box. One day Pandora could not resist the temptation and, defeated by her curiosity to see what was in the box, she lost her self-control and opened the lid. Then the great afflictions were liberated in the world, now uncontrollably: famines, diseases and madness. With the help of the god Zeus, Pandora closed the box and managed to keep the only antidote that now made human misery bearable: hope
- Chorus: "And what medicine did you find (for the fear of death)?"
-Prometheus: "I gave them blind hopes"
(Aeschylus, Promit. Desm.)
Do not be afraid of the one who relied on Faith for Hope. I saw him fight in life, but I always saw him invincible.
(Polemis)
What we usually do on departure when we are going to travel is to take with us what we call, our familiar unconscious self.
So when we travel and go somewhere far away ( e.g. Mexico), or even somewhere close, when we return we say that we had an unforgettable life experience! But if we are really honest, we will admit that we continued, before, during and after the journey, to live our own verbal story, this story we constantly tell ourselves about who we are.We just change an external environment & imagine that we went somewhere, returning we describe we saw it etc. In other words we did not have any “inner locomotion”, but only an external commuting experience.
What is it like to live without a verbal story, but only to experience? Then you should go for e.g. in Mexico, to stay in a village with the locals and follow their life for 1 or 2 years. Only then can you say that you made a trip there and have really experienced Mexico. This becomes part of your experiential story, which transforms you to a great extent.
This is how you understand the experience of who you are, as something completely different from the verbal story you imagine you are. You see that you have the ability to transform into something completely different.
The same happens with the journey of psychotherapy. When we refer to a psychotherapist, it is different to tell us what to do and then to leave, while it is completely different to connect with him on a transformation journey for both. The patient also influences the therapist, which takes some time for exploration, analysis, understanding, revision & processing.
The connection between departure and hope:
Essential journeys are what transform us through the experience, first internally and then externally. It can be the journey of psychotherapy, a relationship, a marriage, a group that we will participate in, a lonely journey, a project, a role that we take on responsibly, etc.
The important thing in all this is how conscious we are.
Anxiety in front of the unknown:
When we reach a state where we stand anxiously in front of something unknown, we usually react and return to a mechanical way of life, to simple survival, that is, to the known, to reduce anxiety. But what is needed is to intensify, to gradually increase with the right amount for us each time, our tolerance to anxiety so that more intense situations cause us less anxiety.This is not easy in the outside world, which is why we usually need treatment. Clinical psychiatrist Dan Siegell points out that there is this mechanism within us that we call a window of tolerance for anxiety. It is the time required for our system from a state of concern (small or large) to return and reset again at rest.
This window determines, in relation to our level of arousal, our response to external or internal stimuli and anxiety. It is not a static window, but it can change as we said in the long run and it is different for each of us. It is affected by many things, such as diet, exercise, rest, understanding & learning, mainly by interacting with others.
For true journeys, those that through experiences increase the window of tolerance in anxiety, the beginning, the departure itself, need hope as a bridge of our heart.
Gurdjieff, a teacher of Greek descent, said that our relationship with hope has three dimensions:
Hope with fear makes us weak. When we do not process our anxiety in the face of the unknown, then the unconscious past psychological automations occupy us. Our basic connection with our life-giving self is interrupted and our action is desperate, or has little effect.
Hope with doubt makes us cowards. When we have a limiting belief that we have not discovered then we hide behind others, or from situations, we do not take full responsibility for life and we are drawn into big divisive movements and cycles of disorientation.
The Unwavering Hope. She is the only one who connects us as a bridge to this next step from anxiety, forward journey to the unknown. It connects us with faith and basic trust. It comes with acknowledging and taking full responsibility for 100% of our response in life and for what happens to us, even in extreme cases, such as in an accident that was not caused by us.
Generally, in the departure for a new true journey, we can only hope when we have processed the story of our past, so that it is a single conscious coherent narrative. We cannot hope when we operate on the basis of the unconscious repetition of the past into the present.
There are changes in our verbal stories, there is no transformation. Only in the unknown do we transform into something else that has nothing to do with anything we knew until now and go to another state of being. Our changes go to the extreme, where we look with concern at the unknown. We need to cultivate gradually through our receptivity, the unshakable hope to live with confidence in the unknown, where our true residence is as human beings.
Have you ever really traveled?