Creative futility (ICA)

This occurs on discovering that any worldly hope or desire, any attachment to objects, ideas, relationships, or even to one's own sacrificial responsibility, is utterly futile; and at the same time that one's only hope and desire belong to that which gives and demands life – that which will never allow one to control the universe. It may be compared to the end of the book "The Ronin" when, after many years of work, the diggers break through in the wrong place and it will take many more years of digging to correct and make worthwhile the work already done. The older man turns his back on it and starts to walk out of the tunnel and, when the young man calls to him, responds: "To hell with it !" Or to the decision of the woman in a story of Nazi concentration camps, who decides that while all are dying around her, she will continue to live.

A dimension of this experience is a sense of awe, that is fear and fascination. Hope is known to be the enemy. There is a kind of deep silence that comes from inside the person. There is nevertheless a fascination with standing on nothing, with Being itself; and a sense of victory that is not victory the way the world understands it. The decision is to keep on going, to trust the absence of hope; one's hope is in no hope. What remains is a sense that all is good, one has a different set of priorities and expectations from the rest of the world, one's hope is not an illusion but a tool to be used to create and release a more human life.

This state is number 53 in the ICA Other World in the midst of this World.