Questioner: If our nature is happiness, joy even, then why do so many of us feel despair about our suffering?

Richard: Your present suffering is transformed by grace and by grace alone. You sense it. You feel it. You know it intuitively. This is why you feel hopelessness and despair, not because the transformation of suffering is not available or not possible, but because you do not believe in grace. You do not control grace, it is not of your own will and volition or anybody else's, so you do not recognize it or believe in it.

Grace appears to you then as helplessness. Because you can do nothing further there's nowhere to go, nothing to do, so you give in and give up. What a tragedy! If you could just see grace masquerading as despair you would see you just have a little further to go, only a small way and your present suffering is transformed into eternal peace.

BLOG entry #36