Oh, Veronika, I am so behind on your posts, saving them all but I'm struggling with reading along on a screen! Please please put all of these wonderful ponderings in a book soon! I want to highlight so many ahas and beautiful inspiring thoughts! 💕💫 I wish you a blessed Christmas time! Maybe I can catch up in the holidays with all the reading! 🙏❤️🥰
Dear Nicole, you are reading my mind, and speaking to my creative spirit. Thank you 💛 🙏 ✨
I have just started to ponder the publication of a series of books from this material in 2025. There will be 2 more wordcasts this year, then a Christmas break, and in the New Year I'll pick the threads up again (including the one from my Synchronosophy substack).
So yes, I totally understand. Some things are better read in books, in front of a fire, or in a Café, or leaning against a boulder with a view over the ocean...
As always beautiful words and new ways of thinking and being. I would love for
Some of these words to be commonly used again.
If we allow the system to manipulate our emotions we are constantly being emotionally yo-yoed.
Our joy, hope, inspiration is an inside job. I’ve been all those places and find stability by not paying attention to the words and deeds of the system and all it’s many players. Inside we can all find stability joy and hope. If necessary use your imagination but always remember, things are going to turn out so much better than we can ever imagine.
Yes or is up to us and I’ve already written down two I plan to use often. Thank you for that. I am also a lover of words and make up a few occasionally that are part of the lexicon with my peoples.
For most of my adult life I have lived with, and oftentimes struggled with, periodic bouts of depression and utter despair. During one such episode in March 2023, I tried to give words to my feelings of darkness and here is the result:
Wow Veronika, How this speaks to our humanity. I have read it 3 times and will have to keep revisiting. How complex we are as a species … from one extreme to another. I believe that despair was what l felt when John was diagnosed because there was no hope, because while it was terminal, there was no hope that the condition could be managed etc, in the meantime. I learned how important hope is to our human experience. There was no desperation as such but a fierceness nevertheless about his care. I love how you weave the words of others in your writing and your exploration of language and reframing. What a gift. Thank you 🙏💜
I can't imagine... I can totally imagine... such an overwhelming experience... the fierceness about his care. This speaks of the power of love.
Every wordcast is a gift to me too. I never know what it's going to be when I start writing. Even the topic. I often pick a title, and then 'it decides' another one wants to be written... Quite an extraordinary experience. The words (including the ways others have used them), their meanings, everything comes in the process of writing, researching, and editing, even until the moment I hit the publish button.
You are most welcome (with heartfelt thanks for your appreciation from my 'creative genius') 💛 🙏 ✨
How very utterly beautiful Veronika! And how simply & directly expressed!
Those in the collapse aware subset of the population use the word ‘hopium’ to refer to what you call spefurtum.
And hopium is exactly the addiction it sounds like. Fed to us by power-hungry governments & politicians, even hungrier corporations and sadly even by misguided environmentalists, hopium robs us of every ounce of our imagination which might allow us to see that even the darkness of despair is no worse than the blinding light of the false hopes & expectations being sold to us.
Bless you Veronika for this very valuable work you do. And simply for being you. ♥️💜
Oh, thank you so much for this contribution Jayasree.
Hopium ~ what a great word!! I'll have to include this in the edited version.
Yes! Hopium doesn't just hijack and occupy the word 'hope' in its true sense. It also does all the other things you mention, thereby appropriating inner space in our individual and collective Consciousness.
Well said -- If all hope becomes understood as 'false hope' or 'naïve hope', then the word hope (and its space in the human heart) has well and truly been subjected to verboklepsy. I like 'false hope' being given its own word (spefurtum) so that the original uplifting aspects of (real) hope can be left to fulfil their role without the rug being plled from under their feet.
When language is under attack with constant verboklepsy (as it is, currently), it's not just the word you can no longer use in its proper way but the mind-space to which the original meaning of the word was 'assigned', also suffers. Language directly relates to our abilty to think in certain ways, and adulteration of language is an adulteration of the mind too. Long live the Symbiopaedia. 💜 (Great poem too - your husband is very proud of you).
The concept of being sold false hope came to me during the writing ~ how it appropriates our inner space, hijacking the slot assigned to true hope, and thereby depriving us of the original...
These words are teaching me so much in the process of researching, gathering and rearranging them into a wordcast...
It's not just the words and their meanings that are stolen from us. It's also the 'mind-space'.
The poem came in the first draft in the form of poetic prose. At second glance it became obvious that it wanted to be a poem (how did that happen?? 😅) The creative process is full of surprises.
How timely is this essay on despair, deserts and false hopes. Humans are the only known species who have to work assidously at being their true human selves. And work it is, since so many paths lead to dead ends.
Kierkegaard is correct in his saying. If we are not allowed to live in accordance to our essential being, then despair sets in and takes residence in our hearts. Trying to meet the expectation of others will leave everyone disappointed and exhaused. And often hurt and angry.
I know, Kierkegaard has a way of picking out timeless truths with his sharp eye.
The secret of finding the hidden well in the desert of despair, I believe, is to practice being who we are, no matter the expectations of others.
Thank you so much for engaging in this conversation 💛 🙏 ✨
I've been thinking of you recently, when reading a book which reminds the reader that ~ according to the scientific paradigm ~ humans are the only species with emotions (I don't think the author shares this view).
I'm quite sure our cat feels fear, frustration, or anger on occasion (at least that's how we interpret her meouw) Not sure about shame or despair... However, she appears to live in eternal HOPE that she can get things, which are consistently denied to her (eating on our kitchen table, sleeping in our bed... etc.)
Yes, cats and all other animals, including birds, have a number of felt emotions--happiness, sadness, fear, love. Of this I have no doubt. I see it in Arya the Cockatiel.
Not despair, though. Not seen in the outdoor birds or cats who visit me. Despair might only be seen in humans for the very reason that humans can and do often act with cruelty.
Interesting thought. I wonder whether this is due to the fact that true hope can never really be lost (see Rumi's recommendation). Only human animals would fall into the trap of spefurtum...
It's interesting that "Catholicism considers despair an ‘unforgivable sin’" since it seems it was Christianity that came up with self-flagellation as a form of punishment or despair for one's sins. At the same time, there doesn't appear to be a bit of 'you're doing to yourself' when it comes to the meaning of despair. Such a rich and complex word. You always get me thinking, Veronika!
Despair as an 'unforgivable sin' in Catholicism was news to me too. I still struggle to understand how any religion can make a case for that...
I guess the only redeeming feature is that Catholics can regularly go to 'confession' and have all the sins virtually erased... (a strange game, but there we are)
Thank you as always, Lani, for reading and joining the conversation with your interesting thoughts!! 💛 🙏 ✨
Always impressed and find much benefit in your wordcasting, Veronika!
I stumbled across a quote a long time ago and it always stuck with me — partly because I could feel its resonant truth, but my mind just couldn’t grasp it:
“True transformation does not require hope and moves even in despair.”
With lived experience since then I’ve gained clarity on how this is possible, but your wordcast was like turning on the lightswitch in a dimly lit room.
Thank you very much for the quote. Yes, hope and despair are not easy to grasp in the ways they are conceived and have taken root in the contemporary conventional Western mind. New routes of understanding often open up (for me) via other languages. E.g. in Portuguese (French, Spanish, Latin...) it is obvious that the words for hope and despair belong to the same family, which immediately helps to make more sense.
Oh, Tom Kenyon! I've received his newsletters and listened to his Hathor meditations for many years..., somehow it slipped into the background... thank you for reminding me.
Another Tom Kenyon 'fan' - yes, I have always also found the Hathor 'chanting' reaches deep, with a visceral body reaction. And thank you for bringing that quote to the surface.
Oh Veronika- I’ll read this a few more times and respond. Beautiful poetry! It’s been said that poetry exists due to the failure of language. Your writing always reveals just where that failure lies and what truly lives in the real meanings of words. The clothes of the cosmos nakedly arrive as I lean into the symbiocene. 🙏❤️ Thank You
Oh, Veronika, I am so behind on your posts, saving them all but I'm struggling with reading along on a screen! Please please put all of these wonderful ponderings in a book soon! I want to highlight so many ahas and beautiful inspiring thoughts! 💕💫 I wish you a blessed Christmas time! Maybe I can catch up in the holidays with all the reading! 🙏❤️🥰
Dear Nicole, you are reading my mind, and speaking to my creative spirit. Thank you 💛 🙏 ✨
I have just started to ponder the publication of a series of books from this material in 2025. There will be 2 more wordcasts this year, then a Christmas break, and in the New Year I'll pick the threads up again (including the one from my Synchronosophy substack).
So yes, I totally understand. Some things are better read in books, in front of a fire, or in a Café, or leaning against a boulder with a view over the ocean...
My best Christmas wishes to you too 🌲 🕯️✨
I'm pressing for a book too ... in her own time I'm sure Veronika will get to it.
As always beautiful words and new ways of thinking and being. I would love for
Some of these words to be commonly used again.
If we allow the system to manipulate our emotions we are constantly being emotionally yo-yoed.
Our joy, hope, inspiration is an inside job. I’ve been all those places and find stability by not paying attention to the words and deeds of the system and all it’s many players. Inside we can all find stability joy and hope. If necessary use your imagination but always remember, things are going to turn out so much better than we can ever imagine.
Thank you Sammie 💛 🙏 ✨ I love your observations.
It's up to us to bring these words back, I think.
Awareness of these identity thefts and verbicides may also help to protect us from emotional manipulation by the sources that spread false hopes.
Yes or is up to us and I’ve already written down two I plan to use often. Thank you for that. I am also a lover of words and make up a few occasionally that are part of the lexicon with my peoples.
For most of my adult life I have lived with, and oftentimes struggled with, periodic bouts of depression and utter despair. During one such episode in March 2023, I tried to give words to my feelings of darkness and here is the result:
DARKNESS
is only a compression of light
so dense that it seems
to pull everything into it
so that there is no room
for any movement, any quiver
of breath or meaning
an emptiness that is packed
full of absence; simultaneously
an arrival and a departure.
but darkness is also presence
a container for buried longing
a place of deep resonance
a time of timeless width
where pilgrims stop to rest
and seekers relent
to the relentless cycling
of the wave upon the sand
and the stars in the night sky.
darkness can seem harsh
and yet so infinitely soft
it is an endless unravelling
an abandonment of self
that which feels abandoned
yet is always, always found
in the waiting stillness
where shadows swirl
settling in myriad patterns.
the veil of darkness covers
just as much as it uncovers
gently embracing loss
even as it deftly hides pain
in the unmaking of being
where desire seems swallowed
but is actually unspooling
like the ongoing whirling of
every dervish who danced.
the darkness is my unknowing
and something of my knowing
in a world that confounds me
as certainly as it awes me
and knowing gets in the way
of remembering the awe
as it takes me to places
where darkness obliterates me
as we obliterate the earth.
Thank you again from my heart to yours 💛 🙏 ✨
What a profound journey into the dark, painful, powerful, crushing and also deeply nourishing
»darkness is also presence
a container for buried longing...
an endless unravelling
an abandonment of self...
the veil of darkness covers
just as much as it uncovers...
the darkness is my unknowing
and something of my knowing...«
THIS and everything in between
I am thinking of a future wordcast, still in the fermenting and gestation stages, where I would love to quote this brilliant piece of your writing.
Well that poem sure captures an essence of darkness. Self-observation of the subjective experience well in tune with the human condition.
Thank you Joshua 💜
Wow Veronika, How this speaks to our humanity. I have read it 3 times and will have to keep revisiting. How complex we are as a species … from one extreme to another. I believe that despair was what l felt when John was diagnosed because there was no hope, because while it was terminal, there was no hope that the condition could be managed etc, in the meantime. I learned how important hope is to our human experience. There was no desperation as such but a fierceness nevertheless about his care. I love how you weave the words of others in your writing and your exploration of language and reframing. What a gift. Thank you 🙏💜
I can't imagine... I can totally imagine... such an overwhelming experience... the fierceness about his care. This speaks of the power of love.
Every wordcast is a gift to me too. I never know what it's going to be when I start writing. Even the topic. I often pick a title, and then 'it decides' another one wants to be written... Quite an extraordinary experience. The words (including the ways others have used them), their meanings, everything comes in the process of writing, researching, and editing, even until the moment I hit the publish button.
You are most welcome (with heartfelt thanks for your appreciation from my 'creative genius') 💛 🙏 ✨
Wow, that’s fabulous, all that guidance … brilliant collaborative creative genius 😊🙌💜🙏🏼
How very utterly beautiful Veronika! And how simply & directly expressed!
Those in the collapse aware subset of the population use the word ‘hopium’ to refer to what you call spefurtum.
And hopium is exactly the addiction it sounds like. Fed to us by power-hungry governments & politicians, even hungrier corporations and sadly even by misguided environmentalists, hopium robs us of every ounce of our imagination which might allow us to see that even the darkness of despair is no worse than the blinding light of the false hopes & expectations being sold to us.
Bless you Veronika for this very valuable work you do. And simply for being you. ♥️💜
Oh, thank you so much for this contribution Jayasree.
Hopium ~ what a great word!! I'll have to include this in the edited version.
Yes! Hopium doesn't just hijack and occupy the word 'hope' in its true sense. It also does all the other things you mention, thereby appropriating inner space in our individual and collective Consciousness.
Blessings gratefully received 💛 🙏 ✨
Well said -- If all hope becomes understood as 'false hope' or 'naïve hope', then the word hope (and its space in the human heart) has well and truly been subjected to verboklepsy. I like 'false hope' being given its own word (spefurtum) so that the original uplifting aspects of (real) hope can be left to fulfil their role without the rug being plled from under their feet.
When language is under attack with constant verboklepsy (as it is, currently), it's not just the word you can no longer use in its proper way but the mind-space to which the original meaning of the word was 'assigned', also suffers. Language directly relates to our abilty to think in certain ways, and adulteration of language is an adulteration of the mind too. Long live the Symbiopaedia. 💜 (Great poem too - your husband is very proud of you).
Thank you, 😅 proud husband 💛 🙏 ✨
The concept of being sold false hope came to me during the writing ~ how it appropriates our inner space, hijacking the slot assigned to true hope, and thereby depriving us of the original...
These words are teaching me so much in the process of researching, gathering and rearranging them into a wordcast...
It's not just the words and their meanings that are stolen from us. It's also the 'mind-space'.
The poem came in the first draft in the form of poetic prose. At second glance it became obvious that it wanted to be a poem (how did that happen?? 😅) The creative process is full of surprises.
How timely is this essay on despair, deserts and false hopes. Humans are the only known species who have to work assidously at being their true human selves. And work it is, since so many paths lead to dead ends.
Kierkegaard is correct in his saying. If we are not allowed to live in accordance to our essential being, then despair sets in and takes residence in our hearts. Trying to meet the expectation of others will leave everyone disappointed and exhaused. And often hurt and angry.
I know, Kierkegaard has a way of picking out timeless truths with his sharp eye.
The secret of finding the hidden well in the desert of despair, I believe, is to practice being who we are, no matter the expectations of others.
Thank you so much for engaging in this conversation 💛 🙏 ✨
I've been thinking of you recently, when reading a book which reminds the reader that ~ according to the scientific paradigm ~ humans are the only species with emotions (I don't think the author shares this view).
I'm quite sure our cat feels fear, frustration, or anger on occasion (at least that's how we interpret her meouw) Not sure about shame or despair... However, she appears to live in eternal HOPE that she can get things, which are consistently denied to her (eating on our kitchen table, sleeping in our bed... etc.)
Yes, cats and all other animals, including birds, have a number of felt emotions--happiness, sadness, fear, love. Of this I have no doubt. I see it in Arya the Cockatiel.
Not despair, though. Not seen in the outdoor birds or cats who visit me. Despair might only be seen in humans for the very reason that humans can and do often act with cruelty.
Interesting thought. I wonder whether this is due to the fact that true hope can never really be lost (see Rumi's recommendation). Only human animals would fall into the trap of spefurtum...
I enjoyed the piece very much, thoughtful, informative oh so relatable.
Thank you Peter for joining this conversation 💛 🙏 ✨
Deeply resonant essay with poems that add to your wisdom about the desert of despair, Veronika.
Thank you Mary! Always beautiful to connect with you here and discover a hidden well. 💛 🙏 ✨
It's interesting that "Catholicism considers despair an ‘unforgivable sin’" since it seems it was Christianity that came up with self-flagellation as a form of punishment or despair for one's sins. At the same time, there doesn't appear to be a bit of 'you're doing to yourself' when it comes to the meaning of despair. Such a rich and complex word. You always get me thinking, Veronika!
Despair as an 'unforgivable sin' in Catholicism was news to me too. I still struggle to understand how any religion can make a case for that...
I guess the only redeeming feature is that Catholics can regularly go to 'confession' and have all the sins virtually erased... (a strange game, but there we are)
Thank you as always, Lani, for reading and joining the conversation with your interesting thoughts!! 💛 🙏 ✨
Always impressed and find much benefit in your wordcasting, Veronika!
I stumbled across a quote a long time ago and it always stuck with me — partly because I could feel its resonant truth, but my mind just couldn’t grasp it:
“True transformation does not require hope and moves even in despair.”
With lived experience since then I’ve gained clarity on how this is possible, but your wordcast was like turning on the lightswitch in a dimly lit room.
How lovely!
Thank you very much for the quote. Yes, hope and despair are not easy to grasp in the ways they are conceived and have taken root in the contemporary conventional Western mind. New routes of understanding often open up (for me) via other languages. E.g. in Portuguese (French, Spanish, Latin...) it is obvious that the words for hope and despair belong to the same family, which immediately helps to make more sense.
Do you remember the origin of the quote?
I found it here: https://tomkenyon.com/conversations-with-magdalen
Oh, Tom Kenyon! I've received his newsletters and listened to his Hathor meditations for many years..., somehow it slipped into the background... thank you for reminding me.
How cool! Same here. :)
Another Tom Kenyon 'fan' - yes, I have always also found the Hathor 'chanting' reaches deep, with a visceral body reaction. And thank you for bringing that quote to the surface.
Small world — I knew you guys were kindred spirits!
God I love this thinking so much!!! I think I may need to tattoo this somewhere, if only I were into tattoos.:)
“When hoping is an addiction, despairing becomes the antidote.”
😊 💕 I prefer human skin untatooed as well
Thank you, as always, for acknowledging my creative eudaimon who popped this phrase into my head 💛 🙏 ✨
Thank you for restacking Diana 💛 🙏 ✨
Oh Veronika- I’ll read this a few more times and respond. Beautiful poetry! It’s been said that poetry exists due to the failure of language. Your writing always reveals just where that failure lies and what truly lives in the real meanings of words. The clothes of the cosmos nakedly arrive as I lean into the symbiocene. 🙏❤️ Thank You