The “Hope Float”

The past couple months, I have been dealing with major spiritual depression.  I’ve fallen into some of the most strangest and severe despair traps , depressions, and irrationality I have ever experienced.  Such irrationality that I continue to get stuck in as the days go by.  And the strangest thing is, the cycle repeats every day.  By the end of the day, I feel like a different person, where I feel more rational, not having such despair severity and feeling emotionally normal with less thoughts.  But then I have these killer emotional pains, irrationalities in the mornings, where I feel completely dumbstruck as to how I’m going to survive or even make it through these moments as a muslim.

How I see it, is that I fell into an emotion mentioned in the Quran called, ??? ?? ??? ???? (Despair from the Merciful Spirit of God)  And included in that is giving up on your own soul and who you are.

Then when it increases and you start despairing and giving up on the Compassion of the Lord.

????? ?????????? ??? ??????? ??????? ? ??????? ??? ???????? ??? ??????? ??????? ?????? ????????? ????????????? (87)

Don’t despair of the Roh of Allah.  Only the People who reject faith are those who despair from the Roh of Allah.

I have a few good times of relief.  But there are a lot of terrible times.  Where I’m unable to function, because of terrible despair feelings.  The most common one is “I’m not good enough for Allah.”  And this occurs whenever I see a downfall or decline in my faith.

Like since I’m not able to stay on the path of studying, I’m not good enough.  Or if I can’t maintain my connection with Quran, I’m not good enough for Allah.  Then the despair cycle continues, and my iman goes lower.  And that’s how the cookie crumbles.

I’ve tried varies strategies to deal with it.  namely examining my belief why behind it, what’s driving this despair.  Or just ignoring it all together.  Or remaining calm.  But what I do know is, this belief that I’m not good enough if I can’t achieve khushu’ or maintain my iman, has damaged my iman and made it very low; due to the severe despair.

There is one strategy that I found to be helpful, especially when I’m dealing with extreme emotional issues of irrational despairing ideas to the point of emotional paralysis and irrational bombardment, is what I call the “hope float.”

What it is, is with all the despairing irrational ideas, and terrible feelings of negativity as you are going through the day, or when reading quran or Salah, is to just let the extreme irrationality pass you by, but by having in your self a feeling of hope in yourself, a sense of compassion for yourself.  I found that when you just do this, the extreme effects of despair often diminish, and I start feeling normal again.

Now I haven’t completely broken out of this cycle yet, as yesterday I felt what was like a recovery day, and today, when I was reading Quran, I felt paranoid about having terrible emotions when reading, not having a heart connected, and then after fajr, feelings of arrogance and lack of accepting basic ayat.  Of course feeling these things is the last thing that I want.  I wanted to stay connected to the book and feel comforting feelings of khushu’, iman, and taqwa.

But it seems clear that the culprit again is the y’as (despair).  Despair over your own soul, and then despair directed towards God, with concluding that, “He thinks I’m not good enough.”  The truth is, this belief inside is what is fueling my despair and feelings of distancing from the Quran.

When I read quran and I feel that way, I further conclude that I must not be good enough.