No Hope Needed

Copyright © 2016 Joey Lott

This book is available for free. However, if you wish to share
this book with somebody, please invite them to download their
own copy by visiting http://joeylott.com/lose-all-the-way and
getting the first book in the series, Lose All the Way first
 You Can’t Escape

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There’s no way out. Yet many people spend their whole lives
trying, desperately, to get out.
We are each taught a secret mantra. It goes like this: not this,
not this, not this.
(There are other dialects to this mantra. But you’ll recognize
the general meaning in each.)
And we each secretly hope that if we repeat our mantra enough,
it will work. Like Dorothy’s magical mantra in the Wizard of Oz –
“there’s no place like home.”
But there is no escape. There is nowhere else.
Don’t take my word for it. Just look for yourself. Just tell the
truth. Never in your life have you been able to wish away what is.
At best, you’ve gotten temporary fixes. Distractions. Highs.
Television.
There is nothing wrong with these fixes. You don’t have to give
up these things entirely (unless you do). You just need to tell the
truth; they don’t work sufficiently.
When you rely on fixes – when you allow yourself to be
deceived by the seductive promise that they can get rid of what is,
get rid of you and your life – there is an unfortunate side effect.
That side effect is called hope.
We are taught that hope is a good thing. And, indeed, it is a
good thing...in the right circumstances.
For example, if you are starving in a desert a million miles from
the nearest food, hope may be very useful. Because there’s not
much you can do to help yourself. But you may find hope keeps a
positive outlook alive.
 NO HOPE NEEDED 3

And, for each of us, I believe that hope was quite needed at
various points in early childhood – times when we felt
overwhelmed, scared for our lives, and without defense or available
allies.
Please, let’s have compassion for ourselves. We are scared
shitless, like tiny babies left alone while something terrible is going
on. We are scared for our lives.
At one time it was appropriate. Now it has been over-
generalized. And fundamentally, we believe (largely unconsciously,
because few of us would admit to this openly) that our lives are in
danger any time we have unwanted feelings or emotions.
But in the context of wanting to escape from yourself and your
life – the unpleasant feelings, sensations, emotions, etc. – hope
only serves one purpose; it prolongs suffering.
Look and see that this is true. You’ve held out hope for years.
And each fix keeps hope alive. But as a result you still suffer.
Be done with hope when it isn’t needed or appropriate. Stop
reciting your mantra (“not this, not this, not this”) in hope that
you’ll be magically transported out of what is, out of you and your
life.
True freedom is always already here. But you cannot see it until
you give up hope.
And yes, that is terrifying. If you think otherwise, you’re not
telling the truth. Because I’m talking about the core terror of all
terror.
Yet, in the biggest plot twist of all time, it turns out that in the
core of this core terror of all terror lies freedom.
Whodathunk?
 Drowning

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You’re drowning.
Sinking in the ocean.
You are handcuffed, locked in a straightjacket, and encased in
concrete.
This is not a Houdini show. You are going to die. In fact, you
are dying. Death is happening.
Your mind is racing. Searching for a solution.
This is natural. It is good. You want to escape. And if there is
any way to escape, this desire to escape is good.
But you are handcuffed, locked in a straightjacket, and encased
in concrete. And you are not Houdini. There is no way out of this.
You’re sinking in the ocean. And you’re dying.
Does this sound disturbing? It should. Because we each have an
inborn desire to survive. This is natural. We don’t want to admit
defeat.
But now I’m going to tell you something surprising.
You are not what you think you are.
You think you are a person drowning in the ocean.
You are not.
You once were a person drowning in the ocean. Once you
drowned. And now this memory is here.
Every time the circumstances are right, this memory gets
triggered. And because you never were taught how to be really,
really, really honest, you have had no choice but to run on auto-
pilot.
water  memory  “OMG! I’m a downing person!”  strategize
desperately to escape what is happening
 NO HOPE NEEDED 5

That’s how it always goes.

Until now.
Now you have a choice.
There is water. There is sinking. There are all the conditions
that trigger this memory.
But this time, take a look. Look carefully.
That person who once drowned is dead. That is not you.
What is actually happening here? Be really honest.
Just water. Just sinking.
Dying is happening just as it always happens. Just as there has
never been anything that made it from one moment to the next.
Just as you cannot grasp a moment. There is nothing graspable.
Nothing to survive.
It is all disappearing as fast as it is appearing.
Dying and living simultaneously.
That is what is happening. You cannot get out of this. You are
this.
You cannot believe your way out of this. So don’t try to take on
a new mantra such as “I am this, I am this, I am this”, which would
really just be a variation on your old mantra – not this, not this,
not this.
There really is no escape. Nothing will help you to escape this.
So I am not offering you a way out. I am just pointing out that
you’ve been understanding yourself incorrectly.
You’re still sinking in the ocean. There is still no hope. But
you’ve just misunderstood yourself.
Why do I tell you that you’ve misunderstood yourself?
Because I am telling you that you have a choice. You can
continue to hope and struggle against the inevitable – you are
dying. This will prolong suffering.
Or you can give up hope now.
It’s the last thing you want to do. Because it seems as though
hope is keeping you alive. It seems as though if you gave up hope,
you’d die.
6 Joey Lott

But you’re dying. It is inevitable. Hope cannot protect you.

Hope just makes you needlessly miserable. Because, as I have
said, you misunderstand yourself. You think you are something
you are not.
Here’s what most people do. They decide that they’re going to
hold on to hope until the last moment. Until they have hit the
bottom of the ocean and sunk deep into the floor and are buried
under sediment.
But it’s a mistake. Here’s why: there is no bottom to this ocean.
There is no end to the sinking or dying.
Hope just makes this endlessness miserable.
Without hope you get to discover yourself as you are – not as
you have misunderstood yourself.
Give up hope now. And continue to relinquish it.
Do not move. Do not resist. Do not strategize. Do not make
any effort to protect yourself or save yourself.
Do nothing.
Continue to do nothing. You will never hit bottom.
The fear remains. Allow it all the way. Don’t move. Don’t
attempt escape. Just let go.
You are drowning. It is hopeless. Be hopeless.
Every time you are suffering – whether big suffering or small
suffering – be hopeless. Like you are sinking in the ocean with no
chance of surviving.
I don’t mean to tell yourself that your situation is hopeless. I
don’t mean to fixate on stories of any kind. All of that is more
something that you do in a futile attempt to escape yourself and
what is.
Do nothing. Not something. Just see how you are struggling
and squirming and resisting. And see that it has never actually
worked.
Tell the truth. All the struggling and squirming and resisting
has done nothing more than prolonged your suffering by offering
 NO HOPE NEEDED 7

(sometimes) a temporary fix. But in the bigger picture, you become

more desperate.
Give up. Tell the truth. You are this. You cannot escape.
 Thoughts Are Happening

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Thoughts are happening. That is all. Give them no unnecessary
attention.
When there is a real problem, thoughts can be useful. So focus
on useful thoughts when there is a real problem.
But 99 percent of your life is not a problem. There is no need to
give unnecessary attention to thoughts to solve a problem that
does not exist.
A failed strategy intended to solve a non-existent problem.
Just stop.
I don’t mean to stop thinking. You cannot do that. Go ahead.
Try if you don’t believe me. I’ll give you five minutes to give is a
whirl. Pick up reading once you’re done.
See? I told you. You can’t stop thoughts. They just happen.
But you can stop giving unnecessary attention to them. Stop
caring so much. Stop believing they can offer you hope.
Remember: be hopeless.
Except when hope is appropriate. Like when you’re in a desert a
million miles from any food or water. Or when you were a baby
and something scared the bejesus out of you and there was no one
to help you.
But 99 percent of your life is hopeless. For good reason. Because
no hope is needed.
What hope is needed right now? Just look. What hope is
needed? You aren’t starving in a desert. And whatever happened to
that person in the past – that person is gone. That’s not you.
 NO HOPE NEEDED 9

I’m not suggesting that you try to dissociate from the memories.
I am saying allow them fully. And don’t flinch. Allow full
association. But just see the truth: that person doesn’t exist.
And the person you fear will suffer some future consequences
doesn’t exist.
You are just here. Reading this. With thoughts, feelings,
emotions, sensations, and so forth just happening.
Just happening.
Thoughts happening. Give them no unnecessary attention.
Really. Honestly. Truly.
So many people are giving so much attention to thoughts. All
the time. Giving them hope of escape from what is happening.
Prolonging suffering.
At the extreme, the prolonging of suffering is obvious in regard
to thought fixation.
Here’s how my days used to go. I would wake up and think,
“Just don’t think about McDonald’s. Oh, shit! I just thought of
McDonald’s. I better wash my hands. Okay. I’ve washed my hands
– rubbed them together twelve times. Now, don’t think of
McDonald’s. Oh, shit!”
Over and over and over.
Your thoughts are just as useless. Just as harmless. And you
don’t need to give your thoughts any unnecessary attention.
Whatever the thoughts are. Unless we’re talking about the one
percent or less of your life in which there actually is a problem and
some thoughts may actually be relevant and useful.
But otherwise, 99 percent of the time, no matter how seductive
the thoughts are, just let go.
How can you do that? It’s like I wrote in When Will It End?
Find out how you do it. Like how you focus on a speck of dust.
Stop giving your attention to the thoughts. Give your attention to
how you give attention to thoughts.
10 Joey Lott

You’ll discover a tension. Then relax it. Like you’d relax the
focus on a speck of dust by relaxing the contraction of the muscles
in the eyes.
Relax the contraction.
You’ll be left vulnerable. Doing nothing. No protection.
That’s it. Do nothing. Don’t make any effort to protect
yourself. Don’t try to figure it out. Don’t try to understand.
Thoughts are just happening. Give them no unnecessary
attention.
 Feelings Are Not Problems

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Thought fixation often serves to provide a (false) sense (hope) that
it is possible to get rid of unwanted feelings. We have been led to
believe that we can think our way out of our own experience.
Won’t work.
But knowing this, you can expect that as you begin to release
thought fixation, the feelings will be more “in your face” than ever.
Because there will be less (false) sense of protection against the
feelings.
I arranged my entire life trying to get rid of feelings. I wanted
no anxiety. No depression. No boredom.
And that was how I judged my success in life and the success of
whatever strategies I was employing.
If I felt anxious, I reasoned that I was failing and that I wasn’t
using the right strategies or using them correctly.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
It is so natural and innocent to make this mistake. Let me tell
you a short story to illustrate how natural and innocent this is.
Where I live there are lots of cacti. My kids frequently step on
them and get “prickers” stuck in their feet.
Getting the prickers stuck in their feet hurts them. They want
to get the prickers out. But when I bring the tweezers, they flinch
and refuse to let me pull out the prickers.
Why?
Because it’s going to hurt.
Can you see how you have done this in your life? You have
naturally and innocently arranged your life so as to avoid
unwanted feelings. But as a result, you live in chronic rejection of
12 Joey Lott

life. Which is painful. Far more painful than the feelings you want
to avoid.
Feelings are not problems. They just seem that way.
Allow the feelings. That is the answer.
Pay attention to how you resist and reject your own experience.
Notice how you armor yourself against yourself. See how you
strategize in dozens if not hundreds of ways to get rid of the
feelings.
And see how none of it really works.
Then stop doing it.
Every strategy requires that you do something. A tension. A
contraction. An armoring. See it and do nothing.
 Allowing

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At the great risk of giving you false hope, I am going to break down
for you exactly how you can discover true freedom now.
If you get hope from this it would be far too ironic. So please
allow me to do my best to strip away whatever hope you have
remaining that you will get any hope from me.
There really, honestly, and truly is no escape. There is no way
out. There is only the way of stripping away what is false.
Stripping away what is false is not hopeful, however. Removing
what never was will not reveal something greater or nicer or more
pleasant.
It just removes what never was as well as the hope that you can
protect against what is.
If this sounds hopeless, good. It is hopeless.
Only desperate people who have exhausted too many futile
attempts to escape will recognize why hopelessness is so blessed.
And I have done my best to crush your hopes throughout these
three books. So I now am...*ahem* hopeful that you, dear reader, are
hopeless and that I can entrust you with this, the only useful plan
there is.
Please understand that this plan is not an answer to your
problems. It will not make you feel better. And if you misuse it in
the wrong spirit, you will be disappointed and you will prolong
your suffering.
But if you understand this and use it in the correct spirit –
which is like a person crossing a river might use a raft – you will
discover the joy of allowing yourself as you are. This is a truly non-
14 Joey Lott

dual knowing – when there is no longer a belief that you can

escape yourself as you are.
Here now is the plan, broken down into steps.
Step 1. Acknowledge that there is resistance to what is. Just tell
the truth.
Step 2. Discover how you do it. This is done by paying
attention. Refer back to the speck of dust metaphor if you need
guidance in this.
Step 3. Stop doing it. Remember, doing nothing is not
something. It is nothing. So make no effort. Do not move. Don’t
touch a thought. Don’t scheme to get rid of a feeling. Do nothing.
Step 4. Continue to do nothing.
Step 5. When you fail, continue to apply steps 1-4. You will
always fail. Fail all the way. Stop trying to win.
This is the only true cure for suffering that I know of. There
may be others. But this is the only one I’ve found.
You will be seduced by other things that promise to cure
suffering. Some may be authentic. Most will not be.
As the saying goes, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the
bush.”
What I am offering you is the bird in the hand. My suggestion,
for what it’s worth, is don’t give it up by being seduced by other
promises.
P.S. – I have yet another free book for you. Continue reading to
learn more about how to download it.
 An Invitation to Radical Self-Acceptance

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I offer a 12-week program to further explore these topics. I call it
the radical self-acceptance immersion program.
I don’t provide any special techniques, secret mantras, or
“advanced” knowledge. Everything that is needed I have already
offered freely in these books. And I continue to offer through free
writings and videos.
So why on Earth would anybody be interested in the immersion
program? Because it is 12 weeks of concentrated inquiry and
support. Many people who have been engaging with my work for
several years have told me that they have found the immersion
program to be very helpful. They have described how it has helped
them to discover the subtleties of how they have been
unconsciously rejecting their own experience, prolonging their
suffering. And it has given them the support to let go and radically
accept their own experience.
If this sounds of interest to you, please sign up for the free
introductory email course on the subject. You’ll then have an
opportunity to join the paid immersion program should you wish.
 Please Share This Book Series

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I would like to share this book series – starting with Lose All the
Way – with as many people who may benefit as possible. I want to
offer genuine help to those who suffer.
Would you be willing to help me? I sure would appreciate it.
Here’s what you can do: share the first book in the series (Lose
All the Way) with anybody you know who may benefit. And post
your recommendation on social media along with a link to
http://joeylott.com/lose-all-the-way/ so that people can get their
copies for free.
 Is Never Was

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My friend, John Veen, author and poet (as well as self-described
“working stiff”), has graciously given me permission to offer you
one of his books, Is Never Was: Secular Buddhist Confessions, for
free.
John is one of the few people I know who has what I consider
to be authentic insight into the nature of suffering and true peace.
And he writes in a fresh way that I really enjoy.
Is Never Was is a collection of approximately 100 epigrams
(short poems) – each of which can produce a momentary stopping
of all the efforting. Part Zen koan, part Oscar Wilde, all (in my
opinion) genius.
I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do. And you can receive
your free copy here: http://dl.bookfunnel.com/91uuih2aq0
 If Somebody Gave You This Book...

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If somebody shared this book with you and you have enjoyed it,
please do the following:

1. Visit http://joeylott.com/lose-all-the-way/ to get the first

book in the series for free.
2. Visit http://joeylott.com/when-will-it-end/ to sign up for
the second free book in the series plus the free content that
accompanies these books.

Thank you.