I’m currently reading Fire in the Soul: A New Psychology of Spiritual optimism. Again, I got this from the library until I knew if I would like to own it. (I’m currently reading several of her books, serially.) Much of the book has illustrations of various types of new-agey helps that she investigates and actually found help in, at this point in her life.

I found the chapter on Hope and Surrender, p 153-157, fascinating. I’m always on the lookout for more about hope. Maybe you are too? Have you read any of her books? Have you read this one?

What are you currently reading? My sister brought me a book to read, but I need to finish these heavy-duty ones first.

Karin

Hope is a term usually applied to the future…This kind of hope is directive, willful…Like spiritual courage, spiritual hope is most likely to emerge when we let go of will and open ourselves to trust…

“Some people imagine that hope is the highest degree of optimism, a kind of super-optimism…A far more accurate picture would be that hope happens when the bottom drops out of our pessimism. We have nowhere to fall but into the ultimate reality of God’s motherly caring.” Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullnessby Brother David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine monk, p 136

Steindl-Rast points out that the ordeals we suffer purge us of unfounded optimism. When the ‘bottom drops out of our pessimism’ we are forced to let go of the idea that we are ‘doers’ who can conquer life by the application of our individual will…We might apply this attitude of surrender to any area of life in which we have struggled fruitlessly to change [as in the first step of a 12 step program.]

…hope and surrender may seem to be strange bedfellows. But when, as Steindl-Rast says, we ‘fall into the ultimate reality of God’s motherly caring,’ we find that we have landed in the lap of hope itself. Hope, he asserts, is a patient waiting for God, a stillness that allows us to hear the inner voice of guidance…

“As long as we wait for an improvement of the situation our desires will make a great deal of noise. And if we wait for a deterioration of the situation, our fears will be noisy. The stillness that waits for the Lord’s coming in any situation – that is the stillness of Biblical hope. Not only is that stillness compatible with strenuous effort to change the situation, if that is our God-given task. It is only in that stillness that we shall clearly hear what our task is… The stillness of hope is the expression of a perfect focusing of energy on the task at hand. The stillness of hope is…the stillness of integrity. Hope integrates. It makes whole. Pp 138-139 [italics added by JB]

Buddhists have a similar approach to finding hope in times of adversity and behaving in what they would call ‘right action.’ Rather than specifying to the universe what the situation means and what is required for it to be fixed, the Buddhist approach is one of openness, an attitude of ‘don’t know.’ “Don’t know” allows for stillness, and stillness for wisdom. From this perspective, hope is not at all a future wish, but a depth of understanding [sic] that can transform past and future as well as lead to conscious action that helps to shape future events.

…hope is really a matter of perspective…from Latin root perspicere, meaning ‘to look through.’…with the courage that comes from seeing clearly. In discouragement, the opposite pertains…vision is clouded…

Madame Aboulker-Muscat [psychotherapist with international ability to heal people physically and emotionally through the creative engagement of their imagination] told Epstein [psychiatrist Gerald Epstein tells this in his book Healing Visualizations] that Freud likened psychoanalysis to a train. Looking out at the passing landscape, patients would describe what they saw to the analyst sitting in the next seat. Turning to Epstein, she suddenly demanded of him, “In what direction does the train go?” [He indicated horizontally.] [She] suddenly changed Epstein’s perspective by moving her hand upward, “Well, what if the direction were changed to this axis?”

“It was an epiphany…seemed to lift me from the horizontal hold of the given, the ordinary patterns of everyday cause and effect. I leapt into freedom, and I saw the task of therapy – the task of being human – was to help realize freedom, to go beyond the given, to the newness that we all are capable of, and to our capacity to renew and re-create 9p 126)”

Hope is the ability…to renew and recreate….The lens of hope through which past, present and future can assume new meanings… [Harris Dientsfrey quotes Epstein’s story in Where the Mind Meets the Body - The Search for the Mind's Effects on Physical Healthand says that from the air all are present, a single vision.]

[Joan looked at her teenage son with hopeful eyes, looking for the best in him.]

“Hope looks at all things the way a mother looks at her child with a passion for the possible. More than that, the eyes of hope look through all imperfections to the heart of all things and find it perfect; [JB added italics] GTHoP p 142 Steindl-Rast]”

Put this way, hope is really a form of blessing. To bless is to increase, to allow something to unfold to its fullness. To hope is to create a sacred space, a space of possibility, in which the goodness of the Universe can express itself. The stance we adopt in that sacred space is one of readiness, openness and non-attachment to a particular outcome.

“Hope…is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur. It is like the crouched tiger, which will jump oly when the moment for jumping has come…To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.” Erich Fromm p 9 The Revolution of Hope, Toward a Humanized Technology.

…[chapters that follow discuss] meditation, contemplation and prayer, whose practice fosters hope: the willingness to listen patiently for the inner voice that will bring us to the path of freedom, and courage – opening the eyes of the heart that most clearly see the way.

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Categories:

Books, Guest writer, Hope, Quotations

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