Recently I’ve been reflecting on the concept of hope because of the maelstrom of change and uncertainty that is spinning around the globe. I have noticed that many people are refusing to engage with how these challenges may manifest and choosing instead, to be filled with the hope that with a hop, skip and a jump humanity will move into a far more conscious way of being. Some speak of us standing on the threshold of a brand-new Golden Era, where ‘awakened’ people will live in complete harmony with the natural world. Unquestionably, this does sound appealing.
Then a thought dropped into my mind, which said, ‘Unhook for hopeful hooks.’
To begin with, I was baffled. Surely, hope is about the optimistic belief that there is a better outcome to what’s happening in the moment. As Desmond Tutu says, ‘Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.’
Personally, I couldn’t have survived thus far without hope. During several bleak times in my life hope has pushed, shoved and hauled me forwards. It’s given me a blind faith not to give up even when I felt so battered by life that I couldn’t see the point of it anymore. Therefore, over the years I have come to understand that hope is part of the human condition, which acts as the counterbalance to despair. This has helped me to develop a strong affinity with hope and what it means to have hope walking beside me when my skies turn grey.
So, why should I unhook from hopeful hooks? Surely this is a time in human history when we all need to grasp onto hope for dear life. I sat down in my meditation chair to ask for clarity. And, this is what came to me: there are two levels to hope; a higher vibration of hope and a lower vibration of hope. The higher vibration of hope gives us strength and resilience when we really need it. The lower vibration of hope is when we turn it into hopeful hooks to feed our illusions.
We humans have an extraordinary instinctive desire to survive, no matter what the world is throwing at us. So, our hopeful hooks are what we cast towards any passing flotsam and jetsam, which can help us to keep our noses above the water level. However, whatever our hopeful hooks have attached to can be precarious in nature. For example, ‘I know he loves me, he’s just doesn’t realise yet.’ ‘This time next year everything will be fine.’ ‘Once this deal is on the table, I will be a millionaire.’ ‘When I find my soul-mate, I will never feel lonely again.’
In other words, hopeful hooks take us out of the rigours of the present into an imaginary golden future.
There’s nothing wrong in imaging a great future (the New Age multi-billion-dollar industry is built on it), but as I have discovered myself, we can’t just jump into it. We need to work towards it with care, focus and integrity, making the inner changes that we need to do to in order to create a far more positive outcome. Otherwise our hope-filled dreams either fall apart or disappear as quickly as they appear.
Therefore, it’s important to understand that hope has its own dark side, which is illusion. Illusion is a cunning phenomenon because it can seem very real in our imagination. In fact, it can feel so real that it tricks us into believing that it is real, and everything becomes dependent on this illusion coughing up what we desire. However, by their very nature, illusions are incapable of doing this, so we throw out yet more hopeful hooks in desperation to make our lives better. This ends up as an exhausting game of chance until we realise the truth of what’s happening.
I now understand that when we unhook from the illusions of our hopeful hooks, the higher vibration of hope can step forward to help us to align with our higher self to create the best possible scenarios for who we are and how we chose to live our life. Things flow because this higher vibration of hope means we become unattached to the outcome. We understand that whatever manifests is often a stepping-stone to something else to help us fulfil what we are called to do in this lifetime. And, irrespective of what storms are brewing around us, we become aware that the world continues to work in mysterious ways. Sometimes not getting what we ‘want’ may turn into the greatest gift we can image.
Gaining this clarity between the higher and lower vibrations of hope has helped me to understand that I do not want to engage in throwing out hopeful hooks to deal with the changes and challenges we are all confronting at the present time. There is a process of transmutation going on here that I personally don’t understand. I have no idea if this means that a Golden Time lies ahead. It would be great if it did. But I want to focus on drawing on the higher vibration of hope to help me to build the resilience, courage and stamina that I need right now to confront what these changes may mean for our planet, and the uncomfortable impact this may have on the whole of humanity. Speaking for myself, I am greatly comforted by the steady companionship of the higher vibration of hope as I walk blindly into our unknown future, one step at a time.
1 comment
Margaret Lockwood
A very interesting read Sue, thank you. Since living in the now I have stopped with old habits and ‘unhooked from hopeful hooks’. Though not till seeing your wise words did I fully appreciate how much energy I had wasted in the past. I now understand it was that which had blocked the higher vibration, the flow of which since have certainly been noticable and plentiful. Warmest regards.