ARTICLE

How Hope Expands Possibility

Add to favorites

Can hope help us expand ingrained, limiting patterns of thought into a more expansive sense of what is possible? Can wanting our future to be better than our present open us to new ways of being?


Contemporary spiritual teacher Jon Bernie calls hope "a thought about a thought called the future. It’s our deep longing to come home. I think it’s important to allow that deep instinct to function and, at the same time, not have it interfere with our deeper path."

But some might argue that a focus on hope, on that thing that we want to have happen, is a departure from a true spiritual path rooted in the present moment and acceptance of what is.

However, if you believe, as Eckhart Tolle writes in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, “Life will give you whatever experience is the most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness,” then hope becomes the basis for both personal spiritual growth and our ability to manifest a greater good.

Hope as a Path

Tara Brach defines mature hope as a “trust in our unfolding world, with a sense of potential, of connection.” She breaks down three basic characteristics of this “holy, or mature expression of hope” that can serve both our inner freedom and the healing of our world.

  1. A vision or aspiration for manifesting our full potential is a core element of hope, a sense of being connected with what really matters—to love, serve, or create.
  2. A trust that this is possible enables us to start where we are now so our true nature can unfold. Tara suggests envisioning our future selves calling us to become.
  3. The energy to serve this unfolding toward the manifestation of our vision or aspiration.

Hope as the Shadow Side of Fear

But there’s a potential pitfall. Whether we’re hoping for health, wealth, world peace, or a good relationship, how can we approach hope in a way that is not wishful thinking, what Tara calls “the shadow side of fear”? When hope is tied to specific events or outcomes, we run the risk of the oversimplification implied in popular manifestation consciousness—the attraction of positive or negative things into your life simply through your thoughts and actions.

Tosha Silver's work suggests that the best approach to hope is not to focus on any one specific outcome, but rather on the recognition that universal intelligence is always working for the highest good—even if it’s not necessarily the thing you were hoping for. In a talk at Omega, she described a concept of offering as a way to connect our longings and our desires with a deep sense of belief in the possibility.

“Turning your desires, your longings— whether mundane or lofty—over to the force of love allows you to have the feelings that are natural to being human without being a prisoner of them,” she says.

In her book Outrageous Openness, Tosha describes a way around the burden that hope can become. “By allowing the Divine to lead the way, we can finally put down the heavy load of hopes, fears, and opinions about how things should be. We learn how to be guided to take the right actions at the right time, and to enjoy the spectacular show that is our life.”

Hope When It's Dark

Author Charles Eisenstein also sees hope as a primal element of the human psyche, something we naturally attach to, especially when facing things that seem as if they have gone wrong.

“Hope,” he writes, “shows us a destination. But a vast territory, the territory of despair, lies between it and us.”

Perhaps the difference between hope and wishful thinking lies in how we negotiate that territory. Is despair something to be pushed aside or gotten over, or can it point us in a direction of growth?

In her book, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope, Anne LaMott writes, “All truth is paradox and this turns out to be a reason for hope. If you arrive at a place in life that is miserable, it will change.” She goes on to encourage us “to do what Wendell Berry wrote: ‘Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.’”

Understanding hope as a way of thinking, a cognitive process instead of merely an emotion, can give us a way to move forward. In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown writes that hope can serve when:

  • We have the ability to set realistic goals (I know where I want to go).
  • We are able to figure out how to achieve those goals, including the ability to stay flexible and develop alternative routes (I know how to get there, I'm persistent, and I can tolerate disappointment and try again.).
  • We believe in ourselves (I can do this!).

Finding the Fire

But sometimes it takes a bit of fire to get going. Spiritual feminist and activist Sister Joan Chittister draws on the words of the 5th century philosopher-theologian St. Augustine to both elevate hope and spur us on to help manifest its promises. “Of the three great virtues—Faith, Hope, and Love—Hope is the greatest,” she says. “Hope has two lovely daughters, Anger and Courage,” she continues. “Anger so that what must not be may not be; and courage so that what must be, will be.”