Finding Hope
How do we find Hope?
Hope isn’t something that someone gives us. It isn’t something that can be bought or traded for. It isn’t something we can consume or chase. It is easy to think that there is no hope --that all is lost. Once we begin to think that there is no hope, we collude with self-pity and despair, closing ourselves to the spaces where hope resides. Hope is revealed once we lean into and even embrace the concept that everything is temporary – including moments of joy, anxiety, fear, happiness and certainly moments of pain. We can experience all the emotions, even the darker ones and come back to a place of quiet clarity and stillness.
Question for Reflection/Meditation/Journaling:
In what ways am I colluding with despair?
How can I engage the darkness without regarding it as an enemy?
Where is Hope?
All our experiences and emotions are to be cherished for the ways in which they can touch our hearts and souls. If we can keep our hearts open and befriend each of these experiences, we will discover the wisdom they have to offer us. Those bits of wisdom are like drops of gold that fill the reservoir of our hearts. When we don’t shy away from the uncomfortable moments and find our way back to clarity and stillness that reservoir expands and develops a greater capacity –not just to endure greater challenges but also to love more deeply and to experience greater depths of joy that that send chords of our unique music notes out into the Universe. Therein lies Hope.
Questions for Reflection/Meditation/Journaling:
What would it feel like to not fight difficult emotions and to treat them gently instead? What would that look like?
What does it feel like in my body when I am open-hearted?
Why Hope?
Our Unique chords and notes are part of the Universal harmony. When we allow ourselves to feel deeply and experience life richly, we are doing exactly what we came here to do –to resonate the notes and chords that only we can emanate when we are being true to ourselves, loving and honoring ourselves and others. Those notes make the Universe tremble with Divine Love that intertwine with the many threads of each soul and give strength to those who are still searching and haven’t yet found it. Even to those who may be hiding from their strength or haven’t yet discovered it because they don’t know they have it or haven’t been forced to find it yet.
Visualization:
When you are in that space of quiet clarity and stillness, imagine a light or sound in your body. Maybe you can smell a certain scent or even experience a taste. The more peaceful and still you are, the richer the sensation may be.
Sit with those sensations and anchor them into your body. Imagine there are roots growing through the soles of your feet and anchoring that sensation into the earth. You have just begun to contribute your note to the Universal Harmony.
Imagine you are filling the space around you with that light, sound, scent or taste. Once you are comfortable doing that, imagine that sensation extends beyond your space to whatever extent feels comfortable for you. Once you learn what resonance feels like for you, you can come back to that sensation and know that it is your true essence.
How to Hope
Let’s take off our armor. We don’t need it anymore –we don’t need it to get to where we’re going. That armor weighs us down even if it helps us feel less vulnerable. The armor doesn’t have to come off all at once. Maybe we drop our shields first. We may take a few hits, but we are meant to. We are meant to be affected by life and all that can come at us. Those wounds are meant to force us to be still, to disengage for a bit to recover and heal, to love ourselves back into well-being. The greater we can love ourselves and care for ourselves, we will find that our armor no longer fits and is no longer comfortable. When we find ourselves restless for reasons we can’t explain, that is the Universe’s way of telling us that we have grown out of our armor, and it is only holding us back. So maybe it’s okay to take off our helmets so that we can see clearly, hear clearly and speak clearly. Maybe we take off our gauntlets so that we can touch more gently, create with more love and kindness.
Less Armor, More Truth
It is frightening to de-armor. Not only do we begin to see, hear and speak more clearly, when we remove our armor, we are also allowing our true selves to also be seen. We will see and hear truths we hadn’t before, and we will begin to speak our own truth. We may begin to question everything we thought we knew, and we may experience dis-connection from the things that once made us comfortable and even the people in our lives. Sometimes that means we have to leave people and situations that no longer serve us. We can first find ways to walk the balance of remaining where we are until we have fully transformed into our true selves. If we are strong enough, we can find ways of being in the in-between space and experience the richness of our growing pains during our metamorphosis. The answer is not always in leaving or running --assuming we are not in places where we are in danger of being harmed. We can serve as examples of authenticity and truth, of loving kindness from a place of strength. If we can be gentle and soft yet firm in our authenticity, we unleash our true power and potential and in so doing, serve the greater good. We then contribute even more of our unique note to the Universal Harmony.
