Abandoning Hope. . . .

I have to do a little bit of redecorating in my bedroom. Two years ago when we moved into this house, I got to decorate my bedroom exactly how I wanted it. For the past 20 years or so, my decore choices had been tempered by Renfrew's opinion. But this time, the only person I needed to consult on paint colour and fabric was me. I went with a pale sea green and adorned my walls with inspirational words and dragonflies.

One of the wall words is 'HOPE'. You know:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all. . (E. Dickinson)

Hope, what was left in the box after Pandora did the mythical equivalent of pushing the red, do not push, button.

The problem with Hope is that it leaves room for doubt that things will work out as they are meant to. Hope is based on a belief that the Universe is NOT unfolding as it should. Hope is limiting.

Over the past few years, I have been studying a spiritual program called A Course In Miracles (the "Course"). The premise of the Course is that ALL unhappiness and misery comes from a false belief that we are separate from each other and the Universe. In Reality (with a capital "R") each of us is part of an organic and Divine wholeness that is what some call God. To get to what Christians call Heaven, Hindu's call Nirvana, Muslims call Jannah and Buddhists see as escaping Samsara, all we need to do is to 'remember' who we truly are.

This 'remembering' and the reunification of the Divine is inevitable . . . LOVE always wins. The question is, of course, whether it happens sooner or later. But even that isn't really true; since time, as Albert Einstein so correctly observed, is an artificial construct to keep everything from happening at once.

I was blessed to have been raised by a Mother who allowed and encouraged me to see the connectedness in everything around me. This Life, she taught me, was a classroom and my Soul was here willingly to learn lessons that would allow it to grow and mature. The Course has built on this foundation with the principle that EVERY interaction with another soul is part of my Soul's curriculum. Nothing is a coincidence.

Anyway, back to Trust v. Hope.

Looking back over my forty-some years, I see that a fixation on HOPE has messed me up. It kept me doing things in my life that clearly were NOT working with the belief that the next time it would work. I spent uncountless days focused on the future I was hoping for, believing I knew better than the Divine what I needed. This living in the 'hope' kept me from seeing the gems of wisdom and truth that were right in front of me in the NOW. It kept me from seeing the lessons that were presented to me.

So, I am turning toward TRUST. Learning to be in the "I don't know" moments when I am presented with a seemingly bad life event. Trusting that the Divine knows what I need to learn and trusting, even more, that the lesson is there and I need only ask that the lesson be shown to me.