Abandon All Hope…for something better

These days, it being an election year, we hear a lot of talk about hope. Little wonder. With the dollar on the verge of free fall. Financial “behemoths” like Countrywide and Bear Stearns needing white knights and government intervention to avoid collapse and dire warnings that it’s already too late to save the world from the ravages of global warning (and even Eliot Spitzer down the tubes in disgrace), “hope” seems as rare and valuable a commodity as the gold we are now supposed to invest in. I can understand the sentiments of the scraggly bearded man in the cartoon who carries the sign that reads., “Abandon hope. The end is near.” In fact, I agree whole-heartedly with the first part of the message. By all means, abandon hope! Hope is part of the problem.

Think about it. The concept of hope is rife with fear and helplessness. It’s full of desperate longing for intervention from some outside force beyond one’s control because the intrinsic belief of the hoper is that his personal influence on the situation in question will inevidably be insufficient.

Charles Fillmore, the cofounder of the Unity movement said that hope was “intellectual faith” and therefore “subject to doubt”. If you want to awaken the laws of attraction, you have to be centered in the kind of consciousness from which an unwavering intention can spring. Once you are, you'll know that your fondest desire is a foregone conclusion. The soul-grounded faith that Fillmore is talking about makes the shallow mental faith of “hope” seem tepid at best.

Whether you are a true practitioner of almighty “faith” or are simply relegated to the feeble stirrings of “hope,” revolves around your definition of “you.” You must know that your intentions are part of an evolution much larger and more powerful than the humble trappings of your personal persona. Are you a microscopic bug at cross purposes, in the cross-hairs of a hostile world, or are you a microcosm of a universal law operating at full-force in the universe? If it’s the latter, what law are you the expression of? The one that goes, “Isolated, half-steps are doomed to failure.” or “ There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”? Again, if it’s the latter, are you truly living like an idea whose time has come? Are you an actor who won’t take no for an answer? Are you a uniter, a motivator, a skillful coordinator of people who share the cause you cherish? Are you “creativity and determination” personified— always learning and adapting, always moving forward? If so. then what you call “you” is not a lonely voice in the wilderness but a tsunami— the fabled irresistible force that cannot fail to save this planet. And, if such is the case, then that “you” is a godsend. And I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say, thanks for being you!

In a recent interview on Bill Moyer’s journal ex- reporter Sarah Chayes was asked if the natural skin care product cooperative she’d founded in Afghanistan as an alternative to the opium trade could really hope to survive the violence, corruption and warlord mentality of that country. Her response was. “I don't think that hope is relevant. I think determination is all that counts. You just have to try. It doesn't matter if you hope you're going succeed or not. You have to keep trying.” No Hamlet-syndrome here, no idle speculation, just the undeterred facilitation of outcome. A dream coming true.

In an interview in Common Ground, Deepak Chopra expressed it this way. He said, “I don’t believe in hope. I think hope is a sign of despair. You know, only people who are in despair use the word hope. You have to be in a state of consciousness that is beyond hope and despair, which means a state that is creative, peaceful, not melodramatic, not hysterical, anchored in sobriety and in touch with your soul. Transcendence means beyond hope, beyond despair, beyond pleasure, beyond pain and yet still being conscious of choices you can make that are creative. The best way to change the future is to be fully in the present and to practice intention.”

Be fully in the present. The present is the solid ground upon which we construct the fulcrum of intention that can move an entire planet. It’s the bedrock beneath the shifting sand of conventional wisdom, recent studies, over thinking, current statistics, pundits, and the testimony of “expert” witnesses.

It’s the job that needs to be done and the doing of it. Period.

So quit your skylarking about whether you’ve got a chance in hell (or not) and just put your shoulder into the task until success is yours. No doubt, along the way, you will encounter many amazing happy “accidents” but rest assured that when all those uncanny unintentional consequences slip into place, they will have been lubricated by the continual flow of deliberate intention combined with good old elbow grease. The immutable law of attraction is simple. It’s faith in action. Nothing more. Nothing less.

(original image can be seen at dpad.gotfrag.com)