Passing of Ken Hamilton

It is with heavy hearts that we share the news that Ken Hamilton, founder of HOPE (Healing of Persons Exceptional) passed away Wednesday, February 2, 2022. Our hearts and thoughts are with Ken’s family — Jonna and their children Ian and Karen.

Stephen & Nona Thompson
HOPE Group Members in 1988

 

 

H.O.P.E. Supportive Groups and Healing Circles

Important note re H.O.P.E. Group meetings and COVID-19

It is clear to me, a physician, that COVID-19 is easily transmitted by close contact; so when my group does meet, we stay 6 feet apart; we do not shake hands or hugs; we greet with the Hindu practice of Namaste. We wash hands at the start and end of each meeting. We cough or sneeze into tissue that is then discarded. (We do not cough or sneeze into the elbow because that puts viruses in a place of ready exposure.) Or, even better, we stay at home and come together using Skype or ZOOM!

A H.O.P.E. Group is a safe place in which we come together because we suffer illness and seek wellness. The first group convened on February 12, 1987. It comprised five cancer patients in the general surgical practice of Kenneth H. Hamilton, MD; his practice assistant, Kathleen G; and a nurse from his hospital, Sharon.W.

When Hamilton began his second year in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University his class learned that the most important service a McGill graduate could provide her/his patients was to promise them that s/he would always do her/his best to help them “get on with their lives.” That instruction became the foundation for his career – indeed, his life.

It was no accident then that, in 1975, when he encountered the success-oriented career of Earl Nightingale, which was based on the principle that every one of us is born with a “worthy ideal,” and the greatest service we can do for ourselves and each other is to keep that ideal in our minds as our lives unfold; for we become what we think about most, and the attitudes of the mind open the chambers of the mind that help us realize that personal ideal. Thus Hamilton discovered the experiential foundation for helping others “get on with their lives”.

After sharing 12 years of the wisdom in the monthly Nightingale INSIGHT tapes and helping patients find the wisdom in their own stories, it was clear that there was an inherently effective therapeutic value in helping patients of all kinds come to realize that their stories all contained that “worthy ideal”. Hamilton became known as “the Doctor who listens” for his attention to those personal stories. He became aware that a powerful psychology lay behind this work, and he considered taking a sabbatical to get a degree in psychology.

He shared his thoughts with the hospital’s social worker, who had become his confidant over several years of working together exploring this. She recommended he find a medical tutor to help him learn counseling. He accepted her recommendation, and she introduced him to the Reverend Barry Wood, MD, a gifted psychiatrist in nearby Portland. The chemistry between Barry and Ken was “just right” and the surgeon found that he had native psychiatric abilities. Of important note: Barry was active in the 12-step recovery program, and he introduced Ken to that style of group work.

After 16 months of working together Barry found out that he had an incurable cancer. In hospital, recovering from surgery, Barry read the New York Times Sunday Book Review… that “just happened” to contain a review of Bernie Siegel’s attitudinal healing book, Love, Medicine & Miracles work. He got a copy, devoured it, finding detailed description of Siegel’s Exceptional Cancer Patients (ECaP) support groups and “strongly suggested” that our surgeon “get the book, read it, and meet Siegel”. Dr. Ken followed that suggestion starting as soon as he got back to his hometown. Five days later, he was given a catalog that listed a Siegel “Life, Death and Transition” workshop one month later – on a three-day off-call weekend. He signed up, attended, and met Bernie, beginning a friendship that endures to this day.

At Siegel’s Massachusetts workshop our surgeon-now-psychiatrist heard about the “Attitudinal Healing” work of Gerry Jampolsky, MD. Hamilton signed up for Jampolsky’s “Attitudinal Healing” workshop coming just one month later, coinciding with another three-day off-call weekend, beginning yet another life-long friendship in supportive group practice.

This experience showed Hamilton that he was well prepared to start a support group for his cancer patients. He was encouraged by the nurse, Sharon, who had asked Ken if he would take part in teaching an American Cancer Society “Coping with Cancer” course in their hospital, to which he agreed. Part of each educational session contained group work… the stage was set.

As noted, the first meeting of Hamilton’s support group took place on February 12, 1987. At the end of that two-hour meeting, Hamilton asked the others if they would like to continue, and with their unanimous encouragement, he told them that Siegel had wanted to call his “ECaP” group a H.O.P.E. Group but could not figure out what the letters stood for. I asked the group if they would like to call themselves a H.O.P.E. Group, and they eagerly agreed. I told them that they would have to come up with the acronym. At the next week’s meeting, Sharon had the answer: Healing Of Persons Exceptional: where “Healing” implied becoming whole, “Persons” is our common humanness, and “Exceptional” affirmed the truth that no two of us are alike in our “worthy ideal”.

A H.O.P.E. Group is a safe place in which we come together to find wellness by sharing our stories and listening with hearts and minds to the other stories in the room. We have a simple opening ritual that helps us bring our inner selves together – reading together the three pages (following a cover page) of a laminated document called “The Goldbook…” so–named because we chose to print it on “goldenrod” color paper. The next three pages are: the ten-phrase “H.O.P.E. Group Opening,” the twelve “Principles of Attitudinal Healing,” and the ten “H.O.P.E. Group Guidelines”. In this way, each meeting is responsible for the way it conducts itself.

Of note… any H.O.P.E. Group can choose to have a H.O.P.E. trained and certified “Guide” to help the group maintain its focus on respectful, affirming listening that helps members remember the “worthy ideal” they were born to serve. A spontaneous Healing Circle may well find lasting qualities and identify a member ar two who would serve well to “guide” such a meeting. Then they can turn to us to find a Senior H.O.P.E. Guide to do the training and recommend that we certify the trainee.

In our H.O.P.E. Groups we learn the practice of compassion and the release of suffering – the engine of forgiving. Join us at one of our three locations in Maine to see for yourself what a difference a H.O.P.E. Group can make.

If you would like to have a H.O.P.E. Group near you, start one! You do not have to be a H.O.P.E. Group Guide in order to have your own. Simply be a H.O.P.E. Group “Convener”! Please don’t be afraid here, go to https://hopehealing.org/hope-groups/ read what is there and communicate with H.O.P.E. through its email account that you will find on that page. A senior H.O.P.E. Guide will get back to you and work with you to convene a Healing Circle that has all of H.O.P.E’s essence. (I have seen it said again and again that the way through the struggle in which we find ourselves is through the interactions of “small groups”… in other words: what H.O.P.E. has been offering humankind for over 30 years.) Read on….

A “Healing Circle” is a small group of people who know each other and come together to explore a matter of common interest. They can well use the Goldbook to set the standards for their relationship during the meeting. There is no “leader”… the group leads itself with the guidance of the Goldbook.

Another model to consider for a “Healing Circle” is the Quaker process called a “Clearness Committee”. Such a gathering convenes at the request of a member of that Friends Meeting so s-he can get “clear” about a particular “concern,” which might simply be about becoming a Quaker; or a couple getting clear about getting married. The members of the committee are asked to refrain from giving advice, devoting all thoughts to asking questions of the one who called the meeting and finding thereby the answers that lie within that person or couple.

In a Healing Circle, according to H.O.P.E’s experience, when anyone presented a “concern”, the others would agree to refrain from advice-giving and devote themselves to question-asking, refraining from asking questions with built in answers, like, “Have you ever considered seeing a counselor?”

A healing circle comprises peaceful, caring, kind, concerned conduct on the part of all of its members, and every meeting begins by reading the Goldbook. Yes, every H.O.P.E. Group meeting is a “Healing Circle”.

Should a spontaneous Healing Circle become established, the members will likely identify the person who has natural guiding qualities, and there we are with a Senior H.O.P.E. Guide to conduct the formal training and certification.

H.O.P.E is 31. What now? We move into its fourth decade… a great adventure!

Here are some welcoming thoughts from Ken Hamilton, MD, H.O.P.E’s founder: As I look back over our first thirty years, I see a steady process of development that began with a study of how to help my surgical patients identify a “worthy ideal” that the entrepreneur, Earl Nightingale introduced me to in 1975. His lifetime of studies of success showed him that we all come here with that ideal in their earliest memories and the circumstances of their life may cause them to forget it. He was of the mind that the healthiest thing anyone can do is to remember it and choose to serve it. To my ongoing appreciation, my patients taught me to listen to their story because it always revealed their worthy ideal – their core passion – no matter how much life had hidden it in the unfortunate circumstance(s) of their lives. I became a human development coach! Then, in the 1980’s, I learned about support groups and guided imagery, and incorporated those skills into my practice. What began for cancer patients benefited a host of other challenges – both mental and physical. This process grew and evolved, reaching maturity earlier in H.O.P.E’s 30th year.

H.O.P.E’S Board of Directors has recognized that they are ready to take H.O.P.E. as far as it could go, building on a motto that first appeared in 1988: “H.O.P.E. is everywhere for everyone”. With our development solid and virtually complete this July, we were called to become marketers and promoters of that for which we stand: our commitment to that principle Hamilton learned as a second-year medical student in the McGill University Faculty of Medicine, to promise that we would do everything in our power to help (people) “get on with their lives.”

In 2014 I had a big dream about the wreck of a driver-less train off its tracks crashing into the waters of Penobscot Bay with the loss of all on board became clear in 2017… it was our oh-so-strange political executive and legislative branches that were off the tracks and headed toward a catastrophic disaster. In the dream I found my way through the smashed undergrowth into a deep, dark forest. With the help of the forest, itself, I found my way onto open land and a large railroad terminus with trains at platforms waiting for all those humans who were coming out of that dark forest. When full, their engineers closed the doors and headed the train out along a track that converged with all others into a single track leading to a lovely light on the horizon.

H.O.P.E. has learned during its developing years how to help people find their way through that dark forest, which is likely to confront just about every one of us humans, and “get on with their lives”. This comprises all of us who began their journey by working their way through the wreckage left by the train wreck.

In 2018, I was reminded of the poetic blessing by John O’Donohue, that wonderful Irish poet who passed in his sleep in 2008, called “For the Interim Time”. For me, he describes that which brings people to H.O.P.E. groups… a time in which things are no longer going right, and the future is unclear. I have read this blessing poem many times, and it helps me grow. It is copyrighted and I am seeking permission to publish it here. The reference for my copy is: O’Donohue, John. To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (pp. 118-121). Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale. Kindle Edition.

We would appreciate your help in experiencing and sharing what we have to offer. There is not one human being who can not benefit from this support. We’ve shown you how to do this work… Your personal initiative in convening H.O.P.E. groups using the H.O.P.E. Goldbook to keep the group headed toward that lovely light on the horizon. There, we find our potential to live in a loving Universe where all human beings are created equal with individual dreams and core passions. Yes, we are all one.

Please feel free to contact us, and we’ll keep looking for you.

Welcome to H.O.P.E. where you find out who you really are…

where we know that at the core of our being all humans strive to be healthy and whole: the process called healing. In addition, all of us are persons; and because no two of us are alike, we are all exceptions to each other.
Moreover, an intense, indomitable curiosity about life, health, and our spirituality has brought us to see that we are alive because the whole marvelous Universe is alive, and It’s not in the business of repeating Itself… we are, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin told Jean Houston just before he died in 1955, “spiritual beings having a human experience!”

No H.O.P.E. Group near you?

Do you work with a therapist?

Invite her/him to go over these pages with you and see if there is a group that is available for you. If there isn’t, invite your therapist to talk with/message me through this website to see how we might get a H.O.P.E. Group started. Therapist referrals are a very important way to get a H.O.P.E. Group going. We in H.O.P.E. work to support both you and your therapist. I’m delighted to share 30 years of guiding over 5,000 H.O.P.E. Group meetings, keeping in mind that my personal devotion to all of my patients, going way back into the 1970’s was, and still is, to help them get on with their lives, and the best way to do that was to help them remember and serve that core passion with which they were born… and may have been discouraged from ever realizing. The life work of my great teacher, Earl Nightingale (probably the world’s best at helping humans succeed), focused on that as the essence of all success.

Be your own H.O.P.E. Group. Here’s how a personal life plan unfolds – stepwise!

  1. Pencil and paper in hand, get comfortable and give yourself permission to know that you, like every other human, were born with a “worthy ideal,” a “dream,” a “fantasy,” a “divine assignment”. Take a few deep breaths, relax your eyes and let thoughts of achieving that “worthy ideal” come to mind as an action. Write out every one that comes up now, even if there is but one.
  2. Patiently relax into an intention for every worthy ideal you wrote down. An intention is more than a goal… a line to cross is something you’d like to have happen, or something you’d like see come out of a particular circumstance. Take mine, for instance: “My worthy ideal is to become a doctor like my grandfather and one of his nephews.” It is already in your imagination, and the work of your life is to make that image real.
  3. Now, you’ve just remembered why you are here, haven’t you? Good! Now write out the answer this question: “Who am I?” Well, let’s get clear that you are not just a body, you are a spiritual being – a Soul, just as the Source made you – immersed in your human body, and promised this life at the beginning of time.
  4. . Alright then, journal what comes up in response to this question: “How am I going to get what I came for, and exactly what am I to do with it when I have it?
  5. Now you need a context in which all of this works: An attitude of service: “First of all, do no harm; second, do some good; third, benefit someone.” Promise that you’ll do everything in your power to help people get on with their lives. Be aware that in making this promise, you’ll be a beneficiary of it, too. This is called “The Law of Returns”, also heard as: “What goes around comes around.”
  6. Now, I strongly recommend that you download a copy of the H.O.P.E. Goldbook that we read at the opening of every H.O.P.E. Group meeting, and participants take home with them to help them keep their focus on care, wellness, kindness, forgiveness, health, and love in the face of so many harmful thoughts that seem to find their way into our lives.
  7. There you have it. Start with yourself, and if you find others along the way who want to do more of this work, your group will grow. Please know that we are always at your service, and we welcome your participation it the process. Just go to the menu bar at the top of the page and click on “Ask Us”. It will get you in touch with a senior H.O.P.E. Guide. Blessings thoughts come and abide….

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Standing at a Fork in Your Road

Standing at a Fork in Your Road Facing Your Demons

First of all, in case you had not figured this out already, we are in chaos today. I liken it to standing at a fork in your road facing your demons. Like it or not the situation demands that we face our most powerful Demon, the Lord of Chaos, Satan, himself.
In addition, the famed major league baseball player, Yogi Berra, tells us, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Therefore, where do the two branches of your fork take you? In our present state of affairs, I see one branch leading down a barren road to a dusty death that could be nuclear. I could also see the other branch leading to a greening of the Earth Mother. If you have trouble understanding this, please be patient; you’ll see. In addition, let me share what crosses my mind now… two important images: our limitless nature – our immortality – and the limited life span of all revolutions, three of which are in their death throes as we speak: the 17th c. world-wide Industrial Revolution on the one hand, and the American and French revolutions against monarchy.

Our Immortality

In addition, I share with you my fascination with the Universe that goes way back in my life. I grew up a few miles from the great Bell Telephone radio telescope that picked up the background radiation from the Big Bang. I visited it when I was a teenager. In my late teen years, I developed a fascination with the quantum reality aspects of this Universe; delighted to find out that it was finite, beginning as a point of light nearly 14 billion years ago. I was also fascinated to learn about the quantum experiments that proved that consciousness was infinite and timeless… a fundamental property of matter, and that matter is a fundamental finite quality of consciousness! On the one hand, it was apparent that matter can be measured in terms of space and time. On the other, it was apparent that consciousness cannot be measured in terms of space and time… It is both infinite and eternal… everywhere… now!
With this background, I have long held the sense that you and I have been promised these lives since the beginning of time. I was delighted to read in Peter Kingsley’s marvelous work, Reality, “We are immortal,” appearing for the first time on page 520 of that 600 page book! I saw that he was leading up to it by the time I had reached page 40, and wondering where he would say it!
About 25 years ago, a friend told me how he had a heart attack and, knowing that he had died, he went into an beautiful place of color, light, and love, knowing that he was dead. Especially relevant, he was aware that a very important piece of creative work had been interrupted by his death and immediately he heard a voice saying that he was to go back and finish it. On returning to this life, he finished his work and then had a second heart attack and left for good. He was the first of six people I have gotten to know who have had similar experiences with their own dying and going beyond their death. They all returned to complete an important service to others.
All of this makes perfect sense to me… not in terms of logical thinking, but knowing, as Antoine de St. Exupéry writes in his book, The Little Prince, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. The essential is invisible to the eye.”

The Dying Revolutions and Chaos

I recently finished reading Chris Hedges’ 2015 book, Wages of Rebellion in which he examines the nature of unsuccessful and successful revolutions. He finds that successful revolutions create their own “vocabulary” that the oligarchs, against whom they rebel, cannot understand. The unsuccessful rebellions fail to create such a vocabulary. As I went through this, I realized that every revolution has a lifespan, the end of which comprised a disintegration of the thought forms that had created the revolution. That disintegration was inevitably chaotic.
The chaos that we see around us today marks the ending of prior revolutions. Consider that the three revolutions of the 18th century are in their death throes. One of the revolutions is industrial and social: the Industrial Revolution of 1750. The other two are political and social: the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789. Fundamental to the vocabulary of the approaching revolution are words that reflect attitudes and belief systems. Examples of the former are kindness and compassion. Examples of the latter are all associated with globalization, which, to me implies the growing recognition of our universal equality in the context of an immense diversity.

The Dark Side of It All

In respect to that image of universal equality as a reflection of the new vocabulary, there is a defensive, terribly fearful, retreat into the dark side of the dying revolutions. In this way, I can begin to appreciate the behavior of a class of powerful individuals who call themselves “The Elite”. This is not what you think it is; rather, it is the product of a denial that there are limited resources to keep us going in our consumption of those resources. There is a class of individuals who have accumulated great wealth from the consumption of our limited resources. They do not see that when we run out of these resources, all of us will suffer the same fate as any homeless human on the streets of every hometown. Yes, denial can take incredible forms… one only needs to be reminded of the Holocaust. It makes you keep on standing at the fork in your road.
It occurs to me that the trillions of dollars accumulated by these ravenous, insatiable appetites represent the energy that can keep the earth and its human population very much alive and well! It occurs to me as well that it does not pay to try to isolate these highly creative and intelligent, but misled, human beings… they will only retreat into their bomb shelters and hire mercenaries to protect them from what is really going on. Most of all, it is better to look peacefully at them in their fear and acknowledge it by saying, “I see what you want me to do, and I will not do it because I will not let you control my life. So, come out of your bomb shelters. We are not going to hurt you.” Rather, I believe that we shall follow the example of Bishop Desmond Tutu confronting the police lining the walls of his Grace Cathedral to prevent a march against apartheid. He extended his open hand, saying, “You cannot mock my G*d; for He will not be mocked. Come join the winning side. You have lost already.”

H.O.P.E. Groups Facing the Dark Side

It seems like we need H.O.P.E. Groups to help each other get through this time and stop standing at the fork in our road. H.O.P.E. groups, big or small, are supportive of each other using a loving, gentle, non-judgmental approach to achieve unity instead of division. As a result, I believe we can direct our future to follow the green road and thrive.

A thought storm

A thought storm today, my friends: my readings tell me there’s company in this storm, and I’m glad. The implications astound me.
Consider that we are a nation devoid of leadership today and suffering greatly in the resulting turbulent void. Might it be that we, the common people, can, and indeed must, find the power to manage the collapse of the executive branch of our government – the power to restore its integrity. Could it be that we’ll find the needed integrity in the third, judicial, branch? Are we perhaps finding it already? Look at the judicial rulings that oppose the POTUS these days.
Consider, too, that progressive displays of executive misbehavior are frank displays of a wish to be removed from the position of POTUS. After all, it is quite clear that he did not expect to get elected. Well, we made a mistake, and yet, because we can learn from our mistakes, it is appropriate that he be relieved of the job… without animosity, but with compassion and forgiveness. And let us look at ourselves with the same compassion and forgiveness, learning a vital lesson of what it is to be a human being created by the same Source that created the Universe, which includes Mother Earth and her children.
Combine the power of the people, supported by those who know law, and trust them with the power to trust each other to steer the ship through the turbulent waters to a caring, creative, interactive way of governance that works for the good of all.
Won’t we be able to find a form of democracy already known to those who were here when the fair-skinned people sailed in from the East? And wouldn’t today’s self–governing small groups like H.O.P.E. Groups and twelve–step groups find a home in the legendary creative way of working out of unanimity as the Native Americans have done for centuries… passing no law unless it has the 100% approval of the legislative branch of the government?
I am of a mind that this is our future, once we have found our way out of the dark forest that threatens us with our own fear, guilt, anger, shame, and rage; the healing of which is love? Can we simply pray for and meditate on this and ask the Great Spirit to keep the world together a while longer? Is a Purification not coming… a Unification? Are the Purifiers not among us already… as Unifiers?
Just thinkin’….

War brings no good to anyone

War brings no good to anyone, unless one wants to believe that enriching a cabal of warmongers is “good”.

Yesterday was not only my wife’s birth day, it was so-called “Veterans Day” that honored all who had served in the armed forces of this country. In our family, we always went out for dinner on that day, but yesterday, we ordered our food at home and drove to our restaurant to pick it up. The server who brought it to us asked if I was a veteran, and when I told her that I had served in the US army for three years, assigned to an army hospital in Germany during the Vietnam conflict, she said, “Your meal is free.” I was honored to hear those words.

I had enlisted in the army in 1960 to be assured that I would not be drafted to work in a dispensary, but to serve at the end of my general surgical residency training as a general surgeon. I did not serve in combat, but I was on “active duty” and I got to see military life from the inside out. I also got a lot of second hand experience from serving military types who had been in the Vietnam combat. I felt very upset by the stories of murder that I was hearing… the sources of terrible PTSD… and when my obligatory service period ended, I was relieved to know that I had no reserve obligations; so I resigned my commission.

Shortly after returning stateside, I found the position for a staff surgeon in a fine, country hospital in rural Maine. I served there for 19 years, during which time I was introduced to the human development work of Earl Nightingale who taught me the power and value of knowing the effects of “attitudes” on one’s life. Several of my patients were Quakers, and because of my spiritual interests, they invited me to become a member of the local Friends (Quaker) Worship Group.

I was born into a Christian Science and Episcopal family. When I was six, I was given a copy of Marguerite de Angeli’s 1940 book, “Thee, Hannah”, which was a story about a young Quaker girl meeting an escaped slave in pre-Civil War Philadelphia. Through that book, I learned that Quakers were pacifists also known as “Friends” and that they believed that there was “that of God” in everyone.

As Life would have it, I was advised to seek admission to the Quaker College, Haverford College. They accepted me, and the next four years were rich in the Quaker way. In addition, my parents joined a summer vacation resort in the Pocono Mountains that had a strong Quaker background. I became active in the local Quaker Worship Group and soon requested invitation to join The Religious Society of Friends. My request was accepted, and I was thereby given the opportunity to develop a rich appreciation of peace.

In 1990, I found the rich Tibetan Buddhist practice of Tonglen, a practice of compassion that prayerfully offered the means to let suffering become peace. I had grown up with a lot of anger that I struggled to “control”. The struggle ended with Tonglen, which altered my body chemistry gently and beautifully.

Along with yesterday’s gentle offering of a free meal earned by being an army veteran, I experienced a precious synchronicity that brought home all thoughts and feelings leading to be a participant in the work to end war. I opened my computer to find a post from yesmagazine.org that brought home all the thinking and experience of our need to practice peace… to become peaceful inside regardless of what is happening outside. I encourage you to open this link and see what veterans are saying about war: https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/

Blessing thoughts come and abide, Ken

The “novel” coronavirus

The “novel” coronavirus is, most certainly, an extremely threatening micro, micro, micro pathogen. There is a perception that this is a part of universal evolution that we need at this time. I do not wish to debate this point, but I do wish to point out something that happened for me and my wife yesterday.

As you are aware, our point – to – point movement that is so dependent on fossil fuels is incredibly curtailed at this time. We are staying home and figuring out how to teach virtually all curricula: grade school, high school, college, and post-graduate. We are eliminating large classrooms and lecture halls full of people who can contaminate each other with that thing we call the “novel” coronavirus. Those of us who have wisely decided to put a 2 metre space between any two of us can talk without the protection of a mask over nose and mouth. If we use such masks, we can get closer to each other without fear of infecting because the fabric of the mask traps the particles. I have insisted on these two methods working whenever anything in H.O.P.E. takes place if Skype and Zoom cannot be used.

What did I just say? Our close communication using electronic means makes it possible to stay at home, not burn any fuel, and get to see each other face-to-face.

There are concerns expressed about the third means of communicating beyond voice and micro gestures – consciousness! What we know about consciousness is it does not depend on space-time for communication to take place! Has anyone ever met a telepath? I had a distant cousin who had grown up in England, emigrated to Canada, but maintained constant non-verbal communication with his mother still in England! I know others who have communicated telepathically and it has been shown that that telepathic communication takes place instantaneously. Hmmm.

I needed to tell you this because I’m aware of the changes in communication today due to the novel coronavirus.

Yesterday evening, I witnessed something else. My wife and I were curious about the comet, Neowise, wondering if we could see it from our home in rural Maine. We saw that it was to be visible in the northwestern horizon after sunset yesterday. Our sources in the Internet said that the comet would not be visible without telescopes or high power field glasses. That was fine, because we had just such a pair of field glasses. We drove to a place where we could see the entire northwestern horizon and started looking for the Big Dipper whose visual presence was near the comet. We had to wait until virtually all of the light of the setting sun had disappeared and, strangely enough, a cloud appeared in that area preventing us from seeing the comet. So I drove the car a 10th of a mile south, giving us a clear view of the Big Dipper. I let my wife out so I could go and park the car while she looked. As I opened my door, she cried out, “I see it!” I looked in the direction at which she was pointing and there it was – the tail was fully visible to the naked eye, looking like a long tapered cloud. Using our field glass, we could focus on the point and there was a spot of light… the body of the comet.

The thing that struck me was the fact that I had read in good authority that the comet would not be visible to the naked eye. Wrong! To us, it was fully visible to the naked eye! “How come?” says I? Could it be because there was less fossil fuel residue in place up here in Maine between me and the comet Neowise?

I shall leave you with that observation and question, and invite you to consider what the “novel” coronavirus presence implies for our future. The comet will be visible tonight, and I would love to hear from anyone who goes looking for it with and without field glasses.

Evolution

Isn’t it about time we ended the violence?

Revelation: the Uncaused Cause has been revealing itself to us continuously. We have evidence in the cave drawings of what can well be said to be revelation of The Source because they are graphical representations of our curiosity about the Mystery. They go back 30,000 years. It was not until about 2,500 years ago that we developed writing, relying on the comments of a campfire to tell the stories of the tribe including its mystery stories. And let’s be clear about this: the Judeo–Christian–Islamic Bible is full of mystery stories… and that is just great.

I consider it to be tragically naïve to assume that The Source stopped revealing Itself to us humans 2 1/2 centuries ago. Why in the name of all that is holy would such a behavior take place? Might it just be that we human beings – at least the children of Abraham – believe that revelation stopped when we stole the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge from The Source. To my way of thinking – today – I cannot believe that The Source would deny Its holy children anything of Itself. Rather, I believe that revelation is essential to the evolution of The Source, Itself! For me, therefore, Albert Einstein’s fascinating theories of relativity, Beethoven’s fifth Symphony, and the Hubble telescope are all a part of the ongoing revelation necessary for the evolution.

We have only been able to understand that the whole universe has been evolving since the first spectrographs of stars came into the hands of Edwin Hubble in 1929. Albert Einstein saw in his general theory of relativity that the universe was not static and it stunned him so he modified it so the universe would be static. Hubble called him out and Einstein admitted to “the greatest blunder” he ever made in his life. What are the implications of this discovery? This has occupied the minds of brilliant people the world over ever since… not just a few, but millions of brilliant people – people who have access to the creativity of human minds as manifest in measuring equipment that can chase down the implications of Hubble’s 1929 discovery. The greatest implication here is that evolution is a fundamental quality and function of the whole universe!

With what we know now, our solar system is 4 billion years old. Moreover, our universe – and who knows how many other universes there might be – has shown us that it is something short of 14 billion years old! In other words, the evolution of the universe took ten billion years to create our solar system. It took one or two billion years to create the first bacterium, and we did not come on the scene in any form until a million years ago, and it would take 800,000 years before the first modern humans walked. Consider this… The universe has evolved itself into us! Consider this… in early 1933 it evolved itself into the first strand of my DNA. Consider this, too… I have been evolving ever since… and so have you.

And none of this is a random, accidental process…. It is a process that arises out of a field of consciousness that has no dimensions and comes to know itself by manifesting itself in a physical form: you, me, my children, that apple tree, the ocean, the fish in it, the Earth, the moon, the solar system, the galaxy, the galactic cluster – all of it, and the more it creates, the better it gets to know itself.

So consider the tremendous variety in human life… it’s not a mistake… we’re all here together… and the Universe needs us to help it evolve; so let us voluntarily put an end to the violence by getting involved in peaceful, compassionate, caring, and respectful non-violent creative dialogue. After all, we have known for centuries that “we become what we think about most”.

(A note about that quote: it came as the first part of a three-part “gift” from Earl Nightingale in the 1990’s that comprised a Formula, a Goldmine, and a Word. What I quoted above was the Formula. Earl said it was common to all spiritual traditions. The Goldmine was the mind that does the thinking. The Word was attitude, the key that opened the doors to the rooms of the mind. Nightingale taught me that attitudes are always chosen, and the attitude that I am using today gets reflected back at me by the universe – a “law of correspondence” – and I can change it in the blink of an eye.)

The Malignant Ego-mind

Helping us remember who and what we really are: spiritual beings immersed in the human condition.

I would like to share with you the thoughts that arose as I considered the implications of Easter in the Christian tradition. I got an Easter greeting from an old friend of mine and his lovely wife. He and I have shared some very rich experiences – some painful and some comforting. Here are two of the opening thoughts they shared with me:

In this real life horror movie in which we are living, we know there’s a vicious creature we cannot see. But – because it is not causing any symptoms – it can secretly be living in anyone who is near us. Equally frightening, we know this virus can suddenly – without any of us even being aware – fly into our lungs & kill us.

This is the horrible Good Friday merry go round ride on which we are all stuck. Nobody knows when it is going to stop, but Everybody knows that the triumphant positive energy of Easter comes next.

I offer you an image for your thoughts… the name for that vicious creature you (we) cannot see… “Wetiko”, a thought form that is pure evil. The word comes from the Cree people and has a couple of analogues in other eastern tribes. Paul Levy translates that into “Malicious Egophrenia”. If you’re like me, “ego” is just what you think it is, and “phrenia” means “mind”. The Eastern Natives saw that the coming of the pale ones from the East was the arrival of a devil in disguise with a nice song but murder in its mind. “Wetiko” stands for humans and their institutions that mindlessly destroy Mother Earth and her children…. Look at our leadership….

I have been rereading a lot of Paul Levy’s thoughts, and I realize that I learned much from him and my cousin Pat – a respected Jungian counselor – quite a few years ago. I have carried this ego-mind concept in my mind in “guiding” 5,000-odd H.O.P.E. Group meetings where many people have surrendered to powerful egos, either their own or somebody else’s. So, I take the twelve-step concept of ego and use their acronym, “Ease God Out” from the word that means “I”.

I was shown years ago that the ego needs the love and compassion of the spirit that shows us that my “I” is part of a spiritual collective known as “We”. Dreams have shown me that my ego – my secular, DNA-related part of me – does not know why it was created, but my soul – my “higher” spiritual self – does know why it is here, having occupied other “human animal” bodies through their lifetimes before this one I’m living today.

I am of a clear mind that Jesus of Nazareth knew that he was taking on the Wetiko of society and he knew that he would have to give up his human body in order to start the healing metamorphosis. And the struggle goes on in the Amazon forests and in the minds of Monsanto and in a lot of what we call “politics” and even “medicine” today.

This is, indeed, a remarkable time in the life of humanity, and we might even sense a gratitude to COVID-19 for clearing our polluted air and our fearful minds.

Thank you for your thoughts, and the opportunity to re-examine those thoughts that I have just shared with you. If a dialogue grows out of this, so be it. I welcome it.

With much love, Ken

“egophrenia” means, literally, “I–mind”… as “schizophrenia” means “split–mind”. And I invite you to join me in an appreciation of who or what is actually in charge of – “minding” – my life.

I had a cousin who was a natural “guide” for people looking to make some sense in their lives. She found this talent when she was working as a clerk in a large Montreal department store that was across the street from a junior college, and the two were connected by a pedestrian bridge. My cousin, whose education had been interrupted by World War II, decided to finish her college education by crossing that bridge to classes of her choosing. Her fellow students turned to her for her counsel, and a visiting lecturer encouraged her to study the work of C. G. Jung.

She spent two years at the Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland polishing her natural skills and came back here to take up a counseling practice in North Carolina. Through her, I found a deep appreciation of what “ego” was all about… it was much more that just the Latin word. I had several dreams that led me to a rich appreciation for my ego: The first was a dream of me being at the wheel of a large, ocean-going freighter – the “captain” steering this “ship of life” named “Kenneth Hamilton” crossing the “ocean of life”. Not knowing what course I was traveling became a problem when I grounded the ship on a reef. Angry, frustrated, I heard a door open behind me admitting a stranger into my bridge.

To my “Who are you?” he replied “I’m the captain of this ship. I came here with the ship’s manifest under my arm, knowing where the journey was headed, with all ports-of-call, including the final destination where we’d run the ship aground to be recycled under your direction, and I’d take the ship’s log to Source in gratitude for the journey it had given me. You’re the first mate-navigator of this ship and we are to work together to get it back on course and headed home.” Ego agreed.

I had another dream in which I was standing at a work station in my home, using my computer to do some creative work, when I was suddenly aware of a hand with a pointing ego-finger waggling in my face, and a stern voice saying, “Don’t do anything stupid now!” I knew it was my ego, and it had come through patio doors from a deck, and it was time for me to ask where it lived. It showed me its quarters in my house. I knew that this part of me was the same as the ship’s captain… my spiritual director… my soul.

I’ll close this post with the reassurance that I have been shown through many dreams and studies that, as Peter Kingsley says in the closing pages of his masterwork, “We are immortal” and we have had these lives promised to us since the beginning of time, some 13.7 billion years ago. We are not accidents but products of a Divine Imagination, and we are here to help It evolve.

We have been hustling along subject to intense manipulation by a malignant egophrenia that is the natural progress of our evolution. I am being so bold as to advance an idea that I got from the passionate creative human, Paul Levy… the First Nation people in the central and eastern regions have a name for what Levy calls “malignant egophrenia”… “Wetiko”. Look and listen to the world today, silenced by the novel coronavirus. Is it not giving us cause to go within and find our spiritual nature? The skies have cleared so we can see the beauty of Earth. In the silence, we stop our violent ways. Is this not the deeper reason that Life has brought us this humble virus?

The H.O.P.E. Group Opening

As I said in the introductory blog, and, as most of you know, I am devoted to the health of the world in which we find ourselves. I do it by “keeping a H.O.P.E. eye on the world…” I write these blog posts to express my thoughts of concern about our human condition. I share my 30+ year experience with helping people “get on with their lives” by participating in H.O.P.E. “Attitudinal Healing” support groups.
Here, I present the thought of how the “H.O.P.E. Group Opening” actually guides a H.O.P.E. Group meeting; for in H.O.P.E. Groups we build images of ourselves that relate to what goes on in the world around us. We open every H.O.P.E. Group meeting by reading a three-page pamphlet H.O.P.E. created in 1993 called the “Goldbook“. (Clicking here will give you a .pdf copy of it.)
It comprises the ten lines of the “H.O.P.E. Group opening”; the twelve “Principles of Attitudinal Healing”; and lastly the ten “H.O.P.E. Group Guidelines”. The group participants take turns individually reading one line at a time, going around clockwise. At the end of the meeting we recite together the “Serenity Prayer“.
I offer this to everyone curious to know more about the Goldbook: I shall add a short description of each phrase in it every week.

    The second line of the H.O.P.E. Group Opening is “We come together to find wellness” and here is its summary description:

Wellness is more than a goal… it is an intention, and that goes beyond a “goal” because it has no final line to cross. Rather it is a guidance for a life without a specific end… it crosses the end-line in any goal-setting, opening into the true riches of a life’s potential, riches that do not need to be related to money.
For me and for H.O.P.E. Groups in general, that “wellness” refers to that spiritual essence of being human… being “well” which is synonymous with “wealth”. That, in turn, is a “state of being” which contains that wealth.
I have always derived much pleasure out of exploring the question with anyone expressing a concern about the “why” of their life.

The Rainbow

A fascinating true story first given to H.O.P.E. in 2010 by a family member who was present to the second rainbow in the post. It was published with permission in the H.O.P.E. periodic newsletter, Ripples, on July 10 that year. It is a stunning account of aspects of reality that keep on happening in my direct and indirect experience. I love the mystery, and it is my intent to remind readers that the Mystery is…

The bow is a covenant between God and man that never again would the floods come to wipe out the human race. This is the story of a rainbow that may have something to do with that covenant.
In June, 1970, a woman died in a single car accident in Maine. Her two-year old daughter was thrown clear of the car and soon found by the occupants of another vehicle who noticed signs of the accident. They noted the time on the dashboard (analog) clock of the wrecked car—12:30 (p.m.).
The woman’s family was vacationing in Switzerland at the time, and as day-long rains ended that same afternoon, they saw a rainbow of such intensity that they felt it had special meaning for them; so they noted the time…6:30 p.m. (When one adjusts for the time zone difference, the times are the same!)
The family heard of their daughter/sister’s death early the next morning and returned to this country. On the flight back, her brother wrote this poem:
What a shame to lose my sister,
a fine woman and mother, and a part of me;
It rained all day the day she died,
and then a rainbow did appear.
It was a full one and beautiful to see:
It seemed to link everyone together
as if to say that no matter
how miserable the weather, or how
depressing or terrible things may
seem, there is always a rainbow
or a ray of goodness for us to see.
She has done so much for me and
other people-hundreds actually.
I could always see that goodness.
That beautiful rainbow that meant
so much to me.
She made people feel like people
and never was a mean word spoken.
Not many individuals such as she
could understand and make people
so happy.
Isn’t this the ray of goodness I’m
talking about?
How fortunate that is still
alive to carry a part of that rainbow
along.
It’s really not so sad or depressing
if you just remember what she has
been. Maybe she filled that Rainbow
from end to end.
And if that’s so, isn’t it time to
start over again?”
At her memorial service, the minister read that poem, moving everyone to tears. After the service, the family and friends gathered at the family home on the shore of one of Maine’s loveliest lakes.
Suddenly, an intense, brief summer shower came through, leading some of those present to comment guardedly about the possibility of there being a rainbow. The brother who had written the poem was quite upset by the idea and felt compelled to look outside. He returned a moment later, quite beside himself with emotion, and said, “There is a rainbow! Come and see it; you’ll not believe it!”
The rainbow was indeed there – right in front of the house! In order to see it, they all crowded onto a floating dock which settled ankle-deep under their weight. The rainbow appeared to rise with breath-taking intensity from a rock on the shore not twenty feet from where they stood. It did not change at all for many minutes, holding everyone in awe.
The silence was broken by the cries of the little daughter whom they had left in the house in her crib on the second floor. She was standing in her crib, pointing at the rainbow, and crying out, “Mama, Mama!” In stunned silence they listened to her cries. Her maternal grandmother was the first to speak, saying, “Now I know! Now I really know!” And in that moment, all the others knew, too.
Just then, the rainbow started to move away, disappearing from sight in but a few moments!

A Contentious Election in Irrational Time 2nd ed.

We are experiencing a contentious election in irrational time. I am a Depression Baby and I remember the contentious irrational behavior of the 1930s that led to a disastrous war. I am seeing much the same today, and I recognize a common pattern that goes back thousands of years. The only problem today is that wars can become nuclear, wiping ourselves off the face of the Earth. It would seem, too, that we are using other ways of wiping ourselves off the face of the Earth. What is going on? I strongly sense that we are being asked to evolve rapidly out of the industrial revolution into a time of creativity and service at a higher level than we have ever known, collectively. [continue reading…]

Keeping a H.O.P.E. eye on the world…

As most of you know, I am devoted to the health of the world in which we find ourselves. I do it by “keeping a H.O.P.E. eye on the world…” I write these blog posts to express my thoughts of concern about our human condition.

I am fascinated by the whole concept of “archetype” as models of our human behavior. I owe a debt to C. G. Jung for his study of archetypes as expressed through a beloved cousin of mine who was a Jungian analyst and therapist. She taught me to look for and find the archetypes that any human being might be serving.

When our current president started his moves into his candidacy, I saw the wounds of Narcissus in his behavior towards other humans of both genders. There was a lot of talk about narcissism in this man, and I wanted to be kind and compassionate toward him; so I was patient with life… as Life has taught me.

Earlier this year, I was loaned a copy of a book by Kurt Kaltreider, PhD, called American Indian Cultural Heroes and Teaching Tales. (Hay House Inc, 2004) Fully half of it was devoted to an archetypal “trickster” of Lakota legend that was used by the elders to help the youth learn the Lakota way of acting “honestly, generously, and in a good way.” I saw that archetype in our leader, and felt I needed to look no further to see what caused his tendency to do harm. On May 15, last, I wrote the blog, Iktomi and Narcissus.

I waited on posting what I had written… because I do such things at times. I was reviewing some publications I had created for H.O.P.E. and came across this quote from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring :

“Frodo: I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, than the will of evil.”

IMHO, we have entered into a time in which the will of evil seeks to dominate our human condition. It coincides with natural forces that have the potential to be destructive. I would add that native prophecies speak of this time as a time of purification… a time of great suffering. As I study those prophecies, I see the potential for relief of that suffering. Because it is my core passion to help people get on with their lives, I devote my 40-plus years of H.O.P.E. experience to helping us see the way through this challenging time.

I submit this blog to your scrutiny and commitment to do what you can to help ease us through this challenging time. Should you wish to make a comment, your thoughts would be welcome at Ask Us. Thank you.