The Story Behind It All

I started H.O.P.E. in 1987 for the benefit of some of my surgical patients who were facing the life-threatening challenge of cancer. I based it on the human development work I began studying in 1975 when a close friend introduced me to the work of Earl Nightingale] in response to my complaint that I felt the universe was giving me a “rough deal”. He loaned me an audiotape in which Nightingale described the mirroring relationship between my own attitudes and the perceived attitudes in my environment. He called it The Law of Correspondence, and he showed that it was a corollary of The Law of Returns (you reap what you sow) that has been with us for thousands of years.

He pointed out that his studies of the history of success showed that success is directly related to one’s attitude, and that one has always chosen that attitude, even if the reason for that choice has been forgotten. He pointed out that once a choice is made, it does not preclude change. If the old choice is not working, choose again!

As soon as I made this commitment to holding a different attitude (I chose to“take it easy”), I drove up to the stop sign in a new state of consciousness (yet anxious about what I might find there), and there were no cars in sight other than mine! One particularly slow-driving man whom I frequently encountered there with a long line of cars behind him never showed up there again, even though I saw him and his cortege in other parts of town for many years afterward.

Coincidentally, one of my patients was expressing the same kind of concerns that I had felt, and I said to her, “Please consider that you are the one who feels and creates your emotions. They are your choice, and if you don’t like them, you can change them. It may just be that if you feel the world is giving you a hard time, you may be the source of that ‘hard time’ attitude.” She responded beautifully! This had a telling effect on her way of living, and it suddenly seemed that other patients asked for and benefited from hearing about Nightingale’s experience. I began a regular study of Earl’s lifetime studies of the patterns of human success, which he defined as “the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.” His work, which he describes well in his anthology, The Essence of Success, provided me with helpful ideas that I could share with my patients.

One of his gifts was a round sticker that fit nicely on my desk drawer. It had three parts: a Formula, a Gold Mine, and a Word. The formula, “We become what we think about most,” was fundamental to all spiritual traditions. The gold mine that made the formula work was the mind. And the word that was the key to the gold mine was “attitude.” At this moment, I suggest that you take five minutes to list on one half of a sheet of paper and the attitudes that open the gold mine for you, and on the other half lives the attitudes that close a gold mine. Give yourself permission to be fully aware of the gift you have just given yourself, and affirm your ability to choose the keys to the Gold Mine of the mind.

I decided to get more formal training in psychology and counseling. In 1985, in response to this intention, I met a gifted psychiatrist, Barry Wood, MD in nearby Portland. We both felt that our “chemistry” was right, and this man, who had truly lived eight lives and was now beginning to live his ninth, took me through Karen Horney’s psychology of moves: towards (loving), against (angry), and away from (fearful).and into the depths of my own shadow. There I met my demons, and there he helped me find the daemon--my Inner Guide or True Self--that gave me the power with which to confront my demons and heal old wounds. He helped me to see that the demons I feared were, in reality, vital escorts on my path through life, thus revealing to me that “demon” and “daemon” are one and the same!

After we had been working together for almost a year, focusing largely on co-dependency as another form of demon worship, Barry came down with a serious cancer. This led him to Bernie Siegel through the New York Times Book Review of Siegel’s Love, Medicine and Miracles, which Barry read while he was in hospital. Barry introduced me to Bernie. Bernie told me about his wish to call his ECaP (Exceptional Cancer Patients) groups HOPE Groups, but he could not figure out the acronym. When I later convened the first HOPE Group, the co-founder of that group, Sharon Williams, RN, produced the acronym--Healing of Persons Exceptional--and the group accepted it eagerly. Having named ourselves H.O.P.E., we encouraged ourselves to take a deeper look at hope, the attitude....