Quotes:

Hope is the beacon that lights the way through your problems to your possibilities.

-The Author

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”

-Emily Dickinson.

“Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul, and it’s not dependent on some observation of the world or estimate of the situation.
“Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.
“Hope in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

-Vaclav Havel

“Hope” is becoming an extremely powerful word today. It has come a long way from being the only gift of the gods left in Pandora’s Box after Epimetheus foolishly opened that box and let all the other gifts fly out. Hope remained because it was the gift of Zeus and the first to go in the box, which is why it was on the bottom, and the last in line to get out.

Pandora’s hope was a promise of good things. That concept of hope has been with us for as long as we can remember. However, we are discovering today that hope contains a memory of good things. Alice Miller, who first offered me that description, has helped many people recover their soul by regressing them to places that seem to precede their present human existence. In such regressions, her patients found memories of goodness and happiness. Indeed, people who have lived hopeless lives of desperate loneliness not uncommonly find happiness inside. It is marvelous to see their faces when they are asked how they know the feeling, and they respond with, “I don’t know how I now. I just know!” (This “gut feeling” or “felt sense of knowing” is the essence of intuition.)

Of even greater significance, I believe, is the idea put forth above by Vaclav Havel that hope is the certainty that things make sense! When things seem to make no sense, we naturally tend to turn from them in fear. When we pause in our aversion, and realize that everything makes sense to the One Who Is All Things, we become empowered to seek the sense of what we are observing. We conquer our fear with the only attitude we have with that power—love—which gives us the strength to remember our future.

A metaphor that speaks to this is “the ray of hope”. On the one hand, a ray is a narrow beam of radiation; usually visible light, and on the other hand it is a foretaste, a glimmer, a gleam or a glimpse. I can see myself in darkness on a turbulent, storm-tossed sea, not sure of my bearings or position. I am looking for a sign of a safe port where I can wait out the storm. I see a glimmer on the horizon. It is a flashing beacon! I can set my course to it! I can imagine the safety that lies near the source of that ray of light.

In the same way, a healthy young wife and mother finds that the sea of her life has become turbulent and storm-tossed through cancer, death, separation or other natural calamity, and she looks about her for that promise of a safe haven where she can mend her sails and wait out the storm of her life. What is her beacon on the horizon? It is certainly to be the hand of another reaching out to her and giving her support and nurturing while she heals. Through another, she finds hope.

Hope is the story of the butterflies that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross tells. When she was young and just beginning to practice child psychiatry in Switzerland, the war in Europe ended, and among the liberated concentration camps was one that had been just for children. Of the thousands of children admitted there, only about one hundred remained. The discovery of the horror led to the formation of an international team of helpers to bring the children back to the “real” world, and Elisabeth was one of these.

The children had been kept in two rows of plain wooden barracks buildings. The survivors showed them a building at the end of each row, to which children were taken, never to be seen again. With their hearts in their mouths, the team went to the two buildings to see what evidence remained, if any, of the children’s experience. To their amazement, they found no sign of violence or fear in either building; instead, they found drawings of butterflies, thousands upon thousands of them covering all the wooden surfaces of both buildings! The children had scratched these symbols of miracle into the wood with the only tool they had—their fingernails!

Today, people working with children with life-threatening diseases often find the children nearing the end of their lives doing spontaneous drawings of butterflies. The world shares a common belief in the promise of transformation that leads the caterpillar to create its cocoon. A simple question: are we seeing an example of a priori knowledge? I suggest to you that if we keep in mind the idea that both linear and non-linear time do exist; then a priori knowledge becomes possible as knowledge that exists in this moment and is accessible to us in our linear dimensions. Hope, as Alice Miller tells us, may just be a “memory of the future!”

The nature of caterpillar-chrysalis-butterfly transformation:

This miraculous process stuns the imagination with its intricate weave of complex processes, and yet it has a striking metaphoric resemblance to human transformation. The HOPE process, be it in a HOPE Group or a SoulCircling, metaphorically contains all of the elements of this transformation. Let us then examine the process for the butterfly.

The butterfly egg contains two sets of cellular instructions: one set contains the DNA plan for the larva—the caterpillar—the second set contains the DNA plan for the butterfly. The larva has but one purpose—to eat twenty-four hours a day and acquire all of the elements that are needed for the formation of the butterfly. Its eyes and antennae are specialized for the detection of the right kind of food. Its gastrointestinal tract is specialized for the digestion of that food. Its respiratory and circulatory systems are specialized to support these functions.

And in its body are collections of cells that have nothing to do with caterpillar function. They are inert, inactive, not growing or changing. Science named these collections “imaginal disks”—a word rich in its implication of the presence of an image that will fully express itself in the emergence of the butterfly.

The larva will molt several times as it grows, and when it reaches a critical size, it will molt for the last time and a new form will emerge—the pupa. The pupa will harden its skin and become immobile. Its digestive system will break down, disseminating the digestive enzymes throughout its body. All cell walls will dissolve. All intracellular structures will become formless, reduced to unrecognizable molecular components. The immune system will selectively remove all foreign material. The imaginal disks and the central nervous system remain unaffected by these powerful forces.

When the destruction ands, the imaginal disks will begin to draw chemicals out of this primordial stew and replicate. A new cellular form develops that was always present as an implication of the DNA of the imaginal disks.

When the process completes itself, there is no similarity to the larva that gave its cellular being to this new one. This new form has wings for primary locomotion to cover great distances in search of a mate. It has no chewing mouth parts but a long tongue for sucking nectar and water. It has six long legs to carry it gently over the blossom of a flower. It has eyes capable of recognizing the color spectrum of the flowers that nourish it, and that it, in turn, fertilizes. It has a memory of the future, for it knows its winter home and how to get there, even though it may be thousands of miles away.

Moreover, when it swelled and burst the skin of the pupa now chrysalis, its wings were little fat nubbins completely incapable of flight. It had to struggle to get itself out of the rigid, protective confines of the chrysalis. In struggling, it built up its flight muscles. It drained the blood out of the wings, allowing them to expand to their full span. It had to endure this struggle… any attempt to help it would result in its death.

The ancient Greeks knew something special about this metamorphosis… they gave the butterfly the name of their goddess of the soul—Psyche! Might it just be that as the caterpillar became a butterfly through physical metamorphosis and the human becomes a spiritual being called a soul through its mental metamorphosis?

An important question before us is whether or not the so-called helping professions really do help a human being who is in the process of deep personal transformation, such as through a serious illness or mental crisis. Is it possible to be present to the situation in such a way that the individual in transformation becomes aware that the process is not a disease but a natural phenomenon of growth and development. Is it possible to be present to suffering in a beneficial way without trying to stop it?

It is not only possible but it is a natural function of HOPE’s service, be it in HOPE Groups or SoulCircling. How then, do HOPE Groups and SoulCircles help without helping? They do so with the power of the most power-full attitude of all—love. Love puts everything in relationship. It encourages with the strength of the heart. It cares through compassion, which we consider to be the most powerful manifestation and expression of love. It is the power to be fully present to the suffering regardless of its depth. It is not the same as empathy, the power of which is to directly experience the feelings that give rise to the suffering. Without compassion, empathy can run rampant in the empathic person. With compassion, especially as expressed in the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Tonglen, one breathes the suffering  into the space around the "noble heart" (Chödrön) where that heart acts as a transformer which turns the suffering into peace; then one breathes out peace, thus sharing it with self and others. This simple practice is wondrously effective... one can learn it by practicing it everywhere, starting with another person to whom one is neutral, then toward another for whom one has a positive feeling, then toward one's own self, and then, and only then, toward one for whom one holds a (to begin with, mild, please) negative feeling.  Compassion empowers hope with the memory of the future.... In other words, HOPE guides need only be in complete, perfect relationship to the one who is struggling out of her-his chrysalis—and that is all s-he needs!