Hi Fiest

You seem to have a good handle on how to proceed. I just wanted to add that most people assume they understand what hope is and how to hope. More often then not it gets entangled with existential angst, ego, control, desire for certainty, fear of uncertainty, desire to have life conform to our demands of how it ‘should’ be… Hope confuse as a kind of passive wishing.. waiting for that ‘something’ other then what it is.

Hope is paradoxical. It is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances.

Hope is like the crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment for jumping has come. To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, yet hope is not desperate. Those who hope unskillfully settle down for self comfort (verses self care) or for violence; those whose hope is skillful see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born.

To Hope is a state of being, an inner readiness. “and yet it would not be wrong to say that the tree hopes for the sunlight and expresses this hope by twisting its trunk toward the sun” – Erich Fromm

The Practice of hope is a art.. perhaps related to the idea of Zen’s doing by not doing…  keeping ones eyes open while continuing to engage with life.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Peter.