The infinite future is before you, and you must always remember that each word, thought, and deed, lays up a store for you and that as the bad thoughts and bad works are ready to spring upon you like tigers, so also there is inspiring hope that the good thoughts and good deeds are ready with the power of a hundred thousand angels to defend you always and for ever.
Vivekananda (Complete Works)
Hope is a strange word for me. I have a love/hate relationship with it. I do not like the future projection of it, the "I will be happy when"-ness of it. At the same time...it is still something I will cling to it as a pulley to lift me up and out of any dark emotional pit I might find myself in. It does have that power. When things are dark in this now I look to the light up ahead. When things are challenging and difficult in this now, I look for the easy times up ahead. I know better than to be dependent on hope, but it does help.
The same goes for positive thinking. I am fully aware the deep programming that goes on in the subconscious mind is more powerful than any thought...be it negative or positive...in the conscious mind. I see that it is much more life-changing to restructure our core beliefs than it is to repeat positive affirmations to ourselves in the mirror. Yet, as Michael Singer says...if you going to get lost in your thoughts, they might as well be positive ones. And most of us are going to continue to get lost in our thoughts.
I remember when I was 18 and going through a very difficult time emotionally I found a copy of "The Power of Positive Thinking," by Norman Vincent Peale on my Dad's book shelf. I was blown away by that book. "Do you mean I can change the way I think. It doesn't have to be this "negative" in here? Wow!" That started me on my "psychological" journey of healing. I began trying to inject positive affirmations into my conscious mind. It did not heal me...lol...but it did allow me to feel momentarily better. This method fed me "hope" and hope was a beautiful thing back then.
Of course, Something pulled me deeper than the conscious mind. I explored the subconscious for decades, and then, as a yogi, I went even deeper. I learned to see both the beauty and the illusive nature of hope.
I do see that the now is the only place where we live but as long as we are still more ego than spirit, lost in our thinking...we may find some light in looking up ahead at sunnier times when we feel overwhelmed by our present life situation.
When it comes to karma, hope is also semi-helpful. We do not need to keep looking backwards...what is done is done. What we stored, we stored. What we accumulated in "bad thoughts and bad works" ...we accumulated. We do not, however, have to hang onto these things. We do not need to keep seeing the world through them. We do not need to live in fear that they will keep repeating; that Life will continue to seem so "harsh" and "punitive". There is another alternative. There is inspiring hope. So called "good thoughts and good deeds" are ready with the power of a hundred thousand angels to defend us. We can look to that to pull us up and out of this darkness we sometimes fall into.
There is a song I have been using as my mantra in tough times. I use it to remind me not only that things will get easier but that connection to my Higher Self will get easier. And that is the answer to all darkness we may be experiencing- connection to Who We Are.
Silly, maybe but it works for this human I call "me"....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dguz0IsCuKU
All is well.
Michael Singer/ Temple of the Universe/ Sounds True ( November, 2025) Beyond Faith: The Logic of Letting Go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo9tqRdIMv0&list=PLyOuAoSmZkKoESr2acNWwhznusbBkKXsT&index=2
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