818 thoughts on “The Evil of Hope”

1. Hope is always about a future that is in front of us but our true future is something that we’re returning to. It’s an inward movement not a forward one. Everything of value is within us already and so hope by its very nature is leading us up the garden path.

2. Wow, this brings a whole new perspective on ‘hope’ and how loosely this word is used. So true about the lost time when we could be spending it to be with ourselves. But somewhere along the way, we got to that situation and as already stated, we’re begging ‘hope’ to rescue us.

   Everything has occurred because of an after cause. In other words, it was become because of the way we have been treating ourselves that eventuated to where we are, irrespective of the disease/condition/illnesses. If we address the before cause, then where would life take us then?

   There is much to ponder on what has been shared here and it brings a new perspective in the meaning of ‘hope’, thank you for the enrichment.

3. Hope is always about our future which we project as being something ahead of us but in truth our future is to return to our past and so hope is part of the grande illusion, an illusion that keeps our eyes fixed on the horizon of nowhere. Our true future is with us right now, we’re carrying it around with us constantly, it’s there to be claimed in our bodies now and always has been and always will be.

4. ‘You may think that the word evil is extreme when describing the effect of hope. Yet I define evil as anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence. Defined in this way, evil and hope are perfect bedfellows.’ Absolutely, and years ago I would have thought describing hope as evil would be very extreme and not only that wrong! However, it is only when you truly get to understand about energy and free the body of many ill ideals, beliefs and consciousnesses that get wrapped around it that you really get to feel and understand the truth in what you present here. Not so extreme after all but instead incredibly revealing if we allow it to be.

   1. I can see the times I had subscribed to the word, ‘hope’ and I shudder at the thought of it being a sympathetic, emotional word. For example, with Live Aid, we hoped that we could eradicate famine and millions of people raised money and where did ‘hope’ take us, no where.

      So now I understand the evilness of this word and what’s beneath this and it’s not how I pictured it to be either, very deceiving in fact.

5. Yes, in fact it robs us of space to embrace the opportunity to complete and not completing means we drag around energetic packages that hold us to the past rather than the space of living and dealing with the present.

6. I had not considered what ‘hope’ robs us of but what you share here makes enormous sense. It is like a focus on the present rather than the future or the past and there is an ease in the body when that is done.

7. Hope, I feel, is very much embedded within Christian doctrine. The religion sets us up to feel lesser, but then offers hope as a way out thereby cementing in the belief that we are indeed lesser and that we simply have to accept life on the planet as it is, without ever taking responsibility for life as we find it or our own lives indeed – keeping the whole sorry mess turning. Pretty clever actually.

8. So love that the quality within hope has been busted here. Within this we are being asked to step up and be honest about our choices and the impact they have so that we may start to take responsibility for them.

9. One of the aspects of hope is the picture or ideal we hold of how life is supposed to be, we hope for that but it means we dismiss what’s on offer in whatever situation we are in, it might not fit the picture or ideal but it could be offering a lot of growth and evolution.

   1. When we hope we are certainly filtering the reality of life through the pictures and ideals we desire life to be rather than accepting it for what is is. If we are open to seeing life as it is without the need for it to be different but understanding that it can be different depending on the everyday choices we collectively make, we would then be much more responsible in our approach to life and for each of those choices that either heal or harm.

      1. That is so true. Hope feels like an abdication of responsibility and our responsibility for those pictures and ideals.

      2. When I look at Catholicism (I was raised a Catholic) it is so easy to see now how clever the setup is. The church proposes that we are lesser and are never good enough and that in fact we are so bad that God had to send his only son to Earth, sacrifice his life so that we may get to Heaven. Of course, while the message is that this is not guaranteed (if we don’t play ball with the rules we will go to hell) there is always hope that we will get there. We simply need to atone for our sins, say a few Hail Marys and we might be ok. This keeps everyone on the back foot, playing nice and doing what is expected all the while not expressing with honesty how this really makes us feel or how if we were to claim our equality to God, we could easily begin to address the issues in society that our alignment to organised religion keeps us in subjugation of.

10. Hope presents a picture that interferes with our ability to feel and know exactly what is going on. Interesting how often we hope things for one another in our everyday conversation.

    1. When we hope for one another we are in truth imposing on each other.

11. I have the growing realisation that hope, usually for something to happen in the future, actually prevents us from stopping and acknowledging what is going on in the present. Not only that, it removes our personal responsibility for what is unfolding in our lives; we hope someone or something else will fix it for us. I have found that there is nothing more empowering than to take responsibility for our lives, and by doing so, hope is naturally consigned to the past.

12. Brilliant, Ariana and you have exposed the evil of hope so well. What a great example and spot on with what you’ve shared. Hope is like the invisible carrot dangled in front of us to distract us away from our true path.

13. Wow, Fiona, this is amazing the way you exposed the evil of hope. Absolutely brilliant. This form of evil is harder to see for what it is because our society is built around these false principles that creates more harm than we realise.

    1. Yes, especially when hope is championed as a good thing. Until reading this blog I hadn’t quiet grasped the harm that hoping brings.

    2. To me there is a saccharine type of quality to hope. When people hope on our behalf it feels sickly and whilst they might be feeling quite genuine in wanting things to be a certain way which fit into perceived normal pictures, we have to question whether those pictures are true and if they are truly serving us.

       1. A great analogy of hope … like saccharine. Trying to mask something or wanting something to be better (taste better) without being honest, being responsible and taking responsibility and also without allowing ourselves to truly get to the root cause of our problems. When we are honest the healing can begin.

          Hope asks us to look for something outside of ourselves, instead of allowing ourselves to be honest about where we are at and therefore it is like walking with a constant carrot dangling on a stick in front of us, never being able to get it and with all the focus on the carrot, of course we will then not be looking at being honest about what needs changing and more importantly why.

       2. I was reading an article in a paper yesterday by a journalist who realised she was addicted to alcohol and had given herself a month without it. She realised just how awesome it was to go alcohol free as she felt better in herself, but she was mourning the bliss in that first half hour of consumption where it felt like all her ‘troubles’ melted away. The feeling of clarity she was getting she couldn’t dismiss, yet there wasn’t an understanding yet of having to take responsibility for her issues and the tension she felt in life. Withdrawing, numbing or distracting ourselves from our issues, or hoping things will get better don’t make them disappear – they just sit latent in the body until we realise there is no escape from them. All our ills have to be confronted and dealt with eventually – so much better to do it in the moment rather than go into delay.

14. I always find this such an interesting read, I can see how hope plays out in my own life, placing expectations into the future with pictures of how I would like life to be, instead of being in the richness of the moment, and embracing the opportunities for healing and growth exactly as my life is. I can see how hope hooks us out of the potential of the moment, whatever that potential may be.

15. Reading this makes me wonder what hope does energetically to a person when they pass over because if we know we are going to die and then distract ourselves with the hope of whatever, there is no way we will be present and accept the healing in its entirety. Is it just setting us up for a repeat performance?

16. I feel that hope is a sentiment and has no connection to our soul.

    1. I agree that hope “has no connection to our soul” as we are placing the result of a situation outside of us, usually into someone else’s hands. If we can let go of the need to hope and instead reconnect to the wisdom within us, to our Soul, we will know so clearly that the next step is totally up to us; yes, it is 100% our responsibility.

17. What is life about? …are we here to watch TV and sitcoms, eat ice cream and pizza, travel the world in a caravan, play golf etc…? Or is there another meaning or purpose such as: could it be that we are here to express the gorgeousness that lies within all of us, the natural love that lies within – in other words be gentle and tender with each other, value, care and respect each other, as well as ourselves? And what if death knocks on our door – do we then look back and say: is my life complete, have I expressed what I was here to express? There is so much more to life than we often realise, and the more we realise this the more we realise the gifts that are there for us on a daily basis.

18. Death is inevitable for each and everyone of us, so in some ways we could say that our life is a preparation for death. But this is not said in a dooming way but rather in an appreciation of what this has on offer – there are many things that we would often do differently if we knew this was our last day on earth and so if we were to live our lives with this awareness of death, then we would realise all the opportunities on offer. There are things often left unsaid, feelings not expressed, love not expressed that we would otherwise naturally let out, and so essentially what this is saying is that every day is day to express and let out the love that we are, for essentially that is why we are really here.

19. Sometimes I see hope being sold to us through the pharmaceutical companies who promise remedies to our ailments. The problem with this though, as I have observed, is that even though the drug itself may not be addictive, the promise of hope often is.

20. Whenever I have ever heard someone use the word ‘hope’ when talking to me or if I have ever used it, it has always felt like a sticky sickly goo and very hollow. I reckon when we use this word it has more to do with relieving ourselves because we can’t deal with whatever discomfort we are feeling about the situation.

21. The freedom of moving on with less constrictions we have put between our true senses and life, is a great movement to move on to the next cycle round.

22. Sometimes I meet with very elderly people, who are very ill. And often I hear them say that they do not want any more medical intervention, that they are grateful for having lived for so long, and now they want to be allowed to pass over, and quite often I hear them say that they do not want to be a burden on their family anymore. And while this is sad, I also hear in their words not a giving up or a lack of purpose, but rather that they have accepted that their time in this life has come to an end and there is no longer any need for hope, for they are ready to depart and to let the next story begin. It is very beautiful.

    1. Beautifully shared Shami, and equally beautiful to feel someone who has not given up on life, yet has embraced the fact that they are ready to go when their time has arrived.

23. “When I looked at the definition of hope, it spoke of having an expectation or desire for something to happen or wishing for a positive outcome. Reading these words confirmed for me the evil of hope and how it could wreak such havoc in our lives.” Yes, and I wonder how many of us rely on hope in our everyday and then have to deal with the fall out of those expectations not being met? And how much time and energy is given to the falsity of what hope offers?

24. Anything that stops us being present, that takes us out of ourselves, that encourages us to live in a mental construct, or to anticipate such a construct rather than actually experiencing what is happening now can truly be classified as destructive and evil.

25. Hope is just a giving -up-ness, not taking responsibility for what is going on in your life. It is so much more empowering to just get on with it, do the best you can, and listen to the message that is being delivered to you from Heaven.

26. Hope is an excuse for abdicating responsibility and as such can definitely be defined as evil. Thank you for exposing this truth.

27. I had the realisation a few months ago that hope isn’t real, it doesn’t exist. It’s an expectation of what could happen, not what will happen. So, by having hope I would be setting myself up to fail. By being matter of fact about something I remove this expectation and emotion to deal with the issue at hand.

28. As health professionals we have a responsibility to be ourselves because when we are truly ourselves we do no harm.

29. I agree with your definition of evil, and can feel how it affects the choices I would be making. Anything that stands in the way of truth, for me that is evil. But when we take the reality of this world as the truth and not the house of lies that it really is, it is understandable the harshness of the reality is too much for so many that numbing and distraction, and hope, are what get us going.

30. Hope is a get out jail free card. Wanting to get through life without any account for what we have chosen.

31. Hope to me feels very “nice and comfortable” when what is needed is love and truth.

32. Thank you for writing about this Fiona, it is an important topic that I find is rarely discussed with this level of honesty. This line is a cracker – “Like a magician’s trick, hope distracted them, drawing their attention away from what was really taking place before their eyes.”. I have fallen for this one many a time, and it has robbed me of time and energy as well.

33. “Like a magician’s trick, hope distracted them, drawing their attention away from what was really taking place before their eyes”. At the time it seems like an innocent choice to focus on hope rather than the reality. However, I am finding how deliberate the focus on hope can be, so that I don’t need to act or change and can stay in the comfort of what is familiar and known.

34. I am sure that most would feel “that the word evil is extreme when describing the effect of hope.”, but I for one have come to understand the truth of it; how hope keeps you locked in a place where there is no possibility of moving forward in life. In fact, the effects of hope can be so very harming to our body, to our vitality and to our full presence in life, and without our presence in life there can be no possibility of the healing we are hoping for.

35. Hope stops us from looking any further. It truly is evil.

    1. Yes it renders us short-sighted and blinkered from the truth of a situation.

    2. I agree Rosemary, hope cons us into thinking that there’s a chance of advance when in truth it’s a big ugly full stop.

36. I agree totally Fiona as I know someone personally, with a chronic illness, who has lived in hope for many years that someone or something outside of themselves will appear with the magic cure, and by doing so is relinquishing any responsibilty for, or any recognition of their part in the illness, and in continuing with this ‘hope’ from what I have observed, nothing will change.

37. Choosing hope over truth denies us the opportunity of reflecting and appreciating all that we are offered and preparing for whatever is next.

38. Having spent much of my time putting my energy into hope, I have come to realise that this is just a waste of time and energy as hope only delays us facing up to the reality of so many different situations.

39. The phrase “don’t give up hope” is actually keeping us in the illusion that we need to hope for better instead of knowing we can change our lives truly if we start to make different choices. Whilst hope keeps us in the possibility but never the true reality of change.

40. Hope is a small example of ‘Evil’ and the power of distraction from the truth of who we are, what we have to bring and the purpose of our livingness. I too, have observed ‘Hope’ play out in terminal illness and the devastation at the end. It also plays out in everyday life where we are always in the future living pictures that block the essence of love we are and the true connection that can be lived in the moment. This blog is very powerful and needs to be shared.

41. In anything that we do we act as a role model for customers as well as other colleagues, and in our chosen field there is an extra opportunity for us to practice utmost integrity and mastery relating to that field. An accountant who has their own masterful relationship with money and is forever learning and developing this is a true financial consultant for example.

42. “Each time I heard this word, I experienced a growing sense of dis-ease, as I became aware of what a detrimental role hope had played in her illness and death.” When we cling onto hope we not only give our power away, we live with disharmony in our body, which eventually comes out of the body in a form of illness and disease. When we accept rather than hope we maintain the harmony within.

43. Hope, looked at through the lenses of honesty and responsibility, is a detraction from reality and the facts of life, as it is a barrier to what is on offer in the form of true healing.

44. As a society we do need to redefine the meaning of evil, as it is currently saved only for events and actions that are grossly and obviously blatant. However, in redefining evil we are called to accept our responsibility for allowing the force of evil to be as dominant as it is today. For in-truth evil is anything that attempts to interfere with our connection to our love within and our evolution as a humanity. It is the subtleties of evil that keep us ignorant and disconnected from our true potential, from living with responsibility and in fact evil is evil, none greater or lesser in its activity. And so, as you have beautifully presented ‘hope’ is a classic example of how evil interferes and circulates, mostly going unnoticed yet completely ignoring our opportunity to truly heal, to let go our ill-momentums and deepen our relationship with our love, our Soul and each other, as such hindering our opportunity to evolve.

45. Hope takes away from us an experience of death as a connection to the soul and has us searching outside of ourselves for a cure; leaving us unprepared for the next stage of our evolution.

46. Before I met Serge Benhayon hope was a positive value for me. In looking back I used hope in situations to avoid feeling and not letting things drop deep to reflect on them. How much we are cutting us off the universe and disregarding that there is a much bigger plan behind everything. Knowing that everything that happens I do constellate and that I have to carry the responsibility for every action and re-action.

47. Hope is a disconnection to our body. It caps the access to the actual wisdom that comes from our body and instead feeds the mind and keeps it busy with distractions and solutions.

48. Hope is considered to be such a virtue, that to consider it as a holder back of truth can be a challenge, but as you have exposed it so eloquently the truth of what you share can’t be denied.

49. For me, hope feels like a barrier in the way of feeling and accepting of the truth. There’s no acceptance of the reality but the focus on what could possibly happen, if something else happens and so on. By accepting the truth of where we are right now, we take the responsibility of what comes next and within it the opportunity to begin to heal the issue, whatever the outcome may turn out to be.

50. In hope we are blinded from the reality that is surrounding us, our vision is blurred with what we want life to be and we get disconnected from the now.

51. Hope does not ask us to engage with the situation and attend to our portion or business that we were instrumental in.

52. I have come to understand that hope is a handover of responsibility and it renders us powerless.

53. The great corruption in hope is seeing our fortune lie outside of our choices. The more we embrace the absolute power of what we choose, the simpler life will be.

    1. Our choices are our power and handing over to hope is a given-upness that can hardly be surpassed.

54. If we don’t accept how things are, how can expect to connect and be real? If we want everything to change, isn’t there something we are missing? For everything here, is as it is, for a specific reason.

55. When you put hope in this context I can see how disempowering it is in that we place all our focus on something outside of us that we hope or assume is going to come and rescue us rather than looking at our part in what is happening.

56. There is nothing more glorious than this moment right now lived with all of our love. Being drawn into future changes that may come, just shows us we have neglected our heart.

57. Hope seems like a life jacket to buoy you in turbulent seas but in reality it’s like a lead weight anchor tied to your feet. It indulges a perpetual game of attachment to events and judgement. It has us sailing after golden shores when the spot we’re at right now has everything we need to thrive.

    1. Hope leaves us in the what if? that brings with it levels of tension and a myriad of pictures and ideals of what life should be like. A tension that eats away the fabric of a being – evil no doubt in the game that is being played here!

58. This is great. When we make it all about evolution, it just exposes how our values are really upside down. I can feel how hope is really a forward projection of an image that does not bear resonance with the reality of what is actually taking place therefore acts as a distraction.

59. Often in those situations in which hope becomes so prevalent we are actually being offered a significant opportunity to learn and heal – hope only robs us of this.

    1. It is very true Michael – and when we begin to address the subtleties of the evils we accept in our lives and allow to move through us, the evils of hope and such others will no longer have space to exist and circulate.

    2. So well said Michael. There is no truth in hope, just delay.

60. Fiona what you have written here is so true
    “I define evil as anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence.”
    I do get a sense of something that actively engages with us to stop and keep us all locked down in the separation to the truth of who we are and what we are here to do.

    1. Even the thought that we can separate from truth is an evil one, we can’t, truth is who we are, it is literally what we’re made of. Yes, sure we can forget that but we can never ever not be it, in truth, even if we choose not to live it.

61. This is one of my all-time favourite blogs because it so well describes the illusion I was under when I first met Serge Benhayon. What I did not understand at that time was how truly ‘evil’ were many ways of being and behaving that looked ‘so good’ – including hope. I did not fully grasp that anything not coming from truthful love was in fact magnifying untruth and lovelessness in the world. Now it is very obvious, but not when I was still in its thrall. So I love the way you open this blog Fiona with this explanatory paragraph: ‘You may think that the word evil is extreme when describing the effect of hope. Yet I define evil as anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence. Defined in this way, evil and hope are perfect bedfellows.’

    1. And for me hope is also quite sinister in the way that it masquerades itself as something so good. Hey but then again ‘good’ is also cut from exactly the same cloth as hope, as is being charitable, national pride, being kind, being nice, having a comfortable life, self sacrifice…….there’s a whole swathe of things set up purely with the intention of drawing us deeper into the illusion of life and away from its truth.

62. ‘ Wow Fiona you have really uncovered what hope truly is and the evil in it, It is a way to avoid what is there in reality to not feel what we need to heal, to not open up we separate from each other.It leaves us without feeling the power we have if we are with ourselves in the moment.

63. “‘You may think that the word evil is extreme when describing the effect of hope…”This is a perfect word to describe ‘hope’, and the fact that this description may seem to be extreme to some, only exposes the fact how dumbed-down we have become to the true meaning, the quality and acceptance of a lesser intrepretation of words.

64. Thank you Fiona… The opening the awareness of the word evil, bringing into discussion that this is in fact anything that holds us back… Gosh this really does open up the floodgates doesn’t it.

65. In terms of the way the world habitually sees it, your opening statement would seem quite a challenge, Fiona: ‘You may think that the word evil is extreme when describing the effect of hope. Yet I define evil as anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence.’ Yet how true that statement is. Evil is not just those dark and back acts such as, murder, torture etc. but are those ‘good’ things at the opposite end of the spectrum that shine with a false, deluding light – things such as ‘hope’ which you have shown beyond a doubt contributes to the world of illusion.

66. Knowing that we can only make different choices from the present moment and forward, better to be inspired by a different way of living than having faith in something external to us.

67. What an unpopular thing it is to say that “hope” is not our greatest ally, but sometimes the truth is not popular for it offers a great responsibility that we ultimately all have, which is the responsibility of our way of living.

68. Evil is a challenging word to use in reference to hope, but anything that stops us from feeling what is happening in our bodies, or creates a picture / desire for what is happening right now is a distraction. A distraction from Truth and therefore from God… and hence the word evil.

69. ‘In the end, hope leaves us surprised and completely unprepared when the reality of dying inevitably hits home. ‘ – Well shared. Hope feels laced with pictures and expectations. But if we can start to open up the conversation, talk about death and passing over, then it starts to support everyone involved. Death becomes something we go into fully aware of and knowing how to support friends and family.

70. The evil of hope is that it keeps us in a perpetual state of desire and thereby robs us of true settlement in the body.

71. ‘When I looked at the definition of hope, it spoke of having an expectation or desire for something to happen or wishing for a positive outcome.’ It is true that of course at some level we as human beings like things to turn out well (or not, if one is into drama) but when a magnifying glass is held to that notion it is clear to see, as you have pointed out Fiona, that such thinking is all part of a sculpting of thought which closes off the avenues of true openness and responsivity to what is on offer i.e. the desire behind hope is for safety rather than the magic of life itself.

72. When I visited a friend in hospital not that long ago I was observing those around and how everyone was with there loved ones hoping things will turn out ok and that will be well. Part of the process of truly healing is to really be honest and take responsibility for what we have chosen that has got us to that point. This can be too much for some people and not want to look at it, others give it ago.

73. I can understand why we sometimes use hope instead of feeling the truth which might be not so nice or easy to swallow yet, just like have a bit of sweet cake is nicer than to feel things we don’t want to feel, in the end the truth will come to the surface. Then we often wish we would have been real or not have the cake as in the example. What is great to do in these examples is feel why we chose it, what it gives us and if this is really supporting for the long run from this I found it is easier to take a step back and make another choice without it just being a ‘cake is not good for me’ thought from the mind but coming from a real understanding that the comfort that cake gives is actually nothing compared to joy and love in my body when I make supportive choices for my body.

74. Looking back on my own life, I can see how much emphasis I put on hope in so many situations. I can clearly see how this was just wasted time and energy and was just a way of delaying the inevitable.

    1. Well said Sandra! I lived in hope for many years in a marriage which was never going to change – too fearful to exit because I could see no alternative, and needed the ‘safety’ of that at the time. I was uncommitted to life and just wanted to fly under the radar and get through – even though this life looked very successful. But what a waste of time and delay.

75. Engaging in hope is almost like burying one’s head on the sand. It is a blind distraction away from our responsibility in life – and faith is often used in exactly the same idealistic way. Truth simply IS and we can all have access to it.

76. Beautiful sharing of your experience that is invaluable in the face of the many ill beliefs we are surrounded by in life.

77. Hope is like putting a ‘do not disturb’ sign on your life and asking responsibility and evolution to come back when you’re free. It postpones you facing the facts and dealing with what you need to see. Hope is a phantom the world could well do without. Thank you Fiona for sharing the truth.

78. It may be a stretch given the obvious evil we see in society but it is clear to be true from the authority and clarity of this blog.

79. “As a nurse and friend, I have seen that there is so much to be healed and gained through the palliative care process, not only for the person who is dying but everyone around them. Surrendering to and taking responsibility for the process, supports the looking at, dealing with and healing of old patterns, deepening of relationships and completing anything left outstanding from this life.” What a valuable time this is. A time to be deeply treasured, as there is so much opportunity for healing past hurts, leaving a clear energetic pathway for the next life.

80. We can even go into hoping that people will like us or that we will be accepted. Hope really does leave us dangling with a gaping hole. If we drop the attachment to being liked or accepted this frees us up to simply get on with our own life, in our own way, being true to ourselves. In this way we can get our strength back and return to our own power.

81. ‘All the denial, all the hope is revealed for what it is; illusion and delay.’ Yes hope is part of the warp and weft of the veil of illusion and when the reality of the consequences of how we have been living hits, hope is revealed in all its evil.

82. Great point Fiona: “In hoping that ‘something’ will change, we avoid taking responsibility for these patterns we are stuck in.” Yes, and we are entirely giving away our power to some nebulous force out there that is going to come and make everything better (by ‘good luck’??). We are our own saviours and this is powered through us taking responsibility (as you say), being open, and getting to the root cause of the ill situation.

83. Yes ‘hope’ certainly belongs to the world of our own creation and not to God’s. It belongs to the world of ‘comfort’ and ‘kind’ wishes for people to get better when the most spectacular and amazing clearing may be occurring which will bring a ‘clean slate’ for the person to begin living and moving in the Field of God again. This is not to say that we don’t do everything within our capability to support and love that person through the difficulty – whatever that may be.

84. The law of karma is based on huge Love and so what comes to us in our life in terms of health and all else is there to support us in every way – and that can be to clear us physically of the momentums and ways in which we have been living our lives so that we can start afresh and learn to live from our essential spark. By not facing this squarely and instead entering the never-never realm of hope we deny what is on offer.

85. “When I looked at the definition of hope, it spoke of having an expectation or desire for something to happen or wishing for a positive outcome.” for me when I had ‘hope’ as part of my life it meant that I was not willing to take the various steps that I knew, to make different choices but instead I would continue doing the same but hoping things would change. Very dangerous when I look back on it!

    1. So true DN. I too spent much of my life hoping that something would change to ‘suit me’, rather than making different choices for myself that would then initiate changes to support me and everyone else. When life is lived from this perspective, it is literally amazing what can open up for us, and very quickly reveals and exposes the true ‘evil of hope’.

86. This is one of the most important blogs written Fiona. Hope forms such a pillar of the good illusion which is one of the main obstacles to humanity ever leaving its reduced plane of ‘existence’ and evolving with The Livingness – a way of life based on Love not hope.

87. When we understand things from an energetic point of view things like hope are easily exposed.

88. There is little hope in us changing our future circumstances unless we address our ill choices that were not made in a quality of love.

89. Throughout my life I have never seen anyone truly helped by giving them hope. All it does is assist them to deny what they in fact know and feel.

90. ‘Hope’ is a part of what has been revealed to humanity as the destructive, deceiving ‘ good illusion’. Many years ago when I first came up north, I remember in a healing session Serge Benhayon asking me what I experienced when playing a particular piece of music on the piano and I said I could feel in the music the rumblings of war and then sections when it was lifted by hope. He pointed out to me the illusory nature of hope and this was particularly clear to me . . . and I asked ‘Is that like people thinking that you can have paradise on earth?’ and he confirmed that.

91. After reading this article, what came to me was the following question: When people are hoping for something to change, say with their diagnosis of a terminal illness as described in this blog, just what or who are they waiting on to make this change. Obviously this brings to light people’s faith in a higher power supporting and healing them in a miraculous way. But what if that higher power or God is using that illness or disease as a clearing of energy that does not belong to the body and an opportunity for that person to look deeper into the choices they have made that lead to the accumulation of that energy to the point that it eventually manifested in a terminal illness? If viewed in this way, the disease is actually a blessing, not a curse.

92. What a brilliant article Fiona: ‘Like a magician’s trick, hope distracted them, drawing their attention away from what was really taking place before their eyes’. Hope is exactly a magician trick of distraction! And from the start we are all programmed to see hope as a ‘good thing’ but as you have so astutely pointed out, hope is exactly the opposite of true good, even though it appears ‘good’. Our whole race has been traced by the ‘good’ which is not true good, but just an appearance of it – a conjuring trick.

93. When my mother died many years ago, hope was everything for me. It seemingly helped me to cope with the very sudden situation. And I agree, everyone would say, what a positive way to go with the dramatic circumstances. But it wasn´t – instead it was a perfect way to not feel. To not allow vulnerability, to hide behind a movement that sells me “good” feelings but no true feelings.

94. With hope we don´t trust, that whatever happens, that it is there for us to grow. That there is no good or bad experience, there are just experiences.

95. This is beautiful truth. Thank You.

96. We can become lost when we have an expectation of how life should be, so it follows that hoping for something is part of that expectation or picture we hold.

97. ‘We miss the opportunity to heal the root cause that this illness is presenting.’ And in doing this we give up to ‘hope’ in a particular favourable outcome from the illness or situation. We do this resigned to the fact that it will be determined by the situation itself and that it came about by a set of circumstances beyond our control, however the opposite is true. We create the circumstances and the resulting outcome and therefore can also change this path we are on and learn from it all through our choices. Hope = zero responsibility.

98. It’s great to look more closely at these words faith hope and charity and feel into what they are really conveying.

99. This is a great subject to bring up as the other day I heard some news that a guy I knew from my school days had been diagnosed with cancer and my immediate reaction was oh I hope it’s not terminal or I hope he can beat it and then this blog sprung to mind, which definitely got me thinking about it in a different way.

100. Hope keeps us hanging on to an illusion rather than facing facts where we can make informed decisions about how we would like to pass over, and we get the opportunity to look at the choices that led us there.

101. It’s great to look more closely at these words we use .. faith hope and charity and feel into what they are really conveying

102. If we live in hope we are saying no to love and yes to less.

103. When times are tough, hope comes in like a saviour promise, shining its light and offering salvation. There is hope and so there is a glimmer of chance that everything just might be alright. And I can see how this is an illusion, how hope serves to distract us away from seeing what is really going on, away from feeling what is really there to be felt, because with a saviour light that comes from an outer source, we are forever enchanted by it and beholden to it. But when there is a turning in to our own light, the sacred esoteric light within, then there is no need for hope, because all is as it should be, and tough times are understood to be part of the re-balancing and healing processes of life. We can embrace our inner-light and re-ignite our wisdom, therefore giving way for a more profound understanding of difficult situations.

104. A comical way of looking at the word hope could be to break it down to single letters like, H= hold, O=on, P=please, E=everyone as this is basically what we do when we spread the use of the word hope in religious groups and so on, keeping us all held in its unnatural and unloving grip.

105. This really highlight the harm in offering people ‘hope’ in any given situation which delay them in coming to the truth and taking responsibility for the situation they find themselves in.

106. Hope is like holding onto a tightrope where you can lose your grip at any moment. This creates anxiety in the body and this is not supportive in any way, shape or form.

     1. Hope is a total disempowerment. And great comment: it does not come from a body that is at ease, it feeds constant anxiety, as you don´t know if the end result you are wishing will come true or not. Instead of going with everything that is there to see and accept and trusting being equipped to deal with anytime.

     2. Great point Elizabeth. Hope creates a tension in the body. Very different to surrendering to what is and allowing life to unfold. There is an ease in this.

107. As you say hope is so often a fantasy, allowing us to dodge looking at how we are truly living and what is really going on. How are we going to live or die in the truth of ourselves if we live like this?

108. I grew up believing that hope was good, in fact it’s touted as being as good as good gets. So we humans spend all our money and hope to win lotto, get really sick and hope we get better, mess up the house and hope someone else cleans it, buy lots of plastic garbage and hope someone fixes pollution, refuse to love ourselves and hope somebody else will … sounds like a recipe for disaster.

     1. Sounds like a perfect set up not to claim our personal responsibility for ourselves or the collective whole!

     2. This just confirms that everything about hope is related to an ideal or expectation that something outside of us will sort out/cure/fix whatever it is that is an issue or problem in our lives. Whereas if we live by what we know is true all the time, we dont need to look anywhere apart from inside ourselves, as therein lies all the answers we need.

109. We can’t hope that the world will change. We have to put the work in. And we can’t hope that our health will change. We have to put the work in. Hope stems from hopelessness, which is the opposite of taking action and stepping forward to taking command.

110. “In the end, hope leaves us surprised and completely unprepared when the reality of dying inevitably hits home.” now that’s a great point, we think of hope as the answer as it delays us dealing with things, but it can actually be worse as that delay in dealing with things means we may never end up truly living just hoping.

111. I find that when I take control of my own life I am so much happier in myself. If I suddenly start dreaming of something else I would like or somewhere else I would like to be I totally lose my sense of strength and command within myself and find myself ‘hoping’ that something else might happen or might be true. This is totally dis-empowering.

     1. What a great point. I often wish life was different and I tell myself this daydreaming is harmless but I can now see how disempowering it is to do this.

112. I can find myself still hoping for something occasionally, an outcome I know someone close to me would like, but when I come back to this blog Fiona, I know deep inside that our path of life is always what we need to learn something.

113. its interesting to consider the expression ‘false hope’…. is hope not just another way of saying something may or may not happen, and therefore there is no guarantee about the outcome? In which case, how can it be false, as it can never be guaranteed as true in the first place.

114. What if hope is nothing other then a denial of a deep innate knowing?

115. Hope take you nowhere – a no-mans land where we rely on something, or someone else to ‘save’ us.

116. Interesting to explore the movement hope brings in us. Hope sets us up to move forwards beyond this moment into the future and with that distracts us from facing the reality that is simply there for us to feel and look at. A reality that when approached unconditionally has a healing on offer that will be beyond any cure hope will ever be able to bring to us.

117. Hope tends to let you hang in there waiting for some kind of miracle to occur.

118. Truth is the only thing that brings true healing therefore there is no healing possible when only hope is offered.

119. Hope takes us away from the present, the process that is necessary to deal with what we know will unfold towards us.

120. Even if one didn’t believe in reincarnation those last moments in healing could end that life in ease and not in regret. I feel that hoping for the end to be extended or delayed means that the life that led to such end point isn’t changed and continues till the end, so nothing gets resolved or cleared until there’s no more space to do so.

     1. If we live each day in celebration and in holding of ourselves no matter whether it is good, bad, beautiful or ugly, we are preparing every day in our life for the moment in death to keep celebrating for our next life.

121. If we understood the depths of energetic harm that hope creates in our bodies, we would never allow it to have a place in our lives.

122. Encouraging hope in someone prevents them from seeing the truth that is being offered. It’s a gross lie – an abuse – a severe imposition on that person’s opportunity for evolution and expansion. (of course, most of the time, that person (us) is equally responsible in the way that they gladly and gleefully grab on to the hope that is offered). But it’s important that we see it this way and understand the damage that we are doing – even when we offer it in its most seemingly harmless way.

123. It is true that when we get an illness that is not that common, has been difficult to diagnose or can’t be cured we often fall to hope to keep us going. What this tells me is that the hope keeps us looking outside of ourselves for the answers but what if this health condition is purely asking us to look closer at the way we have been conducting our own lives, and that we have all the answers inside of us.

124. To invest in hope is just a way to avoid responsibility.

125. I love what is offered here – to see hope as the smokescreen behind which we hide from reality, how we feel and our responsibility. I get a sense of the hopelessness of hope.

126. Hope is like a magic trick distracting you from what’s actually going on before you. It’s like a fantasy land that takes you away and where you get to live in another plane of existence almost. It’s also an opportunity to blame the world for whatever doesn’t come out the way we ‘hope’ it to, leaving us extremely dis-empowered.

127. Hope is really an excuse for us to avoid looking at what is really going on, and taking responsibility for it.

128. I wonder what it would be like if when we went to the doctors and were diagnosed with a serious illness, instead of the general attitude of the medical profession that we’ll hope for the best – instead they helped people understand the yes challenging, but amazing opportunity ahead of them.

     1. So instead of hope, we actually commit to honesty and then we build a foundation of support which would enable people to really take a true look at what might be going on.

129. Having read this before I am really noticing how much we use the word hope in society and our way of living with this word and the falsity it brings and the irresponsibility it allows us. What a great revelation and truth you offer and expose

130. Hope is a way of avoiding the reality of something that we know but simply don’t want to deal with.

131. It’s so common to hear people say when someone’s ill, ‘don’t give up hope.’ But what is being said here? Don’t look at how this came about and see there is healing on offer, that we are always loved and there is a bigger picture we are a part of? When this is said is it also being said that it’s not nice, or kind or loving to ask all those questions to explore an deeper understanding that is being asked of us by the illness? And that actually you’ll be frowned upon for doing so as that’s not what people want to acknowledge or consider in society. Truly wonderful to read this and have the evil of hope exposed especially when it’s generally considered a force of good.

132. ‘While I hoped for things to change and get better I didn´t change and I didn´t change anything to make a change for good. As nothing changed I thought I was giving up hope but I didn´t, it just got hidden underneath disappointment and found other ways to not change anything.’ Quite a survival artist that hope thing.

     1. haha very true, it can sure make you run around in circles all the while keeping you from the fact that the one that will bring change is you.

133. We can leave ourselves in a hopeless situation if we do not take charge of our own lives. No-one else can do it for us, There is no point hoping that our problems or issues will go away. Hoping that things will get better on their own just leaves us empty. There is no joy.

     1. I agree, remove hope and you are empowered. Hope really puts a negative slant on life, if used we are saying to ourselves you can’t really do this so hope for the best. What if you can – and it’s simple but your approach to life is everything.

134. Surrendering to and taking responsibility for the process, supports the looking at, dealing with and healing of old patterns, deepening of relationships and completing anything left outstanding from this life. In this way, we are released from these impediments and left free to move on. Absolutely Fiona, in a way that we are naturally meant to pass on, as clear as we can be and prepared for our next round.

135. Thanks Fiona, a great reminder about hope. It sure does take us away from dealing what is there to deal with, hoping as you say that some one might come with their magic wand and take it all away. And isn’t that what we are told and having had inseminated in our minds, the idea that we are not our own saviours, that someone else will do it for us.

     1. I like your comment Matts. We do know that the magic wand is purely part of a magicians trick, all smoke and mirrors with no substance. Surely that in itself tells us that hope is an illusion.

136. I had a conversation with someone recently about hope and was stunned at the fervency with which she shared that hope is important and that it is an essential part of life. As I shared my feelings, which are the same as yours Fiona, she totally shut down from what I was saying even though I did not mention that I felt it was evil. With her reaction I could feel that if she accepted that hope may not be the truth she has believed it to be, that the foundation for life that she had built would crumble and fall and leave her rudderless, maybe even hope-less.

137. “Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness. In hoping that ‘something’ will change, we avoid taking responsibility for these patterns we are stuck in.” This is quite a eye opener as, so many get caught in the loop of hope, I know I did for many years until I decided to take responsibility of my life and choices.

138. It’s good to come back and have a refreshing dose of the evil of hope, after the first time I read this I seriously looked at how often I did hope this or that and I really reduced it. I had never really thought about it much before that.

139. “…. hope is normally considered to be a virtue. Like a warm coat in winter, it is used to comfort ourselves or other people when we are ‘down on our luck.” Rather than accepting what is we have come to place a false hope in its place, thus not accepting the reality of a situation.

140. Hoping for a cure, these are powerful words because they give so much through the promise of something better. but maybe it is through the wanting of something better that we give our power away to such concepts and beliefs. Perhaps there is a greater lesson to be learnt through the challenges of illnesses and diseases that we as a collect world population have still yet to discover.

     1. This is a great point you raise here Shami, “that perhaps there is a greater lesson to be learnt through the challenges of illnesses and diseases that we as a collective world population have still yet to discover”. And perhaps in this discovery we will come to understand that we have a personal influence on our individual and collective health and therefore a responsibility for the way that we choose to live.

        1. Especially love this part of your comment, Sandra ‘…a responsibility for the way that we choose to live.’ I never knew how good it could feel to take responsibility for the way that I choose to live until I started taking responsibility for the way I choose to live. So empowering.

141. Hope suppprts the perpetuation of words and ‘good will’ without actions. Hope is the password to a make believe world where we have no responsibility. It stops us seeing that every day we’re alive we can change the world with the quality of energy we choose. We all truly know the absolute truth – with this as you show Fiona there’s no need for hope.

     1. Joseph, I find it fascinating how we can end up changing the way we live our lives simply by investing into Hope vs seeing through Hope as a way of being able to avoid responsibility.

142. What people fail to consider is that the consciousness of hope which is so strong and pervasive, is what feeds the industries that will then sell us ‘hope’ – the hope of a better life, clearer skin, a better body, a better something, a sense of worth that we have abandoned for ourselves. There is no hope in the domain of the soul, in our inner most essence that knows all that is true and all that is not true.

143. Dying is often sold as a giving up and letting go stage of life. What is so powerful about this sharing is that we have a responsibility till our last breath to look at how we have lived and let go of what we know is not true all along.

144. It is so interesting how we have changed languages to make it about investment and need and hope. All of which keeps us in the past and not evolving and letting go.

145. I love exploring language and the insight we can get from our use and misuse of it. For me now hoping for anything feels like a handing over of my responsibility to take the steps I need to take and live in a way that is in line with a bigger picture and the needs of humanity as whole.

     1. Isn’t it crazy that a word that most of us would consider to be upbeat, inspiring and ‘cup-half-full’ is actually a total give up. This is what we need to be really looking at with words now. Like you, I’m beginning to see the huge damage that misused words are doing to humanity; I can feel that I am at the mere foothills of the truth of this whole subject – but am really appreciating being open to the fact that there might be more behind these words than I initially considered.

146. When we have hope we are desperately choosing not to be responsible for the choices we have made. When we be honest and accountable for what has got us in a certain situation then we can make different choices and heal the ill imprints that we have taken on.

147. When we hope we don’t see, including opportunities.

148. ‘While there’s life, there’s hope’ as the proverb says can be read two ways – it is ‘human’ to give yourself away to hope or there is always the potential, chance and choice to take responsibility, empower oneself and live what we are capable to live and do.

     1. …’to give yourself away to hope’… is a brilliant summation of the meaning of this word and the giving up on responsibility that occurs when we entertain it.

149. In ‘hope’ there are no vestiges of claiming where you are at or accepting where you are at all. There is very little appreciation of self or appreciation that what is before you is there to support with healing and with evolution.

150. Surrendering, realising and understanding rather than hanging on and living in hope allows one to ‘let go’ evolve and yes, …. “… be released from these impediments and left free to move on…” Surrendering then is a great aspect of medicine.

151. The evilness of hope is that it distracts us from accepting, acknowledging and dealing with the reality of a situation by the promise of something better.

     1. Hope = ‘the promise of something better.’ Hope = the handing over of all responsibility. Hope = the clinging on to the illusion that our choices have meant nothing and have had no effect on the situation we find ourselves in.

        1. Hope = living in non-reality.

     2. Hope gets stuck in a loop that can bury us deeper. A promise that is never full filled. Hope is dangerous illusion to get caught in, but easily done>

        1. And when we free ourselves from the loop we starting living Truth.

152. The backwardness of hoping for a cure when we know what causes it. Why don’t we hope for some miracle cleaning product for muddy paw prints on our floor? So, why should illness and disease be any different?

153. I think this is currently a really common thing and I have found myself say this many times ‘I hope you get better’ but you are right, in the act of hoping we are not allowing ourselves to see the truth of why an illness and disease (or anything in life) occurred in the first place and for our true learning, growth, healing and unfolding this is key. Hope does not ask us or allow us to deepen our understanding to reach the true truth within. Hope is in fact empty.

154. Hope is like the illusive carrot being dangled in front of us… constantly seeking something outside of us when life is all about returning inward to our innate essence and ever-deepening that re-connection.

155. ‘Hope’ is very different to understanding that all of our movements determine the quality of how we will live or what our body will be like down the line.

     1. True Susie, and with that understanding comes Responsibility

156. I can feel the energy of the word if ever I go to use it. “I hope to do this”, or “I hope to have that” is so completely and utterly different to “I will” or “I won’t” which calls for me to responsibly read the situation and be accountable for my choices.

157. Hope holds us ransom to our own life as we are not living fully that what is our reality but constantly hope for it to be different.

158. Hope feeds irresponsibility and just another way of delaying the inevitable and keeping many away from truth.

159. “Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness. In hoping that ‘something’ will change, we avoid taking responsibility for these patterns we are stuck in.” This sentence very succinctly sums up the true and insidious evil that hope really is.

160. When I read this it is such confirmation that I really feel the importance of connecting with people no matter what.

     1. Yes, so true and simple, no moment is unimportant and every encounter counts, there is no time to not care.

161. Your words remind me Fiona of how hope and dreams keep us from the truth of the current moment. They keep us in a perpetual state of looking towards the horizon and another day, instead of truly accepting the way things are today. When I contemplate Acceptance it’s like there’s always a ‘yes but…’ that creeps into my head. But none of these rationale need apply for they have no use, except to distract and delay us accepting and embracing the truth of how things are. Each thing exists to reflect a certain purpose so ignoring bits you do like is effectively like criticising God’s plan.

162. When we understand that we are just living in cycles and that the end of life is just the start of a new cycle. Then every time we interact with another we feel complete with nothing more to be expressed and then we are ready for any one to pass to the next cycle. So how can we ever hold any regrets for we have completed every thing with them.

163. Living in hope drains us of our power.

     1. So true Rebecca. It also keeps us blind to our awareness. While we rest on the notion that something outside of us will save the day, we won’t even bother to consider that there is something there for us to observe, explore and respond to.

164. Hope is a word that allows us to sit on the fence and that life may go either way. It is a word that we slip in that brings in doubt or the possibility that things may or may not go well. The more I become aware of this word the less I want to use it.

165. I often ponder the duality of a word or phrase and what we are really saying when we use them. Hope is an example of this. If we hope for a better future, what are we saying about now? We cannot hope for something better without at the same time stating that now is not so good. And which has more power? The hope or the underlying implication about how things are now? So, when we use a word like hope, are we really confirming that life is not great right now?

166. What if hope is nothing other than a replacement to fill the gap that is left when we separate ourselves from a deep and innate knowing?

167. Hope leaves us hope-less! A play on words but absolutely true.

168. Giving hope to a child is almost setting them up to be disappointed, or worse. Far better to be honest about any situation and let them feel the truth, so that at least they can make real sense of what is happening, even if it is hard for them.

169. Hope is an expression of giving away our power and not taking full responsibility for everything we are creating in our lives.

170. ‘Like a magician’s trick, hope distracted them, drawing their attention away from what was really taking place before their eyes.’ The opportunity to heal and let go of many of our old patterns and hurts prior to dying that have haunted us throughout our lives is precious and one we can never ever take for granted.

171. Could it be that when we are first going to school we could learn about passing-over in an most natural and honest way so the illusion about death and hope is nipped in the bud. So before we go into the passing-over cycle of life we understand that death is just our next cycle we are going into. Then we may even understand the importance of being responsible for how we are Living?

     1. How differently we would see and approach life if this were to be taught in schools Greg. And no doubt children would take it all in their stride. It could actually be a game changer!

        1. A child is taught to react in a certain way at a funeral so they fit into what the adults are doing, so maybe we could also simultaneously educate the adults at night-school about death and dying.

172. The paper yesterday had an article with a headline; Cancer drug offers hope of HIV ‘cure’! Are both hopeful wishes?

     1. A double denial of what is truly going on! This is an amazing headline that once again shows how we are refusing to go to the root causes of why life is like it is. Suspended in hope, we are delayed from seeing what is really going on. But whilst we might delay from seeing the truth, our bodies do not delay in showing it to us – and thus the illness get deeper and more complicated and more multi-symptomatic.

173. What confidence would be felt it your Pilot said I hope they fixed that problem this time?

174. To live life without the grappling of making it about hope is deeply freeing as it allows one to live life based on truth. How much time I wasted on hope has been incredible.

175. I went for a job interview today. It’s so easy to jump into ‘hoping’ that I will get the job instead of feeling whether it is the job for me or not, or knowing that I am either ready for it or not.

176. Hope is a four letter word that just does not inspire at all.

177. There is something we can call ‘true hope’, ie a hope without giving away one´s power or waiting for salvation but more a redeveloping trust of a possibility we had given up on or even forgotten, of another way we can see and feel is available if we should choose to make the right choices and be actively engaged in moving in such a way that we are the one who is making it happen. It is a hope that empowers us to take responsibility and do whatever is necessary and soon that hope is no longer a hope but a knowing and a living way.

     1. Beautiful Alex in the way you describe it true hope would be the sense of something that is there and true before we have the full knowing through lived experience.

178. “Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness.” This is a powerful sentence and makes very clear the heavy and irresponsible impact of offering hope to anyone.

179. Hoping leaves us hopeless! It means we do not recognise our true power and our ability to make the changes that are needed. It leaves us disempowered.

180. A cancer diagnosis is a very tricky one to deal with because the prognosis is so vague – some doctors tell you worst case scenario so that you can’t accuse them of not telling you, and people can respond positively or negatively to the ‘6 months to live’ expression. Some may give up, others may continue to live in a well way for months beyond what they have been told. This makes it doubly hard for the carers, if it is a partner, or close family, because long term plans have to be put on hold. It shows the importance of not creating pictures of our future but just going with the flow day by day and moment by moment.

     1. I can really see the strain that this puts on the carers. With everyone suspended in a bubble of hope, they have to tread incredibly carefully so as not to burst that bubble; and each patient and their family will have different bubbles of different thicknesses. And thus they take the burden of humanity’s irresponsibility to look at the true causes behind these illnesses.

181. Yes, when someone says, “let’s hope for the best”. it doesn’t really inspire you to feel confident in the outcome as the energy in those words are flat and lifeless.

182. I find it absolutely fascinating (and fun) to be really digging into words like this and really examining what they mean, allow, perpetuate and foster. The recalibration of our language back to truth is an essential foundation for us to return to whence we came.

183. The denial of what is going on or even to the level of just simply not wanting it to happen and resisting it creates such a tension and strain on the body the process of passing over is a lot more traumatic than what it is. As death is not spoken about too much we have created it to be something to fear and avoid a very unhealthy relationship with our enviable cycle.

     em for am -enviable ? – inevitable?

184. Hope = giving up and acting as if we do not know all that we do.

185. Hope is the carrot on a stick to keep us moving in the wrong direction and ignoring the problem that needs addressing.

     1. This is superb Steve. But I have dangled that carrot many times not just in front of myself but also in front of many others. “I hope you have a great time”, “I hope your job goes well” etc…..even the most simple and throw away lines like this keep the word and its energy alive. I need to be super attentive to my responsibility in ‘feeding the beast’.

        1. I have noticed this too and whenever there is an urge to say “I hope”.. I catch it and feel into what exactly is going on in that moment!

        2. Usually it is a resistance to accepting that everything that happens, happens because of an energy that we choose and thus, when we prefer to resort to ‘hope’ or ‘luck’.

186. Illusion and delay and a huge distraction, that is exactly what hope is; we avoid seeing and addressing what is right in front of us and in doing so we miss the gold right there in that … hope is indeed evil for in choosing it we rob ourselves of our true growth.

187. From my expereince, to be on the receiving end of ‘hope’ has not been a positive one. There have been times when someone has offered me hope for a number of reasons, but it has felt like an empty and almost pointless offering. How much more supportive is it to be absolutely honest about something than to lead another down a garden path, that actually goes nowhere.

188. Hope feels like gambling, and gambling feels like avoidance of real life, a quick, short lived “fix”……

189. Hope comes from a picture that feeds a desire of how things should be, by disconnecting us from the reality and bringing us a fantasy in which our responsibility is not needed… pure evil indeed.

190. “Surrendering to and taking responsibility for the process, supports the looking at, dealing with and healing of old patterns, deepening of relationships and completing” – These values of constant deepening and healing are so important to apply to how we support ourselves with life, and also our relationships!

191. Living in hope delays us or shuts us off from accessing the future which is so available to us now – by living the future we don’t need hope, but if we don’t trust because of the past then hope suits.

192. Even though I know the evil of hope I still find the word dropping into my language from time to time. It is so ingrained. Each time I hear myself use it it makes me aware that I am not fully present with what I am saying, therefore I am not truly feeling the energy of the words I am using or feeling what needs to be said. It pulls me up every time.

193. “What will be will be”, but it’s our responsibility to take full part in what “is” and that then becomes
     “will be”. No one can take that power away from us, not even the hope that someone will.

194. It is quite sad to live in hope, there is no acceptance of the now, only the desire for the future. But it is sneaky, I found myself hoping for something for someone recently, it insidiously can sneak in despite knowing everything is a lesson for us to learn, whatever happens for us. Hope and sympathy are good friends too, they make me feel quite yuk.

195. My sense is that hope can be linked to our need for security. Whilst we all wish to maintain our health, employment, relationships and wealth etc we often miss the fact of the absoluteness of our essence and the ability to reconnect to that as an internal foundation.

196. In a way hope is the exact opposite of responsibility … a constant external seeking for ‘something’ to save us or help us… rather than the responsibility of stopping, reviewing and re-assessing our lives and the choices we have made to this point.

197. Hope keeps us busy and invites fear and disappointment. Understanding allows us to know what we need to know and do.

198. As a nurse and friend, I have seen that there is so much to be healed and gained through the palliative care process, not only for the person who is dying but everyone around them. Yes, I agree Fiona, it is such a support for those passing over to be surrounded by those that are assisting them to prepare for the next life instead of stuck in emotion and afraid of dying.

199. Simple and clear exposure of the harm of Hope – and there’s some exposing to be done to its two partners Charity and Faith.

     1. Yes, absolutely… Charity and Faith also need exposure for the harm they bring. When dressed up and cloaked heavily in ‘good’ the un-truth they are, is in deep disguise.

200. “Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness”. When I read this I had images of the confession box where people would confess their sins in the hope they would be forgiven, another example of giving our power away and not looking at the root cause or taking real responsibility for what has occurred.

201. I am finding that hope is in so many situations in life that I would never have guessed, because it’s like placing an importance to a desired outcome, or trying to control outcomes rather than allowing what needs to happen. And this is super hard to do at times because often my desired outcomes are that there would be no struggle or hardship, especially for the people in my immediate life. So it can be a challenge to trust that what outcomes there are, or what processes we all have to go through no matter how challenging or difficult are actually for the benefit of ourselves and ultimately for the all that we are a part of.

202. Hoping and wishing for things to come true feels like a way to detach ourselves from our surroundings and make ourselves small, as if we don’t or can’t have an impact on what occurs in our lives when the reality is that every choice we make ripples out to affect everything and everyone else around us and this gets reflected back to us. But if we don’t want to feel our true power, we just keep hoping.

203. ‘Surrendering to and taking responsibility for the process, supports the looking at, dealing with and healing of old patterns, deepening of relationships and completing anything left outstanding from this life.’ I am currently supporting a close friend who is seriously ill, accepting that death is imminent is the first shock to recover from and then accepting that the timing of death is unknown feels like a huge task, but, as you say, surrendering to the process is what enables us to heal, allowing that we have all the time we need to deepen the relationship and completing whatever is there to complete.

204. The reality of the evil of hope and the deeper understanding of what is really going on with the responsibiity we all carry and the opportunity for true healing to occur is obvious here and is very empowering. “Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness. In hoping that ‘something’ will change, we avoid taking responsibility for these patterns we are stuck in.”

205. We need no hope when we know we are it all.

206. If you are hanging on to hope, there is less room for love and evolution.

207. Hope is just one of the many ‘evils’ that affects our health and relationship with ourselves, divinity and each other. Sympathy is also one that is ever present around health, and leaves the receiver feeling less, the victim and disempowered.

208. Hope is basically saying, I don’t have the answers and leaves you feeling the emptiness that that word creates.

209. “I define evil as anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence.” How far is this definition of evil from that which we have come to understand it to mean? A million miles I would say. For true evil is that which we cannot see, and most of us aren’t even aware of. If we could see it for what it is, and maybe one day we will be able to, then we would surely know the depth and scale of the evil that is around us all, all of the time.

210. When my sureness and steadiness is there there is no room for hope to slide in.

211. Hope is what we want and wish is what we want when we are disappointed by what hope lacks. Both are never-ending downward spirals. We become trapped in our own web.

212. When my mother died 13 ears ago I totally went into hope as well. It actually did not allow me to feel what it actually did to me, how I felt, that my mom surprisingly had only 2 months to live. Although the hope helped me somehow to survive and to support all the people around me + my mum, that were devastated and even paralysed during this time I was the only one talking to my mum about the roots of her illness and about death. If that would happen now, after being much more aware about life and death through the teachings of Universal Medicine, I would only talk about this to the person dying- the hope just gave this false way of power and fight against the enemy and actually delay of accepting what was going on for me. Now I see diseases as a blessing. Knowing that nothing else would actually support the dying process.

213. We can ‘hope’ for anything, but it only serves to keep us empty. I ‘hoped’ I would get a new job with a new company, but the whole process of interviewing left me feeling so empty. I realised I had jumped out of where I needed to be and was not appreciating the company I am with and the role I am in. Coming back to committing fully to where I am has led to an unfolding within the company which feels like an organic and true process rather than one that is created by my head and desires.

     1. Interesting that humanity does value hope as something very positive. It actually leaves you in this understate, that it is luck when you get a job e.g. instead of knowing what you bring and what amazing qualities you have. And that the company can be lucky to have you.

214. Hope can certainly be misused in the last days of life but to see Hope as evil is very sad. There are many types of hope – hope for eternity – hope for pain relief – hope for a miracle – hope for those left behind. To hope for a miracle does not necessarily mean the person does not understand and accept the reality of their diagnosis. Many people outlive their expected life expectancy and these are often those with a positive hopeful outlook. Medication does not give perfect pain relief and hope helps many patients deal with much pain and discomfort. To take away a person’s hope is a horrid thing to do, some people choose to hope to the end and no one should criticise them for this. None of us know how we would react if given a terminal diagnosis. I have seen people have hope destroyed by being pushed on to early palliative care before they want it and this is a terrible situation. Palliative Care staff often think they know what is best for the patient but their role should be to respect and support patient wishes and not to consciously or unconsciously impose their own views on to patients.

215. I do have to keep coming back and reflecting on this as for me its the one thing that stops me being all that I am, hoping in better. When ever I go into hope things fall apart, not on the surface but in my connection to myself.

216. When we talk about being fully responsible for our lives and what we choose, this involves choosing absolute love, and hope just does not fit into that equation.

217. I prefer responsibility and eyes wide open to hope any day. With responsibility comes opportunity and empowerment, with hope comes the opposite.

218. A very needed exposing of the evil of hope and the reinterpretation of words over time. Hope takes away responsibility and our empowerment of all we really know and feel and leaves us irresponsible to all that is happening.

219. Wishing someone good luck is like planting a seed of hope. It can also be foreboding when said that you must have it even to have a fat chance of it happening. The record Lottery win for a single person is $758 million in the US, how many tickets had to be bought, and re-bought in the months it took to build that amount, and every one of them came laced with the seed of hope.

220. Most of my experience of medicine as I grew up was all based on hope. The hope that this or that would work and the hope I would get better soon. There was no accountability for the fact that the illness was reflecting a possible ill in my overall way of living. I can see now that when taking responsibility for what the illness more great reflects about the way one is living removes the evil of hope and replaces it with a solid dose of empowerment.

221. Hope is akin to hiding and to not accepting life and everything that comes with it. We tuck ourselves away in the hope that we will be ‘ok’ – but when we do this, we are never truly settled. It is only by embracing life and accepting what is before us that we bring a solidness to ourselves – and hope has no part in this.

222. I keep coming back to this piece because I wonder just how insidious hope really is, how much is it actually living in our lives? Such as with war – what role does hope play here? And is it possible that at times it can be the ingredient during times of conflict that keepings us going throughout the darkest periods, when in fact if there was no hope we would all – as a one collective humanity – see the true outrage against ourselves that war is, and then actually start to take real genuine and sustainable actions that would bring this to an end once and for all?

223. It seems the word ‘hope’ is ingrained within our lives and absolves us of any responsibility, kind of like a get out of jail card. If we live in chronic pain or depression for many years, often hope is prevalent which keeps us in the future of a cure but all it does is distract us from taking a look at why we have ended up in that situation in the first place.

     1. Spot on Julie, ‘hope’ is one of those things that means we certainly avoid being responsible for our lives.

224. When we get rid of hope we face truth, when we face truth we start to heal.

225. The trend these days is to ‘fight’ cancer and return to ‘normal life’ as soon as possible, thereby missing a great opportunity to heal; to discover how and why we manifested our disease. It seems avoiding surrendering to the fact of a terminal illness misses a similar opportunity.

226. There is a hopelessness in ‘hope’. You can feel the gap that is left for anything to come in and sabotage any situation.

     1. Awesome Jenny – exposing the irony in all of this.

     2. Like that Jenny, just reading your sentence I could feel the gap and can see how sabotage can come in.

227. This blog completely busts the idea of hope being a virtue. I too subscribed to this a being a good thing, and Fiona you have made me think twice. It does in fact take us away from the difficulty at hand and not to keep very real about what we are in.

228. This is a really good subject to address as it made me look at all the times in my life where I was stuck on hope or wishing something would happen instead of taking on the responsibility myself or putting in the real effort required to make things happen for myself.

229. Brilliantly presented Fiona – thank you. As have so many of our words been misconstrued, so too has the true meaning of evil been corrupted. For evil is any thing that aims to lead us to move away from God, love or truth. But as we have subscribed to thinking that only the grossly obvious acts of lovelessness and heartlessness are evil, we are continually being stitched up by the subtleties of evil that continue to be part of our society, and worse is that they are often considered ‘normal’ – such as hope. As with ‘hope’ we turn away from reclaiming our power through healing and letting go the ill momentum we have been caught in, so that we can surrender to deepening our connection to our essence, our Soul as such our connection to God – where we belong.

230. What a real understanding of the evil of hope and the veil of illusion this allows us and denies us a chance to see and uncover for ourselves what is really going on and to take more responsibility for our lives and our choices.

231. One thing that is for sure is that our bodies will all die and a second certainty (although not acknowledged by everyone) is that there is a part of us that will never die but continue in another form. Once we truly understand and accept that it brings a whole new dimension and opportunity for evolution to death none of which has anything to do with hope.

232. As a society we do not handle death well and bringing hope in is one part of that.

233. Hope is a lot like an electric fence for farm animals. You only have to turn it on for a few days to do its job. Something about once bitten is twice shy applies. Hope is the wire that gives pain so we avoid it at all costs, we still walk the wire looking for a break but just keep walking in circles.

234. Hope is a complete illusion by which we project a desirable picture outside of us, waiting for it to happen. There is no difference with superstition and takes us far away from the reality we are avoiding to face in those moments.

235. When I think back to times in my life when I have really ‘hoped’ for something to happen it has always felt like a let down, and of course if I invest my power in something outside of myself then for sure I will feel disappointed.

     1. This is very true Samantha. I remember all the times I would cross my fingers in hope and wait for something to happen. There is an unnecessary tension in this that keeps us in anticipation and out of our true power.

236. The more I am supported to deal with and accept what is, the more likely without reaction and judgement I can respond more fully to life’s challenges.

237. As you have explained so clearly here, hope is very disempowering.

238. The evil of hope is that it prevents us from truly surrendering to the healing on offer. If we understood this then we would have a far greater understanding of the path of disease and our eventual passing over and also realise the degree to which we are showered upon every step of the way to return to the great love that we are.

239. With using the word ‘hope’ there is no chance we will take responsibility for ourselves, we leave the door open to feeling the victim of outward circumstances where we have no say in and makes us feel ‘hopeless’ So true what you say Fiona about hope and being ill: ‘This outward focus means that we never look inside to see what this illness means for us or the part we have played in it. We miss the opportunity to heal the root cause that this illness is presenting.’

240. The reality of life does not turn out the way we often ‘hope’ for we write ourselves mental stories about what we want to happen or how we want life to be, but we do not give ourselves the grace to reflect and ponder on what life is offering us to learn by a certain circumstance. I know that although uncomfortable I have learnt a lot in life through observing how life unfolds. This does not mean I sit as a bystander, but I am more honest when I can see that it is a conclusion of what I chosen.

241. Living in hope is not taking full responsibility for our part in something.

242. I feel the falsity of the word Hope, just by hearing it gives me the shivers. What is not true about this word is the huge expectation being put into it and the amount of devastation that this hope is going to bring, so the illusion and its impending consequences is what we do not want to see or choose to be aware of but have to eventually deal with. The shivers that I have felt though comes from a sympathy I have for those who do not choose to know this, and it is supportive to nominate it.

243. Hope grows in a world where we pretend that we don’t know how the life works. It is fostered and nurtured by us dreaming of preferred events. All of this stems from us willfully choosing to not read the meaning and message that is there in life’s events. When we are willing to understand what we are being shown, we’ll finally see the world is arranged and constellated perfectly. There truly is no bad situation or scenario – just learning that might be at times, hard to take. Thank you Fiona for helping wipe away the illusion in our lives.

244. Hope is like a smoke screen, which keeps us from going deeper with ourselves. Accepting life allows us to see everything in full and then take responsibility for how we want to be with it.

245. Hope can have a dismissive feel to it, as it can be used when we don’t really want to give time to hear something, it’s easy and quick to slip hope in. ‘Oh I hope it gets sorted, works out’ etc

     1. The word in itself feels quite like poison, yet it is used so loosely all the time.

246. It was Aristotle who is alleged to have said, “Hope is a waking dream”. Does that put hope firmly in the court of wishful thinking, daydreaming even? In which case the gap between reality and hope opens up even wider.

247. When considering the topic of hope I thought of lots of scenarios where people say ‘it’ll be ok’ or as we say here in Australia ‘she’ll be right’. But now I get that this is more optimism. Hope feels like it carries more attachments and pictures to it, a destination we think is great for us or others. The antidote then it feels like, is a deep surrender to the fact that the world is an absolute and perfect reflection as it is, and it won’t change till it is true to do so. So the greatest thing we can do is understand what it has to offer us through its incredible everyday symbology. Thank you Fiona for supporting me with this awesome blog.

     1. Great point here Joseph. Yes, the world is a perfect reflection for us all and in this understanding, hope is revealed as unnecessary.

248. There is actually no purpose for using the word ‘hope’. I was pondering on the fact if it really is supportive to hope we will change at the moment we feel something needs changing or is going to happen and therefore needs adjustment. In such a moment the only thing that is needed is to make steps to change or adjust/prepare and make sure we are backing ourselves up. If we use hope it is putting the fact of changing, adjusting or preparing outside of ourselves and this is not something where true change comes from.

249. We have so misused many of words in the english language and ‘evil’ is one of them. We only see evil as being evil when it is totally sinister yet evil comes in all sorts of guises. Hope masks the truth of what is really going on and gives us a false reading that everything is going to be fine. This stops us from being in the moment and honouring what is happening, and robs us of the truth that we could learn so much from. This to me is evil.

     1. Yes, it is great to be accurate with words and to understand their meaning.

250. Hope is a dark alley we chose to walk down rather than stand in the light of day of what is true!

251. The word hope is used as a blanket expression for when we do not want to truly feel what is going on or take a closer look at our part in something.

252. Everything is either evolutionary or it is not. When we see things with that clarity it is easy to place hope into the non-evolutionary category.

253. “… Yes, what you share about ‘hope’ rings true, and if we are holding out in hope of something, it is like living in a bubble, and not having full awareness of the reality of what is actually going on….” Yes, what you share about ‘hope’ rings true, and if we are holding out in hope of something, it is like living in a bubble, and not having full awareness of the reality of what is actually going on.

254. If it was commonly understood and accepted that we all came back, i.e. reincarnated, there would be no issues with talking about death and dying as it would simply be a completion of one life and preparation before another begins. Our whole approach to it would be very different with ourselves and with each other and would change so much about the way we live. Perhaps instead of learning how to live a great life, we should consider the way we live as preparation to have a great death.

255. It is time to start talking about death and dying more as a real and day to day topic. What if we look to it from the point it is not ending but simple going to the next cycle and beautiful that process is?

256. As I feel the detrimental effect hope has on us I realize we use hope as a way not to see, not to accept, not surrender to what is before us…

     We have found something that enables us to hold on to something that is already gone… so it is false.
     Accepting and letting go of ‘how I think things should be’ is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.

     What if we stayed open and deeply honest about the challenge at hand?
     Wouldn’t this then give us the best chance to be open to seeing anything that is possible within the situation?

257. Having hope feels so powerless to me, it is as if we feel that we have no choice over what is happening and we look for the answers outside ourselves, in the hands of someone else, and in doing so we “miss the opportunity to heal the root cause that this illness is presenting.” We are our greatest healers and taking the time to connect to our inner wisdom is the first step towards the healing that is possible.

258. ‘evil as anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence.’ What a beautiful and accurate definition of evil.

259. I have been hearing myself saying ‘I hope…’ more conscious and realized how empty and almost arrogant it is to think I know better. Each of us gets exactly the opportunities we need to learn. This doesn’t mean I cannot support another if they are going through a difficult process, but without the investment that the ‘bad’ had to go away.

260. Hope really feels disempowering and keeps you in the emptiness of not feeling enough as you are wanting an outside force to give you what you want without taking any responsibility for your choices.

261. So much of our issues worldwide are due to us expecting something and then reacting with blame when our expectations do not happen. Hoping for something is similar, because there is still the expectation, but the reaction this time is giving up. Both of these are insidious and keep us from reflecting on our part in what is going on, reading the dynamics at play and deepening our relationship with responsibility in life.

262. We can give so much power away to hope, and what’s more we encourage others to do same, when what would be truly supportive would be to be open and honest with each other at all times, which would take away any need for hope.

263. ‘Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness.’ We don’t look at why we got the illness and what is there to learn for us. It is a form of escaping responsibility and by doing that we deny ourselves the opportunity to evolve.

     1. Thanks Fiona for exposing “Hope” – a type of blind faith and now I understand is a great way to avoid or delay the healing, revelation and evolution in ourselves. And as I just looked up – to be confirmed. Monika said: “It is a great form of escaping responsibility and by doing that we deny ourselves the opportunity to evolve.”

264. The more I read this the more I see hope around and the real evil of this in giving our power away and not taking responsibility for our choices and reactions.

265. Hope makes us looking outside (for salvation) instead of going deeper within and connecting to ourselves and the truth.

266. Hope is very often what keeps people going. Without hope it exposes the reality of what is really going on and where we are at. And so the question – is our life worth living without hope? It is up to us whether it is or not.

267. Hope does keep us stuck in a loop where we just never get to the truth of who we are and that we are way more powerful than what is actually going on and instead has us forever doubting ourselves and bringing in unnecessary complications.

268. I love what you write about dying Fiona, that it is such a healing process in itself. I have observed it many times working in palliative care that when the person dying surrenders to the process, it allows everyone around them to feel the acceptance of the situation and brings an opportunity for healing of old patterns.

     1. Its quite a profound time for people. One of the things I have observed is learning to sit and observe when the emotions are high. So sitting in someone’s discomfort without my need to take it on and make there pain better. On the surface it may sound not so supportive, but in truth its very supportive both for me and for them as they are met by someone who is approaching them without any judgment, so they can be themselves completely. It’s a very precious time all round.

269. Hope is hanging on to a thread which inevitably breaks. It’s a myth that we keep perpetuating and as you say Fiona it takes us away from truly healing what is needed in our lives for us to move on.

270. Hope is … hopeless. There is not a skerrick of Will in hope.

271. I was talking to a lady at work last week and she was discussing a film she saw about death. We both agreed that this needs to be more of a normal thing, talking about it and discussing it. The fact that as a society we don’t and it is something that is fear creates a level of tension in the body that is so not necessary. This is certainly on topic that needs a lot more discussion and for it to become our normal way of expressing.

272. There is nothing solid about hope and certainly no truth in it. It is just something for another to precariously cling onto in the ‘chance’ that something will work out the way they want it to.

273. The hope we place on medicine to come up with the next cure or pill for our conditions is not such a benign stance. It actually comes with a silent demand that someone else deals with our health problem, while we continue to go about our lives the way we always have. Until we start to see that this way has brought us to the dis-ease we will not look at what we can do. This is where the real healing begins – with us.

274. There is a moment that I am familiar with, when all that you had hoped for becomes a dream and the distinct reality of your situation is suddenly seen most clearly. And it is these moments that I have come to treasure, because in every day and in every way, I would rather live without hope if it meant that I could clearly see the truth and the reality of life.

275. Since reading this blog I have been noticing how much ‘hope’ comes into my language and how strange it seems sometimes to not wish for something for someone or hope that things get better for them etc, especially when I have no idea of their full situation or why things are happening the way they are for them. Very interesting to consider that perhaps things happen for a reason sometimes and that wishing or hoping it otherwise does more harm than good.

276. When we wish someone good luck, it feels like we are opening them up to be a target for ill thoughts and questionable outcomes because in that grasping for something more, we are actually feeling less.

277. This article was very healing to read. For so long I felt it was virtuous to wish for a good outcome for people or to hope for the best. Now I can see that not doing that is not doing the opposite, but accepting what is, the truth of the situation, and not imposing expectation on it.

278. Hope denies us of the truth that is on offer. To live in hope is to separate oneself from God which is interesting as hope is often associated with prayer and healing.

     1. And the regret that comes hand in hand with this ill truth!

279. Hoping for something by definition means that we have a specific picture that we wish to be delivered and we are not confident that everything including us is in the flow of it happening. Sitting in hope is disastrous because we end up not being honest about the dynamics that we are actually reading, and also failing to respond in an empowered and responsible manner.

280. Hope is considered a virtue, but when you strip it down to what it actually does, in the way that you describe, Fiona I can completely see that it has another face.

281. Thank you Fiona for writing this as I now am on the lookout each time I use this word and you have made me aware of how often I do, I really hope I stop doing it.

282. The hope of a good life, an easy life, a healthy life is fraught with complication. In hope there is a giving away of the power that we each have to contribute to how each day we live is experienced.

283. Hope and faith are in the same basket, both come from religion and in an energy that is designed to keep you small.

     1. Good point Julie. That makes complete sense, as organised religion does everything to keep us small. The more we hope the smaller and more powerless we feel. This makes us want to worship something outside of ourselves and hope to be rescued by a Savior.

284. “… evil as anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence…” With this in mind, when we look around in life, its not hard to see that there are many things that foster separation.

285. There is a very slippery slope between hope and hopelessness, which makes it very unsafe and frightening even.

286. Hope has a resonance to it that is hollow and wistful, these are not qualities I see in nature or the universe. Those are the markers of truth.

     1. Yes, Vanessa – agreed. There is an absoluteness in nature that is the total opposite of hollow and wistful. When I feel absoluteness in my body there is an undeniable strength and vitality there. If I am hopeful there is a nebulous disempowerment that looks to outside events to fix things without taking responsibility for them myself.

287. Hope can also distract us away from the present moment and doing what is needed.

288. The evil of hope also robs us of our precious moments of our daily life. It eats into space we have until the only two inevitable things we can never postpone or avoid, death and taxes.

289. Since reading this blog I have become aware of just how many times we use, or even just think of the word hope and its a very common occurrence. If we put as much effort into being responsibly proactive and productive in any situation, rather than simply ‘hoping’ that something may or may not happen, it could iron out a huge amount of problems that currently arise in our lives.

290. When I hear or say the word ‘hope’ these days, I feel a helplessness in it… like a reaching out for someone, something or some turn of events to rescue me. It is absent of responsibility and therefore the true strength we have to choose the way our lives unfold.

     1. Well said Matilda for the word hope has a sense of emptiness to it, and in that hollowness we will clasp at any straw thinking that it may save us, only to find it disintegrates in our hands.

291. Hope was introduced by the same source that introduced faith and charity. All three are great deceivers exposing the source that they originate from.

     1. So true Kathleen, we have so relied on these sources in the past to want to cure our ills, rather than looking at what we are given and why, and learn from the healing of every experience we are offered.

292. Who am I to ‘hope’ that someone gets better, does well, stays alive etc etc. I do not know or understand what the evolutionary path for someone may be. My hope just gets in the way.

293. I have found myself clocking how often hope pops up during the day in so many different areas, and how insidiuos it is. It is there in the background, just waiting to take our focus away from what we are doing, to tempt us with another possibility which may or may not happen. And if we get hooked, it can be such a waste of energy.

294. Hope is the carrot that can never be reached as it will always be just out of reach because it is a setup..

295. I heard someone talking on the radio recently say ‘we need to be pouring hope onto those who were in need of it’. The context here is irrelevant. By offering hope in any form we are simply delaying getting to the truth of any situation, and in the long run it supports no one. Whereas being honest allows another to face the truth, and although this can be hard, it offers an opportunity to prepare and come to terms with their situation.

296. I have been observing the hope around finding a cure of certain diseases. It creates a way of thinking where you don’t have to do anything yourself, as what you are ‘doing’ is waiting for someone else to help. This way of thinking is part of the bio-medical consciousness and is very disempowering. It takes our focus to medicine and away from our bodies, where we would be able to find a great deal of wisdom and small changes we can make to the way we live that will support us.

297. It is so true hope allows us to “stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs” that do not heal. We get caught up in hoping that ‘something’ will change, avoid responsibility and staying stuck in the patterns. We put all our hopes outside thinking that someone or something will cure, we dis-empower ourselves.

298. Instead of wishing and hoping for something, we could deepen our observation, understanding and relationship. Otherwise we are simply choosing to be disengaged and disempowered.

299. When organised religion took over the role of middleman standing between us and Divinity, they replaced responsibility which empowers one with ‘hope ‘which delivers nothing as it leaves one at the mercy of creation..

300. Hope… Faith… such simple words and yet they reveal a total disconnection from the truth of the extraordinary universe that we live in, and the interconnectedness of all things that we are a part of

301. It is very sad to observe when someone is in a situation like you have described, so often those around them also drive the hope and wanting to fix it for the person/people involved. For me, one of the greatest supports has been not false building up statements but just true support from people who have understanding, offer warmth and love and are able to accept what they see and feel.

302. Wow Fiona you have nailed this, hope seems innocent and something we all choose now and then but we are avoiding or ignoring what is going on in ourselves and the offering to truly heal and clear the root cause of our illness and stay connected until the end. Hope disconnects us from ourselves and the ones around us.

303. Thank you Fiona, I had never really considered hope to be a distraction before, but I can see how it is something that can take all the focus away from what needs to be addressed or looked at in detail. But I cannot imagine ever getting rid of hope when I am in the most dire of situations, I know that I would cling to it with all my might, which is perhaps the point of your piece – that in those darkest moments when it seems that all is lost, there is something more, something deeper and super supportive that we can return to which is in fact with us all of the time – an eternal connection with our soul.

304. Hope seems very dead because we are wanting a specific outcome whereas very often what happens can be magnificent beyond even our greatest hopes!

     1. So true Nicola. I see things happening all around me in recent years that I could not even have imagined let alone hoped for. To let go of hope and instead be open to what life has to offer us is incredibly liberating.

305. Thank you Fiona for revealing how destructive hope can be in our lives. The time we waste on hope as you mention most definitely could be used to heal that which we have not faced in our lives and repairing the damaged relationships we would otherwise leave behind. Meaning that we go forward to our next life with a clean slate.

306. When we drop hope, we start living. Thats been my experience as I with hope I had no responsibility, always ‘hoping’ my life would be a certain way without choosing to work on myself and deal with any issues that were in the way.

307. Living life with hope is having a bucket with a hole in the bottom. You may fill it temporally but will always run out when you need it most. So, when we tell someone, I hope you; get better, find a job and whatever, are we not, just filling up their empty bucket with more emptiness?

308. There is a depth of awareness and insight we can connect to that has a certain absoluteness to it. Yet the choice of settling with ‘hope’ keeps us dangling in the realm of non committing to our awareness and the possibility of connecting to our personal connection and responsibility. Indeed when seeing it in this light hope is indeed evil and very disempowering.

309. You could say that most if not all religions are based on a hope in praying to their God for an outcome to go certain way. What I love about Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine is how it shares the science of cause and effect. That we are energy and that all our choices that come through us have to be expressed and that then is returned back to us. Here you can’t hide from the truth that what our bodies are presenting to us is what we have already chosen it is just playing out the way it needs to. Then you start to clock that there is a responsibility in the choices that we make not only for our own future outcome but for all those around us because we are in a sea of energy and every single choice that is made has a ripple effect on not just those around us but also the Universe we live in.

310. I’ve ‘hoped for the best before’ and it’s often not worked out. And even if it has, it does not create a solid nor steady feeling inside of you because it happened outside of you. By not accepting nor taking responsibility for it, you are in effect outsourcing it and then at the whim of what happens, and when you do that, it is much easier to feel knocked around. But when you let go of hope, and accept and get real about what’s happening, you can build a much more stronger foundation on which to stand upon and deal with what is going on.

311. Recently I have been exploring the awareness that joy is a natural part of our being and hence something that is available to be chosen in any moment. If I attempt to bring hope into this equation, I find that it takes me away from this nature. It is like ‘hoping to be joyful’ when actually, joy is already present in me. We might well consider this evil. It is the pursuit of something already inherent in us and hence the creation of an illusion that keeps us separated from our nature.

     1. Love it Richard. To hope that we are going to be walking in joy already separates us from the joy. Being in each moment is the joy.

312. It is clearly apparent that we are ‘sold’ the idea of hope from many places such as religions, political parties and charities and that we buy into. Could it be that we prefer this, knowing that it is not truly going to help any situation, to having to be responsible for making choices which change the status quo.

313. Hope takes us away from reality and can cause so much added pain, far more wise to have honesty rather then hope.

314. Even though I know the evil of hope I still find myself saying things like ‘I hope you get better’. It seems to drop into my use of language very easily. It is so ingrained in us to speak this way.

315. Hope has always felt to me like a giving up on what we can do and a passing over of the responsibility to someone or to something else like a new drug for example. So, our focus ends up being on everything but the most important ingredient of all for our healing and that is what is going on within us and in doing so “We miss the opportunity to heal the root cause that this illness is presenting.” The illness or disease has its origins in the way we have been living and it is in looking with deep honesty at this way that will offer us the opportunity to uncover the truth.

316. I totally agree where is the hope in looking for a solution outside of ourselves when the underlying root cause is part of the way we have been living from within.

317. Hope keeps you living in the fantasy that something or someone external will provide a solution rather than taking responsibility for oneself. To me that is very dis-empowering and is a victim mentality.

318. This is so important to remember when life throws up the unexpected. Allowing rather than trying to control.

319. It is interesting how much we do use hope in normal conversation …I hope you are well, I hope to see you soon, I hope you get better soon. There is a expectancy and a need and a looking to the future, from an emptiness, looking for a false hope that everything is or will be ok. My question to myself now when I want to use the word hope is ‘What am I really hoping for?’

     1. “What am I really hoping for?” That’s a great question to ask ourselves Alison. And it opens up a whole lot of other questions too!

320. Working in palliative care people often need time to process everything; their life, their relationships, the practicalities of dying and having a will, what to do with their property and where they will die and who will care for them. The longer we leave this, the more stressful it can be on everybody. People do review everything their life has brought them; things perceived as ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Then there is the dealing with the body’s process and what’s happening to the body; some people have symptoms and some don’t, but the extent of disease doesn’t necessarily determine this. Families are also processing this and getting on with the work of caring for the person dying. This is made more simple or not by how open relationships are, how willing they are to talk to one another, how honest they are and how willing they are to surrender to what is occurring.

     Preparation, to the best of our ability, is very important in palliative care, from every angle for it supports everyone equally. Relying on hope cuts short this very precious time.

321. I am realising just how insidious hope is and how much we can allow it to hold us back. If we are always clinging onto something ‘in case it may happen’ we are not allowing the space for what ‘could or can’ happen if we accept everything just as it is.

     1. I have been considering this same point Sandra. For the moment there is hope we are not open to what is truly being constellated. The pictures that make up ‘the hope’ push away what could otherwise come towards us.

322. Hope is of the same energy as crossing your fingers, where does that come from? As if an outcome could change because of that.

     1. Great question Kevin. A quick instant search puts this at the feet of Christianity when it was illegal and became a secret sign. The other side of the coin for crossing your fingers to protect you when telling a lie was your get out of jail free card from God for lying. Either way, we are ignoring our responsibility.

        1. Thanks Steve that just cracks me up, a get out of jail free card for lying if you cross your fingers. Reminds me of stories of the rich in medieval times having their sins of murder and all other atrocities forgiven by the priest or bishop if they provide the money to build another church or something.

323. Hope has us in a perpetual loop, of waiting and disappointment or relief depending on the outcome being what we desire or not. There is no purposeful activity in it, we just wait to receive the outcome. Sometimes there are times when we can feel overwhelmed and know it is time to observe and watch what is unfolding, but in this we can always still make a choice how we are and what we step into next, one way or another. We need to claim ourselves and activate what we feel is true in life, these build every day into our foundation and our lives reflect our choices.

324. Today I noticed some of the institutions and organisation who promote hope in their messages to communities, society and humanity. It really feels like such an entrapment that people chose.

325. The word ‘hope’ is used all the time and it carries is a dishonesty and a delay that keeps us from living full and purposeful lives.

326. Accepting life as it is and not fighting it with hope etc is actually empowering in my recent experience. Liberating in fact.

327. I love the acceptance versus hope understanding, this makes so much sense and empowers us to truly look at and take responsibility for our lives and to see the purpose for honest loving choices all along and to be prepared for all that comes our way.

328. Hope brings with it so much tension because there is no settlement in the body as nothing can complete because we are holding on to trusting something outside of us and totally disconnected from God and love.

     1. So true Julie, it’s like you are waiting for something where you have given your power away too and so the body feels a tension. Wow how crazy is that.

329. There is so much delay in ‘hope’.

     1. OMG is it ever Jenny! It’s a ‘head in the sand’ approach to life that takes no responsibility.

330. Hope feels like a rope ladder being thrown down to someone stuck in a smooth sided well, only to find that the road is frayed and there are no rungs to offer any form of support.

331. This article is so important for society to have access to, I can feel how the illusion of hope kept me inactive a sort of lethargy in life, waiting for something to change rather than me making choices that would bring that change.

     1. So true, Samantha, hope is lauded so much as a positive and supportive emotional/mental engagement when instead it is completely dis-empowering as it relies on an external saviour that will never come.

332. Hope robs us of the opportunity to take command of our own lives. If we take action we are no longer in hope, as we are already contributing to the future. Sit in hope and we are dis-empowered.

     1. Yes. Sitting in hope is handing over our responsibility and power on the premise that someone or something will happen to rescue us.

333. When we hope and wish, the effects can be measured! Put all the results in your hands. Put hope in one hand and wishes in the other and see which one fills up first. Emptiness will never change anything.

334. ‘She’ll be right’ it can seem, is the national motto of Australia where I live. We optimistically think that if we do just enough ‘lady luck’ will intervene and tilt the scales of fortune towards us. This way of viewing the world completely misunderstands the true power we have in the choices we make. Good luck with luck I say as there is no such thing, just the outer consequences of the moves that we make. No wonder we don’t want to face this truth as it means the responsibility all comes back to us. If only we sat with what this all means we’d realise we have powers to transform greater than the superheroes in our shows and magazines. Thank you Fiona for calling this out.

335. We spend our lives chasing for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and then, realize it has been a folly and we panic at the end of the ride on how we have wasted our life. By accepting and surrendering, at whatever age, we once again move forward without the sting in the tail hope brings.

336. To have hope is to give our power away as we don’t feel that we have any part in our future. Our future is all of our making and so is the present so to be hoping for a certain outcome is denying everything we are capable of.

     1. Hope is a well deep trap, where we give our power away and then stay in a loop, things will change, something outside of us will cause the change. It is a way of avoiding responsibility.

     2. Yes there is definitely a feeling that hope is setting us up for an answer in the future rather than surrendering and acceptance at each moment.

337. The opposite of hope is not despair as commonly believed, but acceptance. For if we can accept where we are, even if we are facing our imminent passing, we surrender into the unfathomable depths of love we hold in our bodies ALL the time. We might have just not chosen to accept it until then. What better way to pass over than in the divine embrace of our Soul.

     1. Beautifully put Lucy. In fact, acceptance on any level of where we are at in our lives, makes anything and everything so much simpler and easier to deal with.

338. Reading this blog has been a revelation to me as I now consider the word hope in a different light. How often I have used this little word as a nicety, a filler where I haven’t taken the time express what I truly feel. It is all too easy to drop in a ‘hope all is well’ or ‘hope you feel better soon’ in a text when there are a zillion far more loving and appropriate expressions we could use.

339. I have noticed that when I hope for something better or a situation to improve, what happens is that I stop actively working to change or look at what is really going on – its like taking a seat and hoping for the best rather than making sure in every way I live so as to bring about what is truly needed.

340. After all, what is there to hope for when we know exactly what our future is and that we can live it today.

341. Hope only allows us to deny our responsibility, only up to the point that it comes back with a vengeance and bites us!

342. As absurd as this may well sound, hope gets in the way of true healing because it erodes the trust we build that leads to the knowing that everything is happening as it should in order to support our evolution back to Soul. If the physical body has become laden with burdens by way of taking on ideals, beliefs and behaviours that are not true to who we truly are and these have been left to sit there eroding our health and vitality, then there will be measures in place whereby the body can begin to arrest such impost.

     Unfortunately, this process does not always ensure the preservation of the body if the package is too heavy to clear in one lifetime and at these times the body may need to be discarded so that the being inside can move free of what can then be released by the process of illness and disease and ultimately ‘dying’ which is not a death at all but a passing over to another state whereby the being inside can continue to work on discarding the imprints in the spiritual bodies so that when they incarnate again, they can do so less burdened by what has been lived in previous lives, with the choice to move differently the next time around. If we get lost in the hope (investment) of a fixed outcome e.g. ‘not dying’, then we are resisting the grace this moment of healing offers us as we prepare for the next cycle of life.

343. Hope feels like not being real with each other. I caught myself yesterday wanting to send a text message to someone saying I hoped it would be fine even though in truth I knew that it would be ok and she was over worried for the situation. Saying I hope it would be fine would be keeping up the illusion of it being a drama even though it was not. I could sense in this moment how I often have just played the game, now I know it is so much better to be real and feel what is truly going on and what is true, instead of relying on hope from my head and keep the illusion going.

344. It is amazing how it is encouraged to be hopeful for a situation that is going on or even towards another be it the simple ‘nice’ gesture of I hope you had a great time. They are all based and come from a place of uncertainty and from a place of not wanting to take responsibility for our actions.

345. I was in a conversation the other day and found myself in a situation where hope would be the next thing to say, I stopped, paused and was silent for a moment.. now I have much more awareness of hope and what it carries and other words came instead and the conversation ended very differently, without the energy of hope.

346. How disempowering is it to place this much effort outside our-self and live with such a thing as hope. Everyone can live Open Hearted and by living with an openness, this lets us move in the wisdom of our divine connection, which has no need for hope. So we move with the energy of both male and female in balance so our feet align and move in the wisdom of the Soul!

347. How many lifetimes are required to stop what hope brings?

348. Hope can make us feel better in the moment but so can alcohol or a sweet – until our awareness deepens and we can feel the full effect of all three.

349. Hope is basically withdrawing from life and saying, I won’t step up and take responsibility, I will just let the universe deal with it and hope for the best.

350. When we want things to be a certain way and hope for them to come true it leaves us wide open for the devastation to kick in because it doesn’t turn out the way you want it. That hope is a way of not wanting to look at the truth and taking responsibility for our choices. Hope is the carrot that is getting dangled in front of you which gets snatched away because it is based on a foundation of not wanting to see the truth.

351. “We miss the opportunity to heal the root cause that this illness is presenting.” This is hope? Ouch!

352. “Like a magician’s trick, hope distracted them, drawing their attention away from what was really taking place before their eyes” What a brilliant description of the word ‘hope’. Hope is a distraction away from a deeper truth.

353. “…In the end, hope leaves us surprised and completely unprepared when the reality of dying inevitably hits home…” An awful feeling to deal with layered on top of dealing with the passing of a loved one.

     1. Yes, we can acquire quite a bit of momentum which then hits us when the hope is dashed.

354. Hope can often leave one feeling a level of uncertainty that on the surface may present itself as a person trying to remain in a positive frame of mind but underneath one can feel a sense of tension that lies unexpressed.

355. Hope is a complete denial of energetic responsibility.

356. I keep returning to this definition of evil Fiona, “anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence.” And I can see how hope fits well into this category because it encourages us away from finding the true understanding when something is happening. Hope holds us back and delays us from accepting the reality and learning to move forwards.

357. There’s no empowerment or responsibility in hope. Just the ‘hope’ that things will turn out the way we want them to…. it’s the desperate clinging to the pictures in our minds of what can be and ought to be, and not what actually is.

     1. Hope is misleading.

358. I have experienced how hope can keep me in an illusion, therefore not dealing with what is at hand. My personal experience was around having a child, hoping I would fall pregnant, but that just kept me spinning rather than dealing with what was at hand. Now having dealt with my choices and how I lead myself to this place, I no longer have the need to give birth and have looked at other opportunity to parent.

359. Hope delays the truth that is in front of us.

360. Since reading this blog last week, I have caught myself using the word ‘hope’ a number of times. It’s been really supportive to look at it each time and see what is under the use of the word. Investment, playing ‘nice’..or more simply, a lack of connection to the person I am writing/talking to and thus a fall back into lazy language. Really appreciating this pull up and what it is showing me. Thank you. The ripple effect is that it has made me look at my use of other go-to words as well.

361. I wonder if hope and hopelessness go together and keep people in an endless loop.

     1. Brilliant Christoph. Super wise.

362. Hope is a step away from dealing with our past imprints that have not been self loving.

     1. Yes I can see how this manifests in our lives.

363. When someone is living more their truth and has a strong sense of self and moves in that, others get to feel how settled and full these people feel and then are given an opportunity to ask how, or to feel themselves within it.

364. Within hope lies the permission to not take responsibility.

     1. Yes, the “things will work out anyway” philosophy that sometimes even works out but allows us to avoid dealing with what we need to deal with.

     2. Absolutely, we can keep hiding and avoid responsibility stay in indulgence of hope.

365. What a great simile to describe the way we use ‘hope’ – “Like a warm coat in winter, it is used to comfort ourselves or other people when we are ‘down on our luck’.” It is descriptive of how we don’t want to feel the reality of where we are living.

366. Hope prevents us coming to understanding and therefore fosters the repetition of what is the cause of our ills again and again.

367. Yes, it is true that hope is evil as when living in an imagined future rather than being fully present and taking responsibility in the moment.

368. It is true that living in hope leaves us completely ill-prepared and at the mercy of life rather than empowered, on the front foot and informed.

369. I’m very grateful that you wrote this blog, as now I often catch myself saying I hope this or that and I stop it right there, whereas before I would carry it on and on and keep hoping which as we know doesn’t do anyone any good.

370. Holding onto ‘hope’ gives me a sense of giving our power away. The feeling of hope to me is like an excuse to not take responsibility for what is going on and it is a delay in embracing the truth.

     1. The epitome of inaction, apathy and comfort. From the stance of ‘hope’ we need do nothing. Interesting to hear so much about it when dealing with religions.

371. When we ‘hope’ it feels so lost, and in this energy we have no idea what natural constellations we shut out of our life.

372. The more I read this blog the more clearer it becomes that reflections of those living a true and living life are oh so needed as they offer a real truth in the way they live. People do not need to hope in a better future when the reflection of true responsibility is so evidently clear.

373. This is amazing Fiona, and may I add one word to this mix, which will possibly bring an understanding of the power of words and there falsities they can deliver? Slavery “evil and hope are perfect bedfellows”. Because what is happening in the world is that it is “experienced a growing sense of dis-ease, as I became aware of what a detrimental role” of the ill use of words play and how they affect our health. Understanding that slavery is anything that keeps us from our Soul connection, words start to take on a true beauty in how they truly develop our expression so we can heal! So if society “allows us to stay stuck in a loop” we see no light at the end of the tunnel. With a True understanding of words “we are released from these impediments and left free to move on.”

374. Hope for me feels a bit like burying your head in the sand and refusing to face the reality of what is going on and what we are actually reading and feeling in the situation we find ourselves in.

375. “I define evil as anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence.” This is a great definition of evil. And it shows that evil often isn’t obvious like a monster in children’s videos, but that it comes disguised as the thing we often see as good, positive or better in life.

     1. Yes, it is this subtlety that makes hope and in so many so-called ‘good’ activities that makes them truly evil.

376. Your blog has made me notice how often we use the word hope in our daily conversations and I find it interesting how much we actually seem to rely on hope, which in truth is a total disempowerment.

     1. It is interesting how much the word hope is used in daily conversation, we are not realising we are giving our power away. It is a word we have got into a habit of using and not realising the truth of it.

        1. This is so true Amita and it has only been since reading this blog that I have become conscious of how often I used the word myself.

377. Hope is a sign that we are resisting the call to deepen our connection. It is a way of handing over our responsibility and believing that a situation will change or go away on its own. Which of course is never what happens, for the issue only gets buried deeper, to re-surface with many more complications at another time.

     1. True – hope shifts our focus from commitment as we hand over the responsibility for our lives to an unknown outside of us.

        1. Well said Deborah.

378. I used to hang my life on hope, desperately hoping things would turn out better… it was hopeless. Until I stepped into my own driving seat, working with universal medicine, life was on a downward trajectory.

379. The reality of hope is giving our power away not taking responsibility and allowing things to happen without this. Understanding the true energetic responsibility we all have for ourselves our lives and everything else is paramount to the world and is very beautiful and inspiring.

380. I loved reading about hope this morning and felt an ouch as I realised I can still sometimes slip it into niceties in texts and emails. There is nothing ‘nice’ about hope as you have shared and reading your blog I am reminded of the importance of the choice of words we use. Thanks Fiona.

     1. Yes Jane, I slip into it as a default of using hope, but it is a nicety, and I have realised that niceness is a poison that seeps out and is often encouraged in our world as a good thing when it is not. When we are nice and we are hopeful we are escaping from the reality and the importance of being truthful. Truth is our way forward, so when I say “I hope you are well” maybe I could say “it would be a fine thing if you are making choices that leave you in wellness but ultimately that is your own responsibility and I must not have an investment in it”. Of course I would never say that, but the intent is definitely different and closer to a truth.

     2. Same for me Jane, I am a lot more aware of this after reading Fiona’s powerful blog. I often use the word ‘hope’ without thinking and discerning if it is a loving way to express or not. It is not about cutting out the use of this word all together but certainly for me it’s about bringing more awareness to how I use it and what quality I am expressing in.

381. Fiona what an amazing blog, and an amazing question to ask ourselves, are we in anyway living in hope therefore not addressing reality or are we facing reality and taking our next steps bravely with truth?

382. “Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness.” The same could be said for any situation where hope is given, as we are left with a question of not knowing the truth. To give hope to another is actually very disempowering.

383. So many great points raised here by Fiona about the false allure of the word hope. To me, when people say they hope for this or that it feels careless and apathetic- like a careless throwaway term to not feel and deal with the issue or problem at hand directly.

384. Since reading this blog I am very aware of how often the word ‘hope’ is used in most conversations and the uncomfortable, dragging sense of ill energy it carries with it and observing that this is also noticeable in the posture of the person as they are saying the word hope.

     1. That’s an interesting point Stephanie. How another person’s body language in the way they stand or move is reflected in the words they use and the way they speak. Just one word can carry an enormous influence in this way.

385. When you say I hope, it does feel like a giving up energy, and definitely not coming with an inspiring or uplifting feeling.

386. Hope can keep us trapped in the wanting of more, not fully accepting, or dealing with what is right in front of us. It’s a pull to go outside of ourselves rather than staying connected within.

387. It feels great to expose what lies behind words and our use of them. Having been exalted as a worthy quality, I find hope to be one of the most disempowering words, leaving us in the helplessness of a chance thing happening to turn around a challenge, problem or devastation in our lives. There is no invitation in the word hope to step up and responsibly lead our own way.

388. Living in hope is escapism as it is living an imagined future rather than fully feeling and experiencing the present and then dealing with and taking responsibility for whatever is required in the moment.

389. Hope is not unlike handing our life over to something, someone and possibly the unknown and waiting to see the outcome of doing so… not an empowering way to live, that’s for sure.
     It is up to each of us to do all that we can, to learn, to surrender and to accept what is before us and to take charge of our lives and choices.

390. Totally agree Fiona . You can feel the given-upness in the word ‘hope’, nothing absolute about it at all.

391. It feels to me that hope takes us away from being present to the moment therefore in the case of a cancer diagnosis it stops us from feeling into our bodies to what is actually happening for us and we become reliant on others to offer us something that may or may not be in alignment to our own body. This is compounded when words like “fighting” cancer are used as we are then fighting a truth that our body is offering us.

392. I would not have previously thought that hope was unhelpful Fiona, people think of it as keeping open and positive, but the way you describe it, exposes it for what it is energetically. With hope, we are standing on one foot, not moving forward.

393. As we have not really been brought up to understand that we are here on earth to learn how to return to ‘the love that we innately are’ hope has been a big thing for many and understandably so, as hope is to counter the fear that we may have to face something that could be uncomfortable or even worse, painful. To then add to the mix that there might be also something to learn from and therefore take responsibility for can be all too much for some . . . false hope then seems like the better option especially salted with a little bit of blind faith that everything will turn out alright . Even when we say ‘I hope you have a good day’ we may as well be saying “I hope nothing comes up for you to look at, deal with and learn from today.”

394. Hope keeps our evolution at arms reach permanently placed in a future dream. It places best intentions in the spot where choices and decisions should be. But the most confronting part is that when we indulge in hope we do this because we have chosen not to change or to heal. It’s a point that is vital for us to feel.

395. The stark reality of realising that hope is based on a fear and that is actually imposing your desired outcomes onto another is absolutely pure evil. Especially when it is disguised as being something that is doing good and being praised.

     1. Yes… the abdication of responsibility to the point that we expect someone else to fix things for us.

396. I have been becoming more and more aware of how there is always an order and flow to everything in life. Even the various issues we are faced with, exist because of an energy and a momentum that has led to that point. It has been immensely empowering to realise that I have a part to play in any illness and disease, incident or even the disharmony I may witness around me in life, because there lies the understanding that I also have the power to do something about it.
     Being led to believe there is a randomness to life, that all you are capable of doing is sit back and ‘hope’ – this on the other hand to me seems immensely manipulative and disempowering.

     1. A great point – knowing that we have the power to turn things around, but also understanding the power of accepting that which cannot be turned around.

        1. Yes the acceptance that seemingly cannot be turned around is important.
           It is easy to get disheartened and give up when we expect a particular change and it does not happen.

           Yet the universe is actually made of love, harmony and oneness, and although free will means we can choose to pull away from this, the whole flow is designed to eventually return to its true order.
           And every one of our choices always either contributes to this pulling away or to the return, within our own life and in the world.

           So how long does it take for an issue and a lack of harmony to turn around? It may be immediate, but it may also be very slow. It may look different to what we expect and it may not even be in our lifetime.
           I am slowly understanding and accepting this and it makes a world of difference.

397. Hope, is, totally disempowering in so many ways. So, why do we build a box we can stand in and not move, then wallow about our choice.

398. Hope is the desire for a different outcome instead of understanding why whatever is happening is happening. It is the picture of an easier way out of a situation.

399. Hope is evil Fiona. A byproduct of not loving yourself in truth. A cover up to enter the mind and ‘hope’. We have all fallen for it – to be saved. Reality is lost; and the pictures and images how we wish it to be gain traction. Instead, the focus could be a surrendering to what the body requires to change and evolve into more of what is being offered.
     Hope blocks evolution.

400. When we live in hope we blind ourselves to the magic that is on offer in the present circumstance no matter how horrific it may at first appear to us. This is the true evil of hope – the turning away from a moment of grace that offers us the space to truly heal.

401. Giving another false hope is simply prolonging the pain of something that is inevitable.

402. What are we hoping for when it is something we expect to come from outside of ourselves and for what reason should it come to us? Even when we get what we hoped for it may not be what serves our best interest or even can harm us like in fulfilling a desire but at the same time taking is further away from who we are and what we are supposed to learn and heal.

403. ‘Each time I heard this word, I experienced a growing sense of dis-ease, as I became aware of what a detrimental role hope had played in her illness and death. For a moment this surprised me, as hope is normally considered to be a virtue.’ – Haven’t most of us fallen for the comfort that hope gives us? It has given us the opportunity to not take responsibility what is happening in the moment and in effect it becomes straight out a delay.

404. Perhaps hope is given to us initially as a picture, like a light of salvation at the end of a long dark tunnel of struggle and sadness. So we may cling on to this image, and on to the hope that one day this light will be reached, but first we must pass through the darkness, to do our trials and suffer before it can be reached. But, what if there is no tunnel and no light at the end of a long and arduous journey? What if the light of salvation is in fact right here inside of each and every single person? What if we are our own salvation and the only arduousness that we experience is that which we have created in denial of the fact that we are the light we have been looking for?

405. And as I call out the word hope for what it is when I am being presented with it in the context of ‘hope’ to change the world it brings everyone to the present and gives us an opportunity for us to see and accept in full what is truly going on and the responsibility this way of being brings.

406. In the medical context especially, the deceptive nature of hope is revealed for what it is – an excuse to not deal with what needs attending to.

407. We can hope for this an that but it does nothing. It changes nothing if we don’t take initiative, make choices and take action.

408. We need to consider what we are imposing on others when we are hoping on their behalf.

409. Hope, while it looks forward to the future keeps us caught in the past.

410. “…In the end, hope leaves us surprised and completely unprepared when the reality of dying inevitably hits home….” This is an extra load to have to process during the preparation of having someone die. So yes, ‘Hope’ really doesn’t provide any truth.

411. There are so many ideas and pictures that flood our minds when we hope for a way to be and live.

412. There is a victimhood with hope that we often neglect to look at. We dis-empower ourselves when we rely on things to change from the outside, waiting,….hoping….we have the chance to change through taking responsibility for our lives and bodies, things will unfurl very differently when we make this choice to not rely on the outside, hope to resolve life’s issues and struggles.

413. Hope has been a way of coping with life for so long that I feel it will take a little while for us to detach from the havoc it wreaks in lives when we are not living in the present but the illusion that there will be a ‘fairy tale happy ending’. Maintaining the illusion of hope robs us of seeing and feeling the opportunities that the reality of life can offer for us to make choices that are congruent with our truth and in line with our essence.

414. Yes fascinating Fiona, you expose ‘hope’ for the imposter it is… keeping us from the honesty and truth that will liberate us from the constrains of life as we are choosing it.

415. ‘All the denial, all the hope is revealed for what it is; illusion and delay.’ – So true, and this goes for any stage or area of our lives, not just when we are dying.

416. I must say, the title of this blog was enough to turn me off reading it at first. putting the word Hope and Evil together just felt a little dramatic. As I read on though, I could see what you were exposing and I did end up finding the article very interesting. I understand that in the case of your friends, it did not allow them to embrace the actual experience or truly accept what was happening. But what if there were different cases, where hope was actually the thing that kept somebody alive and enabled them to recover. If you give up hope, it feels a little hope – less, pun intended! I don’t one hundred percent agree that hope is evil, I may be missing something but I don’t see it yet, I feel it has its place.

     1. Hi Sarah – I love your absolute honesty in your comment. I had been reading so many others which are all very similar (my own included) and it really stops you and gets you to question whether there is something missing, a deeper level to consider/understand or a trend forming to which we are simply conforming based on an initial reaction when you post like this.

417. ‘Hope’ is similar to putting eggs in a basket thinking they will hatch with out taking any responsibility for keeping them at a warm temperature to support the process. Hope is an empty word that excludes a person of responsibility.

     1. The level of responsibility that goes with living life is the reason why hope comes into the equation. The more you live life to the full there is no room for hope as one does not question the purpose.

418. This is super Fiona, and I can feel how hope plays out in our lives and how it’s a chimera, a false light which means we avoid dealing with and addressing what is right in front of us ready and waiting to be healed.

419. Hope is a way for not really wanting to look at what we have chosen and to not take full responsibility for our choices.

420. Many times hope is a wish for things to continue as they were and can reveal an attachment we have. Rather than dealing and accepting with what is and the possibility of surrendering to and living with the power of who we truly are.

421. When we hope for an outcome, we are imposing our view of how we want things to be on the world, and possibly those closest to us. This makes our world small and reduces our ability to know there is a giant world of energy at play that can show us more than we can possibly conceive of now. Hope is not power, and I would rather live with power.

422. Hope is very much outside of ourselves and so can never bring us to the point of taking responsibility and knowing ourselves more intimately and deeply – a relationship that brings love and truth to our lives.

423. It’s interesting, since reading this blog I have been catching myself either saying the word ‘hope’ or going to say it. “I hope all goes well?” is an example of what I might say. What I realise is that that’s me being nice, as well as making the conversation about me, with the platitude at the end. They are simply empty words and ‘hope’ is very much that.

     1. Yes Jennifer “I hope it works out for you” is a cheap phrase that does nothing to support or to evolve; it simply dresses one up to appear that you care but underneath it is a complete dismissal and negation.

424. Hope is completely disempowering – it takes us away from our clairsentience and our inner knowing of what is true for us.

425. This really exposes the drive in hope… a seeking outside ourselves – the exact opposite of what our body’s message is through illness and disease: to come back into our bodies, to truly feel what is going on, bring an honesty to our choices, and a responsibility for our own health.

426. “Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness” – This is an interesting point to consider, because although the future is important to consider, when we are faced with an illness or disease we’re ground to a halt and asked to consider what got us to that place on an anatomical and lifestyle level.. Does hope replace this opportunity to reflect with a reliance on ‘luck’ to ‘get us through’? Are we missing out on an extraordinary lesson by doing this?

     1. How many of the people on the planet are stumbling through life on luck or a wing and a prayer hoping for the best, and fully believe this is far better? And, as you have said Susie, they/we are missing a golden opportunity to learn!

427. What this article courageously looks at is a paragon that pervades through out our whole society… And that subtly disempowers on so many levels

428. “Surrendering to and taking responsibility for the process, supports the looking at, dealing with and healing of old patterns, deepening of relationships and completing anything left outstanding from this life.” This takes away any of the falseness of hope and leaves us with only the deep honesty and true honouring of each other.

429. When someone is diagnosed with a serious illness, it is not necessarily the end of their life there and then, there is each day to be lived and much joy still to enjoy as well as serious preparation for the next life – not the ‘after life’ but the next incarnation.

430. Hope is definitely normally considered a virtue. One that keeps a person going in dark times. But what if, like you say, we got real and honest without being led down any dead end detours by hope? Wouldn’t then we have to get real and deal with what is there to feel and know? And only then would we have the chance to heal because if we are head in the clouds hoping for an outcome, we are ignoring our awareness of what is truly going on and how we got there through our choices. And it is our awareness that brings us our understanding and ability to heal.

431. When my step-dad died he didn’t hold on to hope. He accepted his death wholeheartedly and welcomed it. It was beautiful to watch. He accepted the reality and worked on the relationships with those around him until the end, making sure that they knew that he was going. So loving, for himself and his loved ones. No illusion.

432. There is nothing real in a hope, just another picture.

     1. Yes, it’s another distraction, avoidance from a truth.

433. There is nothing to feel guilty about when accepting death. It is not selfish to take yourself for a walk or swim or to give yourself the space you need to support yourself equally. And in fact bringing this depth of support to yourself enrichens the depth of support you offer others.

434. I had for the most part given up on the possibility that humanity could ever return to living with love, truth, integrity, responsibility and a deep care of one another. Living in ‘hope’ for a change and being let down day-in day-out made me feel more resentful and disempowered on a daily basis.

     When I met Serge Benhayon, through the personal example he provided by consistently living those qualities, and further witnessing his inspiration ignite others to start living the same, my relationship with humanity and life started to change.

     From a place of being withdrawn and witholding in life, I am now once again immensely committed to people and to life.
     There is a vast difference between hope and knowing you have everything within you to start to turn things round.

435. We use a lot of meaningless phrases and ‘I hope’ can be in a lot of them, ‘I hope you like it’ – we impose our neediness on others when we hope something. It is a word that gets bandied about without true love or true concern.

     1. Hope does have an air of imposition, handing over for another to take responsibility of a situation.

436. Hope to me is next to faith and believing on the evil scale. All provide a false sense of uplifting and give power away.

437. It is a great exposure of the illusion we live in that you bring to the fore here Fiona, to ‘have hope’ is nothing but a disempowering statement, filled with expectation and a need for something to be a certain way, while it also keeps us ‘on hold’.

438. “All the denial, all the hope is revealed for what it is; illusion and delay.” that is so true, I used to think and many people I spoke to also thought, that hope is the way forward, you have to have hope. But what if that was not it? As I understand hope is actually something that stops us healing as it caps our level of willingness to look at what is going on and heal, being open to everything and being willing to see things clearly.

439. “All the denial, all the hope is revealed for what it is; illusion and delay. Suddenly with only days left, my friend and his partner were met with everything they had avoided facing.” I so recognise this Fiona, when my husband died 17 years ago, hope had been the one thing we clung onto as it had worked for 3 years after his diagnosis,, but when his imminent death became obvious we were not prepared and as Christoph says we missed the joy of the moment, This was a great learning for me on so many levels.

440. I used the word hope yesterday and could feel what was behind it, an unease with a situation and a belief I should say something to appease it. I felt myself going into nice, it didn’t feel great saying it but realising why was a great learning and awareness to have felt.

     1. This discussion is profound. How many of us really stop to consider the energetic quality of the everyday words we use? To have the awareness you share here Ruth, which you follow then with appreciation needs to be really appreciated!

441. I love the falsity that is being exposed here in this blog. When we hope we are in utter denial of what is true. There is no foundation of realness with it. For me it is totally refreshing to go there – to see what is really at play – no wishful thinking – no la la land, just facts and choices that led to their outplay.

     1. True Michelle, Hope is just wishful thinking. Nothing real or true in it, just a desire to not face ‘what is’.

442. Thanks Fiona for exposing hope for what it actually is, it never stops starvation, hunger and war or wins the lottery but it is so imbedded in our language. I quite often find myself using the word although now I will be aware if and when I do.

     1. Absolutely Kevin, loved reading this comment – so important to understand the intention behind the words we use for it is not the word itself which is evil but what it holds.

443. We always regard Hope as such a positive quality, but when used in the attempt to deny a serious situation, it leaks away our focus and denies us making the most of the preciousness of the situation.

     1. I agree Rowena, its as the saying goes ‘ignore it and it will go away’, in other words lets not deal with the situation, lets just pretend it did not happen.

444. Hope means missing the joy of the moment.

445. This is a very confronting blog as ‘hope’ is what we use as Fiona has eloquently shared ‘to get through’ the difficult times in life but it also undermines us and that we have what it takes to be with whatever is presented to us in our lives.

     As Fiona states ‘But in reality, this chase was a distraction from dealing with the severity and urgency of the situation’ Hope can be likened to a chase to go somewhere, anywhere but here right now, yet this moment can offer so much, a deepening, a realness and even a sense of empowerment.’ Something to ponder deeply on, what ‘hope’ actually offers or not.

446. Hope seems to be one of the many ‘nice’ ways to avoid feeling the truth of the situation. Denying a true surrender to death is also a denial of true living.

447. This is such an important subject to look honestly at. The desire to live at any cost is very high, but acceptance of what is actually real is a grace that is afforded anyone who is humble enough to feel what is needed at any given moment. It is the total surrender of self essentially.

448. ..hope is the pillar or corner stone of so many ‘religions’ charities, research projects etc…

     …but I too have felt the falseness of hope and how it distracts us from what is before us leaving us unprepared and unable to respond to a situation; instead being left in devastation and reaction.

     I feel the importance of being sure I am being deeply honest with myself about the things I use to ‘get by on’.

     What concepts other than hope have we been leaning on thinking they are real support when in truth they are not?

449. I went to buy a greeting card recently and I was struck by the amount of wishes, hopes, sympathy, talking about luck and the like, all of which once upon a time I thought were great sentiments to offer another. But now that I know what it feels like to confirm the love, wisdom and grace within a person and how empowering and inspiring that is, all those other sentiments seem to bring a wishy-washy relationship with life that is seriously disempowering.

     1. Good point. They seem to confirm people’s powerlessness.

450. It’s interesting that when we offer people hope it is considered to be kindness. It feels very polite.

     1. It does feel polite, Rebecca and also ‘nice’, and in this contains very little truth which can cap and hold everyone back. The saying is that ‘truth hurts’, perhaps more rightly we should say, “It’s our reaction to truth that hurts!”

     2. Great point Rebecca, I’ve often spoken to people and used hope to get them to do things for me. Which feels horrible and yet it was me being nice, kind and dare I say it super manipulative. Take away hope and it’s then simple truth.

        1. Great point DN. Hope can be used as manipulation. It’s like dangling a carrot and using it to tease.

451. Fiona this is so sensitively written, full of understanding and wisdom. De-tangling the distraction that hope weaves in, you simply being there for your friends in the truth of what you know of passing over, is support in itself.

452. Hope is a form of escapism as one is living in and for an imagined future rather than being in and living with the reality and truth of the moment.

453. I can say hope, like “I hope you are well”, but do I really mean that. I want the other person to be well, but hope, well it doesn’t really come into it. It seems like a bit of a waste of time, and often stops us getting to the heart of the matter, how we live is more effective than any clinging to hope. Great Philosophising Fiona.

454. ‘I define evil as anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence.’ In the case of illness and medical support, we tend to leave the responsibility up to our doctors and nurses and ignore the truth of who we are, because we are educated not to know.

455. The sting in the tail is that there will always come a moment when you consciously realise that having had hope was a waste of time.

456. Yes, hope is a blanket of comfort that we use to wrap ourselves up with in order to not feel the reality of what is happening. Is it loving to allow someone to sit in hope? Why would we allow someone to sit under a veil of illusion?

     1. I agree Rebecca – the relationship between hope and comfort and the harm in them becomes clear to see and feel.

457. Why hope when you can read exactly what is going on?

458. I found myself just about to slip into the very old and destructive pattern of hoping for something to happen the other day. I caught it quickly as it felt so horrible in my body, whereas in the past I probably would not have even noticed it as I used to do a whole lot of hoping. It felt like I was leaving myself behind as I shot into the future and seeing what I wanted to see. I have learned that staying connected to me I don’t need to rely on hope but simply trust and surrender to what is unfolding before me.

459. There are the little hopes we may recognize as hopes like simply going to bed with the half unconscious thought of: ‘tomorrow I start fresh, I give it another go, it will be better, maybe then, let´s see…’.

460. “Hope springs eternal’ ….true, it stops us seeing the reality of what is right there to be seen. When I feel into a hopeful situation it’s like a forward motion in my body that takes me away from myself. Whereas, staying in the moment to see and feel what is right in front of me, even if challenging, keeps me present and more solid in myself.

461. It is no coincidence that ‘hope’ is such a commonly used word or such a commonly indulged activity – in that it is, in fact, the most perfect way to absolve ourselves and each other of responsibility.

462. Reading this blog this morning I am humbled by the wisdom that you have and that there are people in this world who are able to see through such thick veils of illusion and guide humanity back to the truth. This blog is a beginning of that return.

463. After reading your blog, I can see how when ‘having hope’ there is complete giving away of your power to an idea, an image or a dream… It can be a method of avoiding not wanting to see, deal or address something as it truly is.

464. The evil of hope – the blessing of love, as it is available right now.

465. Dealing with and accepting what is before us involves being with and doing what is needed in each moment. When we are sick that might be engaging with a medical treatment and/or bringing understanding to the underlying causes to our ill.

466. A beautiful article offering the reality of the hope mentality and the stuckness of this not allowing one the real opportunity to make changes in how we are living see the root causes and make loving choices from there. Taking true responsibility for our life is an amazing empowering way to live and offers us a very real opportunity to truly heal our life and preparation for the next shared here so importantly.

467. It’s interesting, if we “hope” a situation will change or get better we don’t actually ever have to take action, or take an honest look at our lives and make changes, it doesn’t empower us to take the helm of the ship and to begin to navigate our lives in the direction we truly want it to go in.

468. I use the word ‘hope’ sometimes. And on reflection now, can see how it is a total abandonment of two things; my responsibility and my power.

469. This is such a powerful and potent example of the evil of hope. A brilliant exposure.

470. Being hopeful means that we do not take responsibility like we could for making changes that empower us, hope waits, speculates, in life the more we can embrace the power we have in our hands concerning our health and our choices, the more we truly empower ourselves and free ourselves of perpetual patterns of behaviours and being in certain circumstances and yes our reality is warped if we allow hope to predominate over what is actually occurring.

471. While hope is outside of us and somewhere in the future. Because we always live in this moment and by introducing how we disempower ourselves as we step away from ourselves and this moment where everything happens, can be felt and known.

472. Sometimes illness brings families closer together but it needs to be without sympathy because that is imposing upon the patient and they are dealing with enough of their own feelings without having to deal with our emotions as well.

473. Absolutely, what better way to prepare for our next life… taking the precious time to clear and heal, deepen our relationships and complete this life in preparation for our next life. In this way we take full responsibility for this life and our next.

474. The more I deepen my awareness and understanding about the deeper aspects of life, the more I notice that our beliefs and use of words are flawed. I very much appreciate the responsibility and precision in the use of words inspired by Serge Benhayon. It is astonishing that as shown in this blog some of the concepts we might have glorified all our life could be opposite to the virtue we once imagined them to be.

475. Great insight Jane and something that I will look at more carefully from now on.

476. ‘Hope’ keeps us locked into a victim mentality and disempowered in our life.

     1. Great sum up Stephanie.

477. ‘We can only hope that…’ – sometimes we don´t have much of a say in things especially when it is for someone else to make a choice they may not like to make yet. Do we see where they are at and accept it or do we feel helpless and that we can only hope for any change to happen?

     1. Indeed Alex, hope is disempowering as with hope we choose not to stay in this moment and with ourselves but instead waiting for the answer or truth to be told in the hands of others or somewhere in the future.

     2. Once we allow others to make their choices and appreciate this choice I have found that it also gives ourselves a much expanded range of choices.

     3. When we hope for others what we are really hoping for is an outcome that doesn’t rock our own boats, for if things don’t work out in the way that is wanted or expected what will be exposed in us to look at for ourselves?

     4. Why would we even hope in the first place? – it is like saying that we know and have decided what the outcome should be. Sometimes the exact outcome that we or another person needs to evolve or learn from is not what we might think is best according to our ideals or hope for but exactly what is needed. There is something quite imposing about hope. I remember once really hope, hope, hoping for a particular thing to happen and something completely different happened which was far more awesome than I could ever have even dreamt of!

478. We are all given the choice of how to move to next stage of life be that a new decade or death, every stage has so much to offer when built on from previous learnings.

479. Its amazing to reflect and appreciate how my life has changed for one of “hope” to one of “deepening truth”, from a time when I would hope life would get better to today where I know the choices I make impact not only my life but all others.

480. I can feel how we can put all our energy into hope and then feel let down when we realise how empty it is and it has not worked. It is a passive way of wanting something to change rather than accepting what is happening and why might it be happening. With hope, we are missing a learning and a healing.

481. I can imagine people questioning – but what would a life without hope look like? Or, we need hope, it’s a good quality! But what is being presented here is an opporunity to look deeper at what hope actually perpetuates in society and if it is supportive or if it actually hinders us. When I look at the situations we suffer through because we are holding onto hope of something better, to be hope is not supportive. When I look around me to people who, rather than coming to terms with how things are and perhaps finding truth and joy in how things are, are kept ill at ease while they hold out hope for something different.

482. Hope is just another way we avoid feeling what we have felt and facing up to what is there for us to look at, and by living in the future hoping things will play out differently does not deal with the here and now.

483. I wonder how much living in hope interferes with our ability to face and accept what is front of us to deal with?

484. I have pretty much eliminated the word hope from my expression. Feeling into the word ‘hope’ feels like a big void, an abyss that draws us deeper into the place where the outside world feels ‘hope’ is necessary or all that is left. It’s a lot like the word ‘worry’ – very destructive and draining.

485. Hope need not be all that is left when facing the deepest challenges of life, because there is always truth to come back to. Truth therefore can be our greatest ally because it will always confirm how amazing you are, because that is the truth.

     1. Reading your comment made me realise how lonely “hope” is. It is the perfect way to keep us disconnected from our truth.

486. This has given me a true feeling of just how many lessons and opportunities are missed through living in hope.

487. Thank you Fiona! When I see a sad story of a desperate parent or partner trying to do everything in their power to “save” a dying loved one it seems to me to be such a drain on that family as life is put on hold whilst every cent and every moment is focus on achieving the almost impossible goal of healing that one child or person. I can see the evil you describe here as it drains away the life force of the living and takes away the acceptance of the illness and the healing of the family relationships.

488. Hope debilitates, and prevents us from being truly present and doing what needs to be done in the here and now.

489. ‘Like a magician’s trick, hope distracted them, drawing their attention away from what was really taking place before their eyes’. I know this one well. I have witnessed someone dying, and with all efforts focussed on keeping them alive, the opportunity to truly be with that person in their last months and weeks was missed.

490. When we are ‘hoping’ for a certain outcome we are creating false pictures in our minds which will never be the reality of what unfolds or is lived up to, so we set ourselves up for disappointment. Acceptance and feeling what is there to be felt is far more real and leaves us with a sense of clarity to move on.

491. Yes Jane, when we bury our feelings we are delaying the time when those feelings come to the surface again to be dealt with and healed.

492. Very true. Hope has got me into trouble on more than a few occasions. Often I use hope to mask my knowing of a situation I have read. This dishonesty always leads to disappointment.

493. Hope to me is synonymous with irresponsibility. We hope for a cure without allowing ourselves to see the true cause of our dis-ease. When we do this we miss out on the great blessing that illness offers.

494. “The Evil of Hope” – what a eyeopening title Fiona, and your post an eyeopener to the truth of this. To have hope is to not see or to choose preventative blindness to what is there to be accepted and therefore to be healed.

495. ‘This outward focus means that we never look inside to see what this illness means for us or the part we have played in it. We miss the opportunity to heal the root cause that this illness is presenting.’ It makes a huge difference when we understand that illness always has a root cause within ourselves, from all our choices over lifetimes.

496. Hope can keep us struggling forward down a path to a future that is not real, and in doing so it keep us from dealing with the reality of life as it is – this is not to say we must give into despair, but we need to meet the reality of life with openess and a willingness to see what needs to be done to heal and move on, not to the hope of a better future, but to the knowing of a true way forward.

497. Hope is such a “nice” and accepted way of being, your blog title really grabbed me because I haven’t looked closely at hope and how it plays out in life. It reminds me of sympathy, also accepted and seen as good, but it gets in the way of there being a more true and loving expression, and seems to confirm emotion and at times victimhood. This is a great line “In hoping that ‘something’ will change, we avoid taking responsibility for these patterns we are stuck in.” I can also see how hope plays out this same way for me, I hold out for a picture to eventuate, I invest and have hope, which is so imposing as it’s a kind of demand, instead of accepting and being with life exactly as it is, and me being in the full power of my essence.

498. I have always felt that hope was a ‘rabbit hole’, a distraction from the issue at hand that I could get myself lost in and not address the issue, but I never really knew why. I felt I was wrong, and that if I didn’t have hope I was negative and pessimistic because we all seem to live in hope of a better world. What you have shared with me here brings it home to me, and not waiting but getting on with being the change that is needed in the world.

     1. Hope seems to be a distraction from responsibility.

499. Hope is a great distraction from reality.

500. You mention how hope is used to comfort ourselves. We think of both hope and comfort as supportive things but actually both are very harmful. Unimedpedia: http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index provides some fantastic quotes and audio one each of these words that clearly exposes the harm and brings greater understanding.

501. Hope is like having one of those hats which dangles a hot dog in front of your face… You can keep grasping and chasing it, holding onto the idea of one day ‘getting there’ but all it will do is exhaust you and wear you down till you give up on ever getting anything.

502. Well said Jane – burying our feelings leaves them to fester and lead to ill health if we do not choose to seek true healing.

503. Fiona, this is an absolutely amazing blog. Wow, how evil is hope? I didn’t realise the extent of this until I read your blog. You have exposed so much here for me to digest and to observe.

504. Discussing hope is a very worthwhile discussion, for I feel that there is layers of how ‘hope’ has infiltrated how we are with others and even ourselves. It really feels like an abdication of responsibility by choosing to not see the reality of a situation or be invested in a particular outcome. As your sharing exposes, when we are full of hope we are unable to have very needed conversations, especially at end of life.

505. Hope is no different to a belief in a God or some saviour that will save us from our dire circumstances. We are our own saviours as we also choose the quality of life we will experience.

506. When people talk about things that fall outside of our scientific and religious ‘norms’, about the power of forces that we can’t see, there’s a tendency to get mystical and imagine beings much greater than us. We hope ‘Lady Luck’ or ‘good fortune’ will intervene. The Way of The Livingness is the complete opposite of this. It presents that we all hold amazing strength in the quality and way we live, that our every choice determines our whole future. We couldn’t be more powerful if we tried, how ironic then as you show Fiona that we see ourselves as victims of life dependent on a life raft of ‘hope’. It’s a big lie.

507. Your blog gives a great perspective on the word hope which is so accepted in society, even expected.
     It takes us straight out of the present moment as it truly is. I agree, that is evil.

     This line stood out for me, because there are no coincidences, and hoping instead of learning makes us miss out on so much.
     “This outward focus means that we never look inside to see what this illness means for us or the part we have played in it. We miss the opportunity to heal the root cause that this illness is presenting.”

508. Hope is an avoidance of truth and an attempt to bury what is truly going on, which will never work as our bodies always expose our choices.

509. This is so true…”Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop…’ … we place hope on one thing and when that ‘fails’ we move on to the next and the next, constantly striving for some ‘saviour’ outside of us – when in fact we save ourselves! It is only the responsibility we take for ourselves that truly heals.

510. When true wisdom leads the way, hope has no place. It would be like offering up a candle to lead the way in the blaze of the full sun.

511. Like so many other words, the meaning of the word evil has morphed into something that has made it totally meaningless and insignificant in terms of current daily life. It is great to clarify your understanding “anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence”. This means the word has a direct significance in daily life, one that is very much worth considering (this webpage is great to check out in this exploration http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-evil.html). And what a booby prize is ‘hope’ when you see it clearly in such light.

     1. It is true isn’t it – we see evil as something that hurts us but we never consider something that takes us away from our essence or doesn’t let us know who we are as evil. Taking these words back to their roots can offer us a healing if we are open to bringing a fresh look and a fresh approach to a life that is not working.

512. Living in hope is the same as living in a fantasy world of things that may never happen. I would much rather live with what’s actually happening now, than pretend it is otherwise.

     1. I agree Julie. Hope seems to be ‘dressed up’ into something positive, yet if we were to say that we are living in a fantasy world, or avoiding the reality of the situation it is a lot more honest to feel this than be in the denial of a situation through hope.

513. Hope seems to keep us one step removed from the reality of a situation. Its only when we get real that we can feel what is actually going on, what life is reflecting back to us – when we do feel what is truly going on then we have an opportunity to engage differently and not ‘hope’ the problem will go away.

514. Without hope there would be far more truth in the world and it is truth that heals.

515. Hope does keep us from looking at the responsibility we all have in creating a situation.

516. “… In the end, hope leaves us surprised and completely unprepared when the reality of dying inevitably hits home….” This is quite poignant, as you can get the sense of how ‘hope’ creates one to live in a bubble, until the very end when it pops and then you get dumped onto the ground… ouch!.

517. If I am in hope that something will be different then I am distracted by the power I have to change circumstances, to make things occur as I wish. And that doesn’t mean it will be perfect, but more a prefect imperfection where I have done everything I can learning along the way and leaving myself with no regrets.

518. Hope is denial of the what is.

519. Cancer is different for everybody – they way they respond mentally, emotionally and physically. Generally a cancer diagnosis is seen by many as a death sentence but I know a few people who have some form of cancer and live for years afterwards. We can only live with what is.

520. ‘We give generously to charities dedicated to researching medical conditions, in the hope that a cure will be discovered.’ ironically this giving to a research which is not truly focused on finding the reason behind our ills actually delays our return to truth and prolongs our time in hope.

521. Reading this I could feel how hope is choosing to walk around in life with eyes closed, it’s an acceptable way to not see truth in front of our eyes.

522. Hope is a desire to not to have to deal with what is happening but wanting to wish it away and have a positive conclusion. Everything that happens to us happens for a reason for us to learn and to grow.

523. I read a number of historical treatises and fiction and one of the central insights there was how much more painful dashed hope was than if the hope never existed in the first place. Hope can be very harmful.

524. Brilliant blog Fiona. I too have witnessed the evil effect of hope in relation to passing over. Someone close to me spent 4 years living in hope with a terminal diagnosis. There was nothing to indicate anything they were hoping for would eventuate as their body was quite rapidly shutting down and everything had to be done for them – they were not even able to speak or eat in the last years. Yet all the focus was on prolonging life until a cure was found. Nothing was accepted or dealt with. When the moment came where passing over was clearly inevitable, there was a panic and they too were met with all they had not accepted.

525. ‘Hope had prevented them from using the precious time leading up to her death to heal and prepare for her passing.’ – Hope seems to not allow us to be in the truth of the situation – as is shared here – and in my own experience – hope is based on a picture and when that is not met we feel lost – but what if we could start to be honest and look at preparing and healing for the reality of the situation.

526. As I read your article this morning Fiona, I reflected on how much love and fullness we deny ourselves under the miasma of hope. When we are ‘hoping’ we’re not fully in the reality of what is actually happening and hence, we are not present, in the moment. To live our lives like this means that death and dying is always something unspoken of (in the hope that it won’t happen), with an underlying dread of what we know is inevitable. This is far far from the glory we are meant to – and can – live and pass over in.

527. A great example for me of the difference between on the one hand hope and the loss of empowerment and on the other hand responsibility and empowerment, is playing lottery. The attraction with the lottery is often the ‘hope’ of winning lots of money and resolving all your problems. This keeps you hooked, looking outside of you for a hand-out and dependent. There is a vast difference between this and the deepening of your understanding, awareness and ability to respond to life in order to heal and resolve your issues.

528. For many, it is only hope for something better that gets them through a situation – but as you say, if you are in a situation and all you can focus on is a potential but currently imagined future, how well are you really able to deal with the present and address what needs addressing.

529. Whilst a physical or emotional sickness or condition are a definitely reality that requires healing and deep understanding, these are all on the surface of the situation. What if the use of hope creates illness and disease that may manifest sometime later as a physical or obvious emotional condition one needs support with? Could our medicine only be dealing with the surface and not seeing the real roots of where these ailments begin?

530. For a time I was into ‘positive thinking’. Thinking positively was a definite improvement to thinking negatively – which had become my habitual way previously – but it did not change how I felt within. For that I had to make a true connection to myself within, the innateness I am in the inner-heart. Like hope, positivity is a preferable thought process, but I have found, to make a true change, we have to ‘heal the root cause’ of our dis-ease as Fiona shares here.

531. Hope is a distraction from the power of our presence.

532. Coming back reflecting on the term ‘true hope’ as I would say we can use the word hope in a supportive way when we know what we mean by it – the word true qualifies hope to be something of value, something we can rightfully say that there is a potential worth to put energy into, not like in giving one´s power away and wait for something miraculously to happen but to move forward in a way and towards the potential that activates it, ie. it is my choice and action I give energy to. Such ‘true’ hope is very real and productive.

533. Living in hope for a future cure does not allow us to be in the moment dealing with the actuality of what is happening, as your friends discovered. We miss out on so much richness connected to the process when we jump to an end result.

534. When we rely on hope we are living for the future rather living in and dealing with the present.

     1. That was just what I was thinking Jonathan hope is something out there that can’t be quantified or known and so we can paint a picture of what we would like it to be but the reality is often very different.

535. Hope is a distraction from dealing with whatever situation we are in.

536. Hope creates an empty hole within us that may never be filled. It drains us of power.

     1. Yes, it makes us see everything under a certain light which means what we see is either exaggerated or barely visible compared to how it looks in truth.

537. An exposing blog about the true activity of ‘hope’. Fantastic reveal Fiona, Thank you for sharing.

538. In my view the problem with hope is that it is a positive intention or wish for a certain outcome without any real action or responsibility taken for why things have unfolded the way they have.

539. Such a great thing to do to bring attention to the evilness about hope, I have to admit I have been a hoper so often in my life and now realise how futile hope is, it’s just like relying on luck.

540. It is great you have written this, I often received the ‘I hope you feel better soon’ or ‘I hope everything will be ok for you’ kind of sayings and this always would make me feel uncomfortable and feeling like I had to be thankful of receiving the gesture but to me it never felt real to receive and more a cover up and not really being honest and real with each other.

541. Hope is the shadow that hides the truth!

542. Why carry on oblivious in the face of all evidence? Yes great things beyond our wildest dreams can and will occur but all of this must start with steps towards truth from ourselves. When you truly open the door and are willing to change, awesome events that far exceed your expectations arrive, and make hope look like the flimsy fluff of illusion it truly is. Thank you Fiona for blowing hope out of the water.

543. “Like a magician’s trick, hope distracted them, drawing their attention away from what was really taking place before their eyes. Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness. In hoping that ‘something’ will change, we avoid taking responsibility for these patterns we are stuck in” – powerfully beautiful, and written too Fiona, the evil of hope stopping us from seeing what’s really there to be dealt with and healed.. for an evolving and expansion even in the light of one’s passing.

544. ‘I hope you get better soon’ ‘I hope you like it’ ‘I hope you can come’ these are simple examples of the way we use the word ‘hope’ and it makes me wonder if it comes from our own neediness. In terms of health, they will either get better or they will deteriorate, depending on the circumstances, but attitude of mind certainly helps in all cases, so that even the process of dying can be a joy.

545. Evil is a strong word, but I love how you have defined it Fiona…”I define evil as anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence.”

     1. Yes and when we define it in this way some of the less obvious things in our societies become exposed for what they truly are.

546. Fiona, working as a nurse and continuously encountering such situations would give you a great overveiw of how damaging hope can be. I too came from the approach that hope was not anything ‘bad’, but have over the years come to understand how dis-empowering it can be for us to go into hope. In this disempowerment, we pretend that the outcome will be fine, rather than working with the case as it is.

547. ‘Hope’ – another big fat lie to be hooked into with the use of this word.

548. I hadn’t considered ‘hope’ in the way that you have highlighted Fiona. Yes, it is misleading and masking of what really needs to be looked at. I can see how it can keep us away from reality.

549. This is an awesome article on something I’d never considered, but now seems clear as day. Hope is not being realistic, it’s living with a level of expectation.

     1. Yes, I hope we all understand it more now…ha sorry could not help this one slip in…;)

550. Love this Fiona, really love what you are sharing. We use the word hope without really considering it…and I love that you shared this story because it makes it so easy to understand.
     You can still care and care a lot.. without hoping.

551. Hope and faith feel very similar – both leave us blind.

552. I would agree with you Fiona, I know of several people who have pinned their ‘hopes’ on finding a cure for their illness and left in the devastation when reality finally catches up with them and there is no ‘hope’ left.
     And for the loved ones that remain there is anger because ‘hope’ let them down.

553. There is so much that can be said for acceptance. This is the true beginning for healing and evolution.

554. Hope encourages one of two things, to imagine that there is an element of random in the way the Universe works, or to believe that our own choices and actions are somehow divorced from the way life unfolds. Both of these grossly disempower us and neither of them is true.

555. Hope is evil indeed – it leaves you wondering in a way that is depending on an outer outcome, that actually is never coming your way. This is giving your power away to an energy of evil that never lets you truly know what you truly know.

556. I can feel how hope is wanting a change to a situation rather than looking at what is going on in our lives or expecting it to change by itself. We may not like it, but we get whatever happens because it is what we need, so far better to look at that and learn from it, than wishing and hoping for something else.

557. You’ve asked some great questions in your blog Fiona, and it’s true that when you look at ‘hope’ under a microscope does it really inspire or create change? Initiate action from humanity to speak up for what’s true?

558. This is a very detailed examination of Hope and how it plays out. And I relate to it in a very similar way as it hope has us standing still waiting around hoping that something or someone will come and make things better. Hope feels like a word of inactivity.

     1. Good point Leigh, my sense is that it disempowers us and leaves us to its mercy, with its false wishes.

559. I know I have done this before, that is search and search for alternative treatment and remedies in order to try and heal an illness to avoid having an operation. Looking back on this I can see it was done in the energy of hope and how this energy is evil, you are right, because it becomes an off road that we wander down on and veer away from the truth, our truth and in turn if we carry along the false road of ‘hope’ we leave honesty behind and when we leave absolute honesty behind we will never get to feel the truth/root of the illness and get to learn the very valuable lesson of why it was there in the first place in order to truly heal and evolve. This is a great one to have our attention brought to .. the evil of hope.

560. It seems like you can have “hope” or “truth – we can “hope” the situation gets better without truly taking responsibility for it, or we can embrace the truth and look at the truth of why we are in this situation and commit completely to our healing.

561. I keep coming back to this blog because for most of my life I was told what a great thing “hope” is when the truth is it’s far from great, in fact in my experience hope takes me out of reality and truth and into a fantasy dream land where I never need to look at what choices or actions have got me to the place I am today. It’s amazing how one word can change our entire relationship with life depending on how we approach it.

562. Evil is such a strong word. But it definitely makes us sit up and take notice. I have come to understand that ‘evil’ is anything that takes us away from our true nature of love. Hope definitely takes us away and leaves us feeling empty and ‘hopeful’. The opposite of hope is to connect to our inner essence and know that we have everything we need right within us. To surrender to this dissolves hope and we are free to deal with the reality of what is occurring.

563. Hope is the antidote to responsibility. When we choose to take responsibility for a situation, it can unlock doors we had never perceived were there, while hope keeps us knocking on the open door that led to the situation in the first place.

564. So, with each step through life we can choose to hope for something better than what we currently have playing out before us, or we can choose to see the reality of what is happening and to actually address the deeper conditions that live in our bodies which are working away to influence our each and every step.

565. Reading this has really highlighted how the word ‘Hope’ and its insidious energetic intentions are really entrenched in our beliefs systems, to the extent that we see it as a good thing. Thank you for bringing my attention to this false belief and the underlying energy it comes with.

566. If we are caught up in hoping for a different outcome then we are abdicating responsibility for examining how we have reached a particular situation and what we can proactively do to work through it, including preparing for how we pass over and how much we can heal in this life before we do so.

567. This blog has been a real game changer for me. Since reading it the first time I have been shocked to see how many times I say ‘Let’s hope so’ or ‘I hope so’. It’s been so interesting. My sons have just started back at school and when talking to work colleagues about they were excited so far, I kept blurting out ‘Let’s hope that continues’. I thought to myself, what am I really saying? And what is happening to my body and what am I imposing on them by saying this? I can feel when I say I hope something is a certain way etc. I’m putting an expectation on a situation or person, and my body is held hard and bracing waiting to see if what I’m ‘hoping’, does or doesn’t happen.

568. My daughter started a new school yesterday and I’m not sure who was more nervous, her or me. This blog came to mind as I stood there in the school yard, as I stood there hoping she would be all right and hoping she would fit in and make some new friends easily. Hope just doesn’t help anything in the slightest; it is useless and a waste of energy, it is the same as worry, another total energy waster.

569. Fiona I love what you have revealed in your amazing blog about hope and illness. “This outward focus means that we never look inside to see what this illness means for us or the part we have played in it.” It seems to be not so easy to face the role we have played in our illness, but as you so wonderfully describe, it is really worth it to be so truthful as it is the honest and respectful way to deal with a disease and or illness. In the end it can be a gift.

570. I love what you have exposed here Fiona, it is a real revelation. I can observe the patterns repeating when we get caught in the idea of hope being our saviour. It takes things out of our hands which is never actually the case. Responsibility is a powerful word and one that if we live by changes our lives immeasurably.

     1. There is quite a different flavour here Stephen… do we hope that things are going to get better (feels pretty wishy washy) or do we take responsibility for what happened to get us here and therefore learn and make changes (which feels very engaged and that we can change our circumstances).

571. Hope is often a sign of not allowing us to go deeper to feel the fragility of the experience for all those involved in the death or any illness and disease. You could say a calling card we use when we have to get real about the situation and bare our true self to others.

572. We all know someone who has died or is dying of cancer, whether it be a family member or a friend. We tend to avoid seeing the truth of any situation and ‘hope’ they will get better. Situations vary, there is never any definite timescale, so the best way to manage it is to be with whatever is, every day, to appreciate our relationship with them in every moment, and not to create any pictures of how the future will be.

573. I once read a comment on beggars, that they can be quite happy because they have hope that things will get better. Once that hope is dashed, it can get very difficult for them. It is as if we are in a cycle of hope and hopelessness or despair rather than seeing what is truly there.

     1. Thats a great point Christoph, that we cycle between hope and hopelessness or a given up state. Either one disengages us and keeps us from committing to the reality of our lives.

574. ” In hoping that ‘something’ will change, we avoid taking responsibility for these patterns we are stuck in.” A great article on hope, a word that is so much used by people, uncovering what hope really means is something I have not been aware of until reading your article, thank you Fiona for sharing.

575. That’s for the awareness of how going into hope can take away the truth of what is before us when discovering how to understand a diagnosis.

576. Hope is such a con. We put so much energy into hoping for different outcomes, attempting to escape the ugly bits rather than stopping to take stock of what is really happening. Accepting the reality of any given situation brings honesty, responsibility and intimacy, especially in cases of terminal disease, qualities that support us in vulnerable situations.

577. Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness. In hoping that ‘something’ will change, we avoid taking responsibility for these patterns we are stuck in. Instead we place our hopes outside of us and wait for the elusive cure, the great healer or the latest treatment. This is so true Fiona, and not only does it not ask us to take responsibility for our choices in life, but it means we are holding back a great opportunity to evolve past the belief we are holding and also help many others as a result.

578. ‘The searching and hoping kept them focused in the future, believing they would eventually find a cure.’ True Fiona hope is evil it is a distraction, it keeps us away from what is happening right now before our eyes and what we do not want to see or feel, the reality, the possibility to heal and evolve whatever the circumstances will be.

579. “In the end, hope leaves us surprised and completely unprepared when the reality of dying inevitably hits home.” So true. How then can the concept of hope be trusted, believed or respected? Surely it is far more enriching and responsible to be open and honest about the state of someone’s health, rather than have to deal with the inevitable fall out of the falsity of hope?

580. “Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness.” Very well said and the example in the blog is very beautiful. The hope for it to go away or not end in death stopped both from learning and growing from this situation.

     1. Yes, it is a powerful loop. I noticed that when people are in hope, everything is rose-coloured while when they are in hopelessness and despair, everything is dark-coloured and neither is true.

581. “Like a magician’s trick, hope distracted them, drawing their attention away from what was really taking place before their eyes.” This statement alone expresses amply for me the insidiousness of the comfort and distraction offered by ‘hope’ and how truly disempowering it is.

582. A poignant article exposing an evil many wouldn’t consider to be so… but you are right… it absolutely ‘allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness.’ and allows us to avoid taking responsibility for what we have chosen, hoping instead that things will change. A must read for all who have fallen for this distraction from being in the moment, and moving in honour of the truth of the situation.

583. What a great blog Fiona. There are so many ways we avoid evolution and this is a great expose of one of them. Reading this I could feel the lack of responsibility we chose when we invite hope into the equation.

584. Hope also cements the belief that illness and disease as bad, when it is neither good not bad. It prevents us from looking more deeply at why an illness is there, what is it that we are meant to understand at a deeper level and it also prevents us surrendering to what is occurring in our bodies and the wonderful amazing people that come to assist us. Hope is wishful thinking and plays no part in healing.

585. Thank you for tackling this rather sticky subject Fiona. Asking the question ‘what better way to prepare for our next life?’ is important. If we believe there is no after-life, or next life then this life can seem pretty random and pointless…and becoming ill purposeless. If however we return to life again, then there is room for understanding the possibility of a purpose to illness and disease – that it offers a healing maybe and that in our next incarnation, we are clearer and more able to be who we truly are.

586. I can feel the truth in what you have written here Fiona, and exposed how hope holds us back, hoping for a change, hoping for a cure, rather than accepting and understanding the blessing of the journey we have been given.

587. Hoping things will improve has us living in the future and is a way to ignore or distract ourselves from what needs to be looked at in the here and now. Awesome blog.

588. When I think about what ‘hope’ means, it is to me a dream that something you desire will happen, without putting any of the practical steps in place. It’s not the things we hope for that are wrong or misplaced but the fact that we are giving our amazing power away to the idea that things happen on a whim or by chance. When you look back at human history, and all the lessons we’ve been shown only to return to hoping for a better outcome, it truly is evil as you say Fiona when each one of us carries in our words, movements and gestures the ability to shape the future. It’s like the person who’s driving the car saying they have no input into where they are going. If you don’t, then what are you doing?

589. Awesome reflection on how ‘hope’ keeps us distracted from taking responsibility for what is indeed happening in our own bodies! I love your style here Fiona – up front, real and so inviting of healing and true acceptance. Hope certainly is putting our money on the magicians trick when we don’t need magic; we just need to connect to the love within us and allow our relationship with it to guide us.

590. There is a big difference between hope and understanding. Hope is something we blindly rely and bank on in difficult times without looking at a) the full reality of what is going on and b) how our actions can often make an enormous difference to the experience or outcome of this, whereas understanding is something we can apply which prepares us for any potential situation if we can explore the different factors of what’s going on and give ourselves the space to consider how events might play out, including our role in these.

591. Hope gives apparent comfort but in fact keeps us where we are and resolves nothing.

592. Hoping feels like having given up on life or a situation in it.

593. Letting go of hope is a big step in the evolution of humankind. How many times do we say “”I hope you are well”? The word hope is embedded in our everyday language in phrases that roll off the tongue without thought, mere polite cover ups, whereas if we took time and space to observe and read a person or situation we have the opportunity to open up a deeper relationship with ourselves and them. Reflecting on our hopes for others it feels like an imposition. How do we know “the best thing” for them? Sometimes something is happening to them that feels painful or uncomfortable turns out to be just what they needed to live through to come to a deeper understanding of how they can live a more fulfilled life. The same with ourselves.

594. Through the presentations of Serge Benhayon, and the sharing of perspectives such as this and of blogs by students of Universal Medicine who have faced or are facing terminal illnesses, I have learnt much about the importance of the end-of-life phase. Preparing for our passing – and the quality of our livingness during that preparatory stage – is critical if we are to move to the next incarnation with as much understood and healed as possible, presenting a clearer vehicle for service.

595. ‘Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness.’ I see this same dynamic play out in the charitable sector in which I’ve been involved professionally for many years. The foundation of much charitable endeavour is hope for a cure, a better world, the end of poverty, etc., etc.. Little actually changes as a result – but I suspect we’d start to see true and lasting change if the focus moved to investigating and understanding the root causes of those problems.

596. There is so much love offered here. Most people would presume hope to be a normal and good thing. What you present here blows that apart. A loving blog that exposes the illusion we choose to hang onto.

597. Hoping is a self-deceiving form of giving-up-ness.

598. Great blog, gets to the point of what is really going on. Do we live in hope or do we look at what is going on and feel why this is? Are we open to heal or are we hoping for the fix and the cure to get us back “well” again. What i love about being open to heal is that its not outcome based but provides an opportunity to deal with things that span lifetimes of abuse.

599. Hope definitely takes us away from ourselves and from being in the moment, how many of us have totally wasted energy on hoping we win the lottery or hoping for a fine day instead of just accepting where we are at and getting on with life.

600. Hope is not real, it is creating a picture of how we want things to be rather than being with what is.

601. ‘Hope’ is like a ‘coat’ as you say Fiona, that we put on in the ‘hope’ this will it will make a difference so when we find it does little to nothing we put another coat on. Until we are weighed down with so many coats that we live in the ‘hope’ that one ‘coat’ will hope-fully-pull-a-rabbit-out-of-the-hat, then we give up and die with the “hope that a cure will be discovered.”
     Great way of dealing with our life is as you have shared Fiona; “Surrendering to and taking responsibility for the process, supports the looking at, dealing with and healing of old patterns, deepening of relationships and completing anything left outstanding from this life. In this way, we are released from these impediments and left free to move on.”

602. The process of hope would be less prevalent for those who believe in death not being the end but the end of that cycle. For hope is clung to as a fear of losing something we don’t want to lose. But if we view life more as a constant evolution and that each event before us is a lesson then it lessens our need to view life emotionally and gives us the space to see what we can learn from each event we encounter. We still would feel upset about losing a loved one, but not lost in the process of hoping that doesn’t happen.

603. Apparently Aristotle said, “Hope is a waking dream”, indicating that we shape this waking dream to suit us and our wishes, our expectations, our ideals and beliefs. In that it has little connection with reality or the present moment but catapults us into the future with nothing much left to attend to what needs attending to right under our nose.

604. Hope holds us in circumstances which we should really seek to understand and make changes to be responsible.

605. In effect hope takes away any responsibility we may have towards what is going on in our lives – disease or no dis-ease! We can have all sorts of ‘hopes and dreams’ for the future – all ideals and pictures of how life might be but not allowing us to be present with ourselves in the here and now, and be responsible: How am I feeling right now, what is happening in my life and how does it relate to how I feel about myself?

606. There was an entire presedential election campaign run on “hope”, and look how evil that turned out to be.

607. “Hope allows us to stay stuck in a loop, repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness. In hoping that ‘something’ will change, we avoid taking responsibility for these patterns we are stuck in.” Looking outside of ourselves for some miracle to save us when the beautiful miracle comes from becoming aware of these detrimental patterns and the opportunity to change, and although that doesn’t mean that that will ‘fix’ the body, by being willing to honestly look within to get to the root cause of our illness and by taking responsibility for our choices, plus the support of the Medical profession, we are supporting the body for a true healing to occur.

608. Hope is an illusion based on a picture that things will be as we want them to be, a ‘way through life’ whereby the difficult stuff is relegated to ‘have nothing to do with me, it’s all in someone else’s hands’. Hope abdicates personal responsibility by being in denial of the truth of what is occurring and knowing we are each playing a part in that, no matter the scale of the situation.

609. Such a well written and openly honest blog. To be given hope is to be fed a false belief, as what is there to be gained from telling someone that something may not happen when it just as equally may happen? This really exposes how evil the idea of hope is, and removes any form of responsibility that may otherwise support someone and those around them to prepare for what inevitably lies ahead.

610. In the past I have handed over my power (not sure to what??) to ‘hoping for the best’. Reading this blog today I can see how irresponsible this is, in not wanting to take full responsibility for the situation for the way that it is and my part in it or out of it.

611. I can so relate to this. My Dad had cancer when I was 15, and the staff who looked after him, and us as a family, were very caught up in hoping that the treatment would work. Of course, it’s natural to want a treatment to work, but I never actually thought he would die and we never talked about it. So when he did, in spite of the fact that he really was quite ill, it was a complete shock. I can totally see how hoping is like a blind optimism that takes us away from and blinds us to reality.

612. You are so right regarding the word and energy behind hope ‘repeating patterns and cementing beliefs that do not heal the root cause of our illness.’ Also being in the energy of hope we are not allowing ourselves to learn as to why we got the illness and dis-ease in the first place (the root cause of our illness). If we allow it an illness or dis-ease can be a blessing. It can stop us and ask us to take stock of our life, stop the momentum we have been living in, ask us to care and love ourselves more and reflect of what is important in life and what needs to be changed. If we are ‘hoping’ we are missing out all of this which is essential for our true evolution. Great summary of the word evil ‘anything that holds back our growth and development and anything which perpetuates the separation from the truth of who we are or which delays the healing needed to return to our essence’

613. I love the frankness in which this blog is written. We do need to look very honestly at this concept of hope and what it is all about and why we use it. When I hope for something to occur it is like I give my power away to something outside of myself to intervene and help rather than working with what I have within myself to support me. What I have within is my divine connection.

614. Expressing our hope that someone or thing gets better is a dishonouring of what is being shared. It’s a dismissal of intimacy for it is a way of swiftly moving on from any uncomfortable feelings or reflections that are coming our way whilst pretending we care. But really it’s a way for us to forget.

     1. Yes – perceptive of you. There is a massive dismissal in “I hope everything works out for you’ as there is no true connection or engagement of support here – simply an avoidance in going to the root of what is being shared.

615. Yes the way you describe it hope is very irresponsible and disempowering.

616. I was reading yesterday about the tensions with the USA and North Korea and there was some commentary in Q&A for for readers. The burning question being, how likely is it that there will be a war. The response was ‘Hopefully not’. The underlying concern, even panic was clear to read through the lines – ‘hopefully’ gives us no real assurance. It tries to tuck the problem away and buy time and an illusion of things being OK, when they are not.

617. The outward focus of hope keeps us stuck in the ‘victim’ mentality, refusing to see where our choices have been irresponsible. Being present with an illness and working through whatever presents itself is deeply healing. Just wanting to get over it and let life return to how it was, simply sets the scene for illness to re-occur in a myriad of ways.
     “This outward focus means that we never look inside to see what this illness means for us or the part we have played in it. We miss the opportunity to heal the root cause that this illness is presenting”.

618. A very honest look at the word ‘hope’ – yes it certainly says that we want things to be a certain way and that we have expectations which are pretty toxic. But truth has no emotion or expectation – it is what it is.

619. The word ‘hope’ comes so loaded with investment in outcomes. It denies the truth that events unfold in a ‘negative’ way because of the choices we have made. If we are investing in hope we are denying this truth. When ‘negative’ events happen they are offering us awareness and the potential to make different choices. For me, whilst this may present challenges and an ouch this is welcome. I’d far rather be open to the evolution on offer than be in denial of it.

620. Hoping exposes the fact that one is in disconnection to oneself and the flow of life, it is like standing on the sideline watching life like a soccer game hoping for one´s team to win, an outcome we have no control over. So basically hoping is giving one´s power away.

621. The use of the word hope makes me consider how deeply entrenched our irresponsible ways can go. We use hope in the way that it offers something that sounds or feels great but this is deluding of the real irresponsiblity at play.

622. Hope is held as a positive that allows us to keep going in difficult circumstances, but consider if we are hopeful for a future positive outcome are we really able to accept the current situation in all its aspects?

623. Preparing for an upcoming death is not easy but it feels so important to talk about the reality of the situation, to appreciate its seriousness, and to allow the true feelings to be expressed, with nothing held back.

     1. Death is often the elephant in the room with serious illness. ‘Hoping’ it will go away has never worked, because it happens whether we are ready or not.

624. Brilliant observation Fiona I witnessed the very same thing with my fathers death. When it came to facing the fact that he was riddled with cancer and there was no way hope would prevail he went straight into a coma never to come out of it again.

625. Shock and regrets threatened to overwhelm at a time that can offer a deepening connection to self and those around us. Whilst there is so much to consider and bring understanding to, it does appear that ‘hope’ can distract those involved from fully being in the love that is available.

626. Well said Fiona…. Another possibly even more pernicious aspect of hope is lotteries or gambling in general… cul-de-sacs of awareness and dis-connection where literally 100’s of millions of people place their ‘hope’ for a better life, instead of taking responsibility for the next movement and the next breath which actually will bring evolution

627. When we invest in hope, we’re investing in the illusion, the lie that we deep down know is a lie. We are flagrantly saying yes to remaining in denial and in continuing to feed that lie. I wonder if we do this deliberately, in the ‘hope’ that by being constantly in that level of denial we will forget what we actually know… pun intended.

628. Fiona I get what you are presenting here – about how much denial or avoidance of something, in this particular case illness and disease, can actually lead to us being very unsettled and miss out on a depth of understanding and healing that we may otherwise have gotten to. It’s not that we can’t be positive about things but not to avoid the truth of what is there for us to see.

629. It is a remarkable time of life the end, if you are granted the grace of an illness that allows you to know you are to pass over soon. This occurred for my father and his last days were very special and divine.

630. This is such a great point and I so agree with you, Fiona. Hope blinds us from facing the reality and taking responsibility. It is like telling ourselves that everything is fine when it isn’t.

631. A stunning blog. Yes, hope creates a gap between what we are hoping for and the actual reality of the situation. It’s healing to deal with what is directly in front of us and within us, and sometimes that can lead to what we are hoping for. But we can’t get to that place without being present with what is here right now.Great observations, thank you.

632. I can remember hearing some words about hope many years ago that have always stuck with me as they felt so very true. They were: “Don’t give someone hope as it will strangulate them. Tell them the truth. It may hurt for a while but eventually there will be a healing, one way or another’. Yes, it is the truth that will heal whereas hope simply holds the person in the quagmire of illusion where absolutely nothing will ever evolve.

633. Thank you Fiona for highlighting the word ‘hope’, for I must admit I haven’t given it much thought, and have realised that I was not seeing the evil, and still regarded it as a harmless throw away gesture. Having said that I have always felt the falseness of it and would cringe when people used the word, so obviously there was and still is something to look at. Thanks again.

634. I wholeheartedly agree Fiona. We use Hope to avoid the reality of the consequences of our way of living and the task of dealing with the resulting issues. When we fully appreciate the gift of the illness and the huge healing it brings, we are given the opportunity to step onto the wave and lovingly prepare for our passing over, and hence our new life that will inevitably appear again. The evil of Hope as you say keeps us focussing on outside solutions rather than surrendering to the diagnosis and lovingly bringing our current life to a harmonious closure, ensuring our relationships and affairs have also been deeply cared for.

635. So often we stick our heads in the sand and hope that whatever it is that we do not want to be a reality will just go away without our having to do anything whether this is a dis-ease or another person’s negative behaviour. Hoping in this way disempowers us and as you say is evil because in this activity, or lack of it, we cannot claim what is true for us or take the necessary steps to turn our lives around.

636. What you write about hope is very true; I have experienced it for myself when my late husband was diagnosed with cancer in 1997. He was given a short time to live but actually lived 3 years longer. We lived our lives in the uncertainty and hoped that a miracle might occur, clinging to anything that looked like it might prolong his life. In this time we got on with our lives but we never took the opportunity to spend quality time together or truly discuss his impending passover. I feel hope was there stopping me really accepting the reality of his illness. We rarely talked about the possibility of his death and I know I didn’t really want to look at it, so hope was the false provider that was the underlying factor that kept me going. I would certainly do things differently now and being able to share and express how we both felt would have brought us together more instead of relying on hope to get us through.

637. “In hoping that ‘something’ will change we don’t take responsibility …..” so true Fiona. We thus don’t deal with the present issues but have a picture or expectation that a magic solution or pill will come along, rather than dealing with the reality before us.

638. Great blog Fiona, it has really made me think about something that I really hadn’t thought about before and how much of a hope person I am, always hoping for something. This line is a beauty, ‘In hoping that ‘something’ will change, we avoid taking responsibility for these patterns we are stuck in’. This is so true although the things I hope for are more out of my control like I hope Kim Yong Un and Trump don’t start firing Nuclear bombs around the place.

639. When we say ‘I hope I have passed that exam’ there is nothing that can alter what has already been written during the exam and we have to accept the end result of that. So we have to accept and learn from the consequences of something that has already occurred..

640. The more I think about hope and how it takes us away from being responsible and therefore being able to look at what is going on and heal, the more I realise that I used to live out most of my days in hope. From being at school and not wanting to be there, to hoping for a better relationship with a partner, whatever the situation I would use hope instead of developing a depth of love and care for myself. Today hope is not a word that comes up for me and at the same time I feel more alive than ever.. therefore it is clear that evil and hope do go hand in hand, no matter how harsh that may sound.

641. There are many sayings on hope, like hope deferred maketh the heart sick, hope springs eternal in the human breast, if it were not for hope, the heart would break or while there is life there is hope. What do we actually say with these sayings and more importantly, after reading this blog, what are we avoiding if we use these. The word hope is so common in our language and to me in using that we are actually neglecting our responsibility and instead put our faith in an outcome we do not want to take responsibility for in the first place.

642. If people cling on to hope when caring for someone who is dying, they miss the opportunity to truly be with the person, accept where they are and course of the illness. Instead of hoping for an imagined outcome, miracle or prolonged life, we can instead be fully present, support and respond to their needs in the here and now. This honours the person and process of dying.

643. There are so many possibilities we can open up to such as feeling life, reading and understanding situations and consider our own part in everything that occurs. Within this hope never surfaces and life is much grander for that as in reading this piece I really got to feel how horrible and life sucking the word is, a block to what is really going on.

644. One of the traps with hope is that when we give up hope we can feel hope-less which feels even worse than hope so we go back to hope as that feels comparatively better.

645. Hope to me is like a hot air baloon, it lifts you up when you are ‘down’ and makes you feel like everything’s awesome, up there in the clouds but all that has happened is you have gone on a short trip getting totally removed from reality. Life for so many of us can be nothing but a succession of these rides, all the time keeping us away from real life on the ground. We spend so long escaping is it any wonder things don’t go so well? As you powerfully show Fiona a truly new start would be for us to see through the smoke and mirrors of hope.

646. Your article got me thinking…How often do we automatically use the word hope, ‘I hope you have a good day’, ‘I hope things improve for you’, ‘I hope you get that job’, and on and on. Hope is a very loaded word. It may be used with the best of intention but it lacks truth. There is nothing that happens without a cause and we can bring a greater understanding to all of life when we learn to read what lies beneath.

647. To hope that a certain outcome happens contains a sense of holding onto a picture of how you think something should be for the better and not feeling what is there to be felt and responded to, learnt from and understand and appreciate. Whenever I’ve hoped for something I’ve held my breath, crossed my fingers in the hope that what I want to happen or not happens happens according to what I want. But what if I am wanting a specific outcome so as to avoid a lesson I actually need to look at and grow from, even if is difficult or painful?

648. This is such a wise consideration to present for us to contemplate Fiona, thank you. Investing in hope sets us up for the disappointment we will inevitably feel when we have placed all our focus on something that lies outside of us and not deeply within. It is also a clever and very socially acceptable way to dodge the part that we play and thus the lesson/healing on offer by way of the circumstance we find ourselves in. Hope says to us – ‘there, there, it will all be fine, you did not write the script and everything will be ok when the magic pill, cure or the like is found that will take all this mess away’… thus seemingly leaving us reneged of the personal responsibility we otherwise feel when we look down and see the pen is in our own hand only.

     To bust the myths that surround illness, disease and dying, there is nothing ‘random’ and there is no ‘bad luck’, just a series of choices playing out that stem from the energy we have chosen to align with, be that love or be it not. Also it needs to be said that often it is our realignment with love, after a long hiatus, that allows for a healing of this magnitude to occur. Therefore what we call ‘death’ is detrimental in this instance for us to perceive as bad luck or punishment because it prevents us from taking in full presence, the next step required in our journey home back to Soul.

     1. Yes and one part of hope is that when hopes are dashed there is often a lot of anger which is yet another distraction.

     2. ‘To bust the myths that surround illness, disease and dying, there is nothing ‘random’ and there is no ‘bad luck’, just a series of choices playing out that stem from the energy we have chosen to align with, be that love or be it not’. With this awareness, the consequences of certain choices and how they play out in people’s lives is no surprise.

     3. So with what you say Liane you actually mean that with hope we invest in this one and only life and comfortably forget that we have lived many lives before and that after this life we will have many to go in our return back to the original beings that we are.

649. Great reflection on hope Fiona. Hope is often considered a ‘positive’ thought or gesture, though it is a bit like wishing on a star, it takes us out of the picture assuming life just happens and we have no responsibility in how it plays out. It is quite disempowering.

     1. Very true Victoria. How can we ‘wish upon a star’ (place all our energy on an external source) when we are that very star in the sense that all we need do is live the magnitude of this light from within us back out to the world. Therefore it stands us well to appreciate that all we need to address whatever life seemingly throws our way is already in us and there to be accessed through our connection with it.

650. So often you hear people say, we are living in hope that a cure will be found or that things may change, then as you say Fiona, all focus is on looking outside of themselves and never once taking responsibility and looking at their choices, or within to seek true healing and arrest of the belief or behaviour that has configured in their bodies and brought on the dis-ease. In disempowering ourselves and playing ignorant in this way a huge opportunity is missed and we then take the same way of being into our next life to be lived yet again.

651. Great article, thank you. I have often used hope to avoid reality – in big and small situations – and avoid taking responsibility. And rarely has it ever ‘turned out for the best!’.

652. A powerful and exposing blog Fiona on the evil of the word hope. To me, hope is like having a rope around our neck that squeezes the life force out of us by living focused on the future, disconnected from our body, instead of dealing with what is required in the present moment.

653. The true harm in living in hope is revealed.

654. Interesting and timely read and I agree how hope keeps us away from dealing with or facing what needs to be done. I was on a course recently and we were discussing why someone will stay in an abusive relationship and I said how hope is a strong motivator to do so as the abused is always hoping the other will change. It seems this is a way of not taking full responsibilty and just focuses on our needs rather than what is real and harming.

655. It’s challenging to consider this in the face of a situation such as the one mentioned. Society doesn’t support us to look at why illness and disease eventuate and it certainly doesn’t support us to take responsibility for it. Instead it delivers us with a ‘hope’ package. And really, it’s just an extension of pain and suffering as it gives us something to hold onto ever so tightly.

656. Yes I totally agree with you, but having not been in that situation I would never pass judgement on those who are looking for cures. I imagine actually most of us live in a state of hope, wanting things to be better in the future, while avoiding taking responsibility for what is happening right now. The greatest evil I would then deduce is to not live in the present, anything else is robbing you of the divine connection.

657. Hope is often used when we actually feel the truth but don’t want to accept it.

658. Fiona this is so true, I used to live my life by hope and the reality was I never felt complete. Let go of hope and you start to live life based on truth and what the reality is in the present. Only then can the world really change.

659. This blog has opened my eye to how hope can be a distraction from dealing with reality. Hope is like a wish that might or might not come true. While we can hope for a positive outcome to a situation, we should not relinquish the power we have to act, plan and face the realities of life.

660. I understand what you are saying about hope and how it can be used as a distraction almost, away from what is truly going on or what is truly needed. I feel we need to take care when talking about others experiences and how we see them. It’s one thing to speak of our own life experience but when we detail others for me it needs to come from our understanding personally of how that relates to us and the world. It would seem from reading this article while the expose of ‘hope’ is needed there is something missing from the personal understanding and care. It not to raise critique of anyone but to say there is a personal relationship here with parts of this article that don’t quite hit the mark for me.

     1. Interesting observation Ray. I completely agree with what Fiona has written and it is great to reflect on the harm of hope. Perhaps what you are offering is the deeper understanding that we all need to come to these truths and understandings in our own time and way. I feel Fiona also expressed that in that she did not impose her understanding on her friends but shared her observations without judgement. Judgement is possibly even more harmful than hope, but observation and awareness is healing.

        1. They are possibly two peas in the same pod, hope and judgement. Hope under the guise of being something that is ‘good’ is possibly the more difficult to see, while judgement already has a bit of a ‘bad’ rap.

        2. ha ha that is so true!

661. Hope – waiting in vain while not taking action to produce what we are waiting for.

     1. Love this capture of hope Alex.

     2. Great definition of hope Alex. Thankyou.

     3. I love how you have captured hope Alex – so spot on and true. For me hope is like being kept in a vacuum wanting or expecting things to change yet doing absolutely nothing about it yourself. So keeping the environment and your choices the same yet expecting a different outcome.

662. ‘… the hope they clung to prevented them from accepting the diagnosis or the reality of the rapidly growing breast cancer. It allowed them to escape into denial and ignore-ance, hoping that everything would eventually be ok.’ Yes – hope doesn’t allow acceptance and to take responsibility for what is occurring. This reminds me of the teachings of the church that says if you can repent your sins you will go to heaven. Like hope, this offers no recourse for responsibility or room for evolution.

663. Your blog is oh so gorgeous Fiona. Very confirming and very heart warming and empowering. Hope is no different to belief and we are giving our power away to something outside us “in the hope” it will change. It is a word that sounds nice but leaves us utterly power-less.

664. Thank you Fiona, a brilliant exposure and example of the harm, delay and illusion of being hopeful. It’s like hoping a relationship gets better or hoping dynamics at work just all of a sudden changes and it is all harmonious. There are so many areas in our lives that we use hope to sit and watch it all go by instead of seeing our part in it and making changes within ourselves that support a different way. Hope as described here feels like wishful thinking, it has no substance no foundation from which to grow, heal and evolve from.

665. I really enjoyed reading your article Fiona. It gives everyone a different perspective on how to deal with medical diagnosis, including one of a life threatening medical condition.

666. Fiona I love what you’ve shared here, it is very true. Hope distracts and robs us of presence with what we are facing, and in the case of a situation where one is facing the end of life, prevents the acceptance and surrender to the process that is unfolding. I can see that this would make all the difference to the way everyone involved experiences it.

667. Fiona, what a great insight from a nurse’s perspective on the consequences and effects of hope.

668. This is a very helpful example to understand why hope is never the answer.

669. ” … Suddenly with only days left, my friend and his partner were met with everything they had avoided facing. Hope had prevented them from using the precious time leading up to her death to heal and prepare for her passing….” A profound and truthful description of how ‘hope’ can rob one of time to evolve, yes- that is evil

670. The tragic irony is that hope leaves us in a constant state of anxiety and… hope. We have nothing to fall back on apart from the illusion we create which inevitably reveals itself for what it is.
     Conversely, choosing the path of self-responsibility opens us up to the beholding we have always longed for – without a skerrick of hope in sight.

     1. That’s what I feel in my body when I am hoping for something to be a certain way. Looking back on my childhood I can see that part of my anxiety was from hoping things would be different at home and at school. Now that this has been brought out in the open it will be interesting to see and feel all the ways we undermine ourselves with hope.

     2. True Katerina (and loving the word skerrick!). How far from honesty are we, let alone truth, if hope is lauded and seen to be a kindness, a virtue, when in fact it is rendering us paralysed in a perpetual loop that cannot see the irresponsibility inherent within it.

671. Totally agree Fiona. Hope is like wishful thinking, it has nothing to do with what is actually happening and it can conveniently abdicate us from our responsibility. It is becoming much more widespread knowledge now that epigenetics, the way we behave and our lifestyle choices have a lot to do with the illness or disease that we end up getting. This puts our healing in our own hands and let’s us see more clearly how we can change and either pull through this time around or clear our way for the next life.

672. How true that hope is a focus on the future, and a momentary escape from the present. I know from my own experience that to hope for something depletes me of my loving power that is found in each moment, and this power actually propels me forward, where as hope locks me into one possible scenario and shuts off the endless possibilities of how my future will actually be.

673. Your reflection makes me consider the terms ‘real hope’ and ‘false hope’, describing the difference of having a chance that a possibility becomes reality and putting hope into something that right from the start has no or not much chance to become real. In general I agree that we use the term hope mostly to invest into an outcome we would like to see or achieve and thus distract us from dealing with what is really going on right now. If we understand it as seeing a real, tangible chance or possibility of how something can actually develop the term hope would much more imply to do whatever it takes right now to further such development, ie taking responsibility and the required steps.

     1. Yeah so true. We’ve measured hope!

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