Hope is a mindset and practice that combines belief in possibility, emotional resilience, and trust in a larger unfolding process. 

Explore hope as a spiritual practice through teachings from Omega faculty on healing, storytelling, and resilience, and discover how to cultivate hope in difficult times.

World-renowned qigong master and healer Robert Peng says that of all the relationships we experience in our lifetime, our relationship to the universe stands apart in its ability to inspire and mystify.

“Despite the high hopes we place on finding happiness at some point in our future, the sad truth is that many of us leave this Earth still waiting to find it,” he says in the article, You Matter to the Universe. “But having a spiritual practice can help you avert that dismal fate. Your life can become a joyful, meaningful journey.”

Contemporary spiritual teacher Jon Bernie calls hope "a thought about a thought called the future. It’s our deep longing to come home. I think it’s important to allow that deep instinct to function and, at the same time, not have it interfere with our deeper path."

Hope as a spiritual practice can inspire us through difficult times, helping us feel connected and optimistic. But some might argue that a focus on hope, on that thing that we want to have happen, is a departure from a true spiritual path rooted in the present moment and acceptance of what is.

However, if you believe, as spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle writes in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, “Life will give you whatever experience is the most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness,” then hope becomes the basis for both personal spiritual growth and our ability to manifest a greater good.

How Storytelling Supports Hope & Emotional Healing

Writing coach Lisa Weinert, founder of the Narrative Healing Program, says there is a healing power that comes from sharing our stories.

“They live in our bodies and have a benevolent purpose,” she says in the article Off the Page and Into the World. “They exist to keep us safe and support our personal well-being, our natural ecosystem, our community, and our world.”

Most people she works with are bringing their stories to the page, she says, “because there’s something they have to say, something they want to shed light on, or some way they hope to help.”

Hope & the Force of Love

The work of author and teacher Tosha Silver suggests that the best approach to hope is not to focus on any one specific outcome, but rather on the recognition that universal intelligence is always working for the highest good—even if it’s not necessarily the thing you were hoping for. In a talk at Omega, she described a concept of offering as a way to connect our longings and our desires with a deep sense of belief in the possibility.

"The best approach to hope is not to focus on any one specific outcome, but rather on the recognition that universal intelligence is always working for the highest good," she says. “Turning your desires, your longings— whether mundane or lofty—over to the force of love allows you to have the feelings that are natural to being human without being a prisoner of them."

In her book Outrageous Openness, Tosha describes a way around the burden that hope can become: “By allowing the Divine to lead the way, we can finally put down the heavy load of hopes, fears, and opinions about how things should be. We learn how to be guided to take the right actions at the right time, and to enjoy the spectacular show that is our life.”

How to Find Hope in Difficult Times

Author Charles Eisenstein also sees hope as a primal element of the human psyche, something we naturally attach to, especially when facing things that seem as if they have gone wrong.

“Hope,” he writes, “shows us a destination. But a vast territory, the territory of despair, lies between it and us.”

Perhaps the difference between hope and wishful thinking lies in how we negotiate that territory. Is despair something to be pushed aside or gotten over, or can it point us in a direction of growth?

In her book, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope, Anne LaMott writes, “All truth is paradox and this turns out to be a reason for hope. If you arrive at a place in life that is miserable, it will change.” She goes on to encourage us “to do what Wendell Berry wrote: ‘Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.’”

Understanding hope as a way of thinking, a cognitive process instead of merely an emotion, can give us a way to move forward. In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, best-selling author Brené Brown writes that hope can serve when:

• We have the ability to set realistic goals (I know where I want to go)
• We are able to figure out how to achieve those goals, including the ability to stay flexible and develop alternative routes (I know how to get there, I'm persistent, and I can tolerate disappointment and try again.)
• We believe in ourselves (I can do this!)

Finding the Fire

But sometimes it takes a bit of fire to get going. Spiritual feminist and activist Sister Joan Chittister draws on the words of the fifth century philosopher-theologian St. Augustine to both elevate hope and spur us on to help manifest its promises. 

“Of the three great virtues—Faith, Hope, and Love—Hope is the greatest,” she says. “Hope has two lovely daughters, Anger and Courage,” she continues. “Anger so that what must not be may not be; and courage so that what must be, will be.”