Hope Makes all the Difference

“Never lose hope, my dear heart, miracles dwell in the invisible.” ~ Rumi

Hope is a universal concept, a renewable energy source and it never runs out. We can tap into it whenever it is needed. From poets to presidents to box office hits, hope has captured thousands of generations and helped each of us endure the heartache and suffering that is life.

Scott Russell Sanders, an American novelist, and essayist explains that the Latin word for hope, sperare, comes from the Indo-European root spei, which means to expand. “To be hopeful is not only to feel expansive but to count on an ever-flowing bounty while to feel despair is to feel constrained, to fear that the springs are drying up.”

From the view of the soul, facing an overwhelming array of troubles is an old story. Throughout history in times of great uncertainty, we have told stories and myths which seem to provide us a meaningful path through life and give us what we all need the most–the touch of the eternal. These myths continue to remain relevant because we continue to endure the same challenges of our ancestors. And myths continue to captivate and help by reinforcing the concept of connecting to the old soul within each of us.

The story of Pandora’s Box is an origin myth made up to explain how all the evils came about in the world. It was written by Hesiod in an epic poem called “Theogeny” about 800 BC.

Zeus gives a wedding present, a box, to Pandora, the first mortal woman on earth. Zeus does not tell Pandora what is in the box but gives her strict instructions not to open it. Pandora waits a year, at which point her curiosity gets the best of her and she opens the box. The lid flies open and all the evils and miseries of the world bolt out: Hate, Violence, Sorrow, Ignorance, Jealousy, and Sadness. Pandora manages to shut the box, leaving only Hope, who is hiding under the lid. This old myth teaches us that all the ills and ailments, all the scandals and betrayals and the rampant dishonesty must be faced before the hidden hope of life can be found again. It’s as if things must become hopeless before a deeper sense of hope can return from the depths of the human heart. This level of hope includes a darker knowledge of the world and a sharper insight into one’s own soul.

Hope is found, not by clinging to old dreams or by denying despair, but by surviving it. When life becomes darkest, the eye of the soul begins to see. “Hope springs eternal” is when people begin to see beyond the parade of facts and the litanies of ideologies and learn to trust the deeper values of individual life, as well as, the underlying truths of human culture. Great crises are not solved by simply conserving assets but by finding inner resources that were hidden from sight.

The sense of connecting to the underlying spirit of life and the hidden resiliency of the individual human soul is the source of genuine hope. This level of hope is based on creative imagination that appears when people honestly stay in the tension of opposing ideas long enough to lean into their despair. This intensity and deeper meaning of hope depends upon the profound power of the human soul to imagine and therefore to create, renew and innovate. When all hope is lost and all seems headed for disaster, it is genuine meaning that is missing and needs to be found again.

In the end, Pandora hears a faint voice in the box. When she lifts the lid, she finds hope, releasing it into the world. Everywhere evil goes hope goes too. And all that is touched by evil – so to is touched by hope. So hope continues to make all the difference in the world.

Conscious Eating as a Spiritual Practice

Most people say they don’t have time to meditate, yet we all find time to have three squares a day. Eating isn’t typically associated with the expansion of our soul but with a few mindful moments, eating can be an opportunity to cultivate a spiritual practice.

Here are a couple of ways to invite your soul into your next meal:

Give Thanks

When Ricky Bobby (actor Will Farrell) says grace at dinner with his family in the movie Talladega Nights, he prays, “Dear baby Jesus use your baby super-powers…“His wife interrupts to remind him that Jesus grew up to be a man with a beard. But Ricky Bobby likes the Christmas Jesus better, and continues to pray to “the eight-pound, six-ounce baby Jesus who listens to baby Einstein tapes…” Whatever “saying grace” means to you – praying lays the energetic and spiritual groundwork for the meal. Our thoughts and spoken word create a vibration that influences physical matter. My Native American grandmother used to pray for the spirit of the animals that gave their lives so we could eat. She thanked the farmers who grew the vegetables and always thanked whoever physically prepared the meal. As a child I thought her prayers were too long and thanking the animal was ridiculous, but as I look back on her meaningful words I realize now that it was her way of incorporating her spiritual practice into every eating experience. Each meal was a spiritual journey as she took the act of eating to a deeper level and filled every bite of food with the energy of grace. Through prayer, we invite God into our meal making it a blessed and scared experience.

The Cup Concept

Anyone who knows my husband Barry knows about his cup concept. Essentially Barry suggests choosing a cup to eat out of, so that each time you eat, your meal takes on an element of sacredness. A cup that is the same size as both of your hands cupped together is about the size of your stomach. If you are eating just enough as provided to you by the confines of the cup, you will be less apt to overeat compared to eating from a plate of food on which you can pile lots of food. You hold the cup in your hands, in a prayer-like manner to set your intention. Additionally, I like connecting a cup to the dimensions of the stomach because it is a subtle reminder that your stomach is the “altar of your being.” It is where your mealtime offerings are made to your entire self. If we considered eating as the process of making an offering on the altar of our stomach for its transformation and integration into our being, that might create a different awareness of our intake.

Make a Spirit Offering

Although I grew up Christian, I became acquainted with various spiritual religious traditions through university classes and by studying with spiritual mentors of different faiths. When I traveled to Tibet I noticed in the Buddhist temples that food offerings to the gods are common practice. Food may be simply and silently left on the altar, with a small bow, or the offering might be accompanied by elaborate chants and full prostrations. However it is done, offering food on an altar is an act of connecting with the spiritual world. It is also a means to release selfishness and open the heart to the needs of others.

It is a common practice in Zen to make food offerings to the hungry ghosts. During formal meals or during Sesshin ( an intense meditation retreat) an offering bowl will be passed or brought to each person about to partake of the meal. Everyone takes a small piece of food from his bowl, touches it to the forehead, and places it in the offering bowl. The bowl is then ceremonially placed on the altar.

Hungry ghosts represent all four greed and thirst and clinging, which bind us to our sorrows and disappointments. By giving away something that we crave, we unbind ourselves from our own clinging and neediness to think of others.

If you don’t have time to meditate, use the daily ritual of eating to enjoy and enrich your life by creating enlightened experiences and meals full of meaning.

Are you wearing the best colors for you? According to the ancient art of Feng Shui, each of us has a power color based on the five elements and the day you were born. Sign up for my email list and provide me the day, month, year of your birth and I will send you your birth element and power color!

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Changing

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“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” ~Anatole France

My doctor says I need to change my eating habits, my husband says I need to change the way I interact with him, my fat butt says I need to change my workout routine, and I think I need to change my approach to God. I continually tackle life with habitual attitudes while expecting outcomes to be different. The outcomes don’t seem to change. Not simply doing things differently but becoming a different person, both more aware within and more alert in life is really what I am attempting to accomplish.

It seems that changing doesn’t happen simply because a person joins a movement or converts to some form of faith. Those things can help; they can widen one’s perspective and bring you to the banks of the flowing river of life. Yet the baptism takes place under the water and no one actually sees the change that occurs.

In ancient India hunters developed a proven method for catching monkeys. A big coconut would be hollowed out. Then a hole was made in it; just large enough to allow the monkeys paw to pass through. The coconut would then be pinned to the ground and some tempting fruit would be placed inside the hollowed shell.

Inevitably, a monkey would approach the shell and want the fruit. As soon as the paw of the monkey grabbed the fruit, he was trapped because the fist and the fruit were too big to go through the opening in the shell. In order to become free of the trap all the monkey had to do was let go of the prize it coveted so much. But, the monkey would not let go. The monkey was trapped by what it desired and held onto. I think a lot of us are like these monkeys. Some of us stay trapped and imprisoned, caught by a narrow desire, and also by a fierce and blind unwillingness to simply let go of what we’ve held to be necessary or important.

Many take hold of something and refuse to let go, even when they become stuck in one place, even if they can’t taste the sweetness they first reached for in life. Some hold onto another person and refuse to let go; others take up an idea, a political belief or a religious notion that was supposed to set them free. After a time, they become trapped inside narrowing ideas or rigid rules. Soon they are caught in a trap made of their beliefs.

Change is hard because we hold onto what keeps us from changing; because freedom feels like losing something that we are used to clinging to; because real change means that we would no longer desire what is trapping us.

Genuine change involves pain just as birth involves labor. Many come to prefer the pain that they know to a birth that they can’t control.

There are many religions and philosophies that promise to end the piercing troubles and deadening habits if you only believe in them. However, belief in a spiritual experience of others can only act as an inspiration. In order to truly change we must let go of our habitual ways of being and cut off that which otherwise seems natural and common to the rest of us.

Wisdom is always valuable because it remains hard to find; it hides where most people prefer not to go. Wisdom and true freedom are found when we submit to the way we are intended to go and surrender to the mysterious ways we are intended to grow.

Like Leo Tolstoy said, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

This summer it’s time for me to start changing me.

Michelle Cromer