Hope is not a campaign phrase. It is not the fluff in a bedtime pillow. It is not a myth. It’s an energy signature that obliterates Darkness and locks the hatch on despair. Hope is not the light at the end of the tunnel – it’s the tunnel itself, leading us out of the prison we’ve built brick by brick from our own fear, mortared by our own self-imposed limitation.

I’ve noticed that since the doctrine of “Hope and Change” appeared across every TV screen in the known world back in 2008, a vast number of people have burned out on, and then shelved, this very important energy signature. Thanks to our pop culture’s ability to grind anything into a dead horse, “hope” went the way of “extreme” —  just another over-used word for a nation that is “over it”.

The problem with our love-hate relationship with catchy concepts is that Hope, unlike “extreme”, is not simply an adjective used in flashy packaging – yet we’ve deemed it as such, now rolling our eyes whenever the word is used as if someone is trying to resurrect “Where’s the BEEF?”  We’ve forgotten that before Hope earmarked a generation in a political campaign – it held great meaning.

Now, as the United States creaks and moans beneath the spiritual weight of these changing times, something that was absolutely bound to happen no matter who was captaining the ship in Washington, poor Hope has lost its credibility. We have forgotten the very meaning of such a powerful energy signature, and have deemed it a pipe dream. We have taken out our own fears of what we will never get back, as a nation, on the same word that once brought us together, to great action.

Hope is not a liar.   

Hope is the fuel that ignites us, and propels us into our own unexplored possibility. It is the dream builder, the encourager — our own secret cheering section. Hope slams the door when Darkness slips its fingers through the crack in the jam, widening the doorway to our own doubt. To wrap Hope in a “disappointment costume” is a trick of the Dark, with Darkness betting that we will take the bait. Darkness relies on our moments of fear and sadness in order to use our own pain as a cloak. This cloak is then tossed over the energies in our lives that we know work for us, in order to convince us that we no longer recognize our own familiar path.

If you find yourself losing Hope, ask yourself: “Is it really as bad as it feels?” This is very important, because how we feel is not always accurate. For instance, I can feel nauseated and dizzy from eating bad chicken, but that doesn’t mean the world is actually spinning. I can feel like “it’s all coming to an end”, but the planet is still going to rotate at 1,038 miles an hour (at least at the equator), which means that the sun will rise again and a new day will be had. Our feelings are valid, but like anything in life, are most accurate when tempered with a decent amount of perspective.

Hope is a funny thing, because without it, we have no motivation to continue onward through difficult times. You can see why Hope is a valuable target marked for destruction by Darkness. Think of Hope like a supply convoy heading up into the outback of Alaska, carrying season-breaking medical supplies and food. (Okay, maybe I watch “Ice Road Truckers”.) Darkness knows that if It can just take out the “lifeline” that the convoy provides, the people in the outback Alaska towns will be stranded without the necessary items to survive the long winter. And, they will likely turn on one another for supplies, before perishing in the elements. If Darkness is able to torpedo our Hope, then we will be so distracted as to cut ourselves off from our Parent Creator. We will then turn on one another seeking that Light, until we waste away in our own illusion of separation from Source. I say “illusion” because we are never actually separated from The Universe, but we are absolutely allowed to believe we that are, if that’s what we wish to experience. One way to experience the isolation of “separation” is by losing Hope.

Remember, Darkness can’t take us over, head on, because we are creatures of Light, and the Light, from a Spiritual Physics perspective, is far more dense than Dark. Darkness doesn’t stand a chance in hand-to-hand combat with us, so to speak, so it must pick away at us from the shadows in a way that we will not notice until we believe that it is we, not Darkness, that is the source of our misery. As long as we are distracted by our feelings, we lack the desire to seek perspective. Darkness, being the perfect predator, knows this about the human species, and in fact, banks on our strange addiction to drama and all-things-painful, in order to enact most of Its dirty work. Yet ponder that last sentence – Darkness banks on US to do ITS work. Welcome to the modality of the Ultimate Predator.

As a species, we often times confuse the purpose of Hope energy. In order to Hope, we find ourselves wanting to first feel safe enough to do so — so that we are not disappointed by the outcome later. We want to be able to observe hard, cold facts that support our wishes, so that we feel confident in having Hope. However, the hard, cold facts – the proof that we seek in order to trust ourselves to have faith – has nothing to do with Hope. The facts have to do with outcome.

Hope has to do with navigating the journey.

Okay, this is getting a little abstract, so let me draw this back together: If you have all the facts, you don’t need Hope. The purpose of Hope is to keep our “eye on the prize”, so to speak, to continue focusing that “manifesting energy” into the universe in order to help us get through the rocky spots in life, so that through the Like-Attracts-Like spiritual Physics of our existence, we will bring to us what we HOPE for. Think of Hope like a guide rope, from one building to the next. As long as you are walking on the sidewalk, with your hand on the rope, you won’t lose your way, because the rope is tied firmly from one place to the other.

Which brings me to what I like to call “The Hope Rope”, an analogy for the supportive energy that The Universe provides us with. When we are in duress, The Universe hears our petitions, thoughts, and prayers, and though we are physically unable to see it, The Universe tosses us a rope. Think of this Hope Rope as coming through a vortex that opens up into our future. On the vortex end, the Hope Rope is tied firmly to the “destination” of our Hope, wish, or prayer. Our job is to tie our loose end of the Hope Rope that we’ve just been tossed to the very spot where we are at in our life. This will anchor the rope in not only the future, but the present, because in order for the energy of  Hope to work, it must have two anchor points: Where we are, and where we wish to be. Now that the Hope Rope has been tied to our current location, we can grab a hold and follow it into the future, even if we are not sure where it is leading us.  Just like a guide line between buildings, The Hope Rope is attached to where you once were, and will securely take you to the point that The Universe has tied for you, in the future.

Sometimes, while we are making our journey along The Hope Rope, it takes much longer than we anticipated for us to reach the destination that The Universe has anchored. We begin to second guess whether or not The Universe knew what It was doing when it tied off it’s end. We begin to wonder, since we’ve been wandering for so long, holding onto the rope, if indeed, we are going in the right direction. Often times, when this worry prevails, we let go of The Hope Rope – and BAM, the rope, which has been targeted by Darkness since we tied off our end, is torpedoed — snapping mid-journey — and we are stuck somewhere completely unfamiliar, in a neighborhood that we’ve never been to, surrounded by people we don’t know. We frantically Google our location on our smart phone, because now, with our Hope Rope snapped — we are well and truly lost.

Welcome to the low-rent, high-crime spiritual subdivision called Lost Faith, population 6,000,000,000.         

Of course, we are so busy panicking that we are left standing in a strange neighborhood so very far from the comfort of our own life, that instead of taking a moment to scour the street to find The Universe’s end of the rope, so we may continue our journey – we just freak out, like a lost four year old in a shopping mall. Rather than shaking our fist at Darkness, who sent the torpedo in the first place, we curse The Universe for leading us astray and abandoning us. Naturally, in all this, we take absolutely no responsibility for letting go of the Hope Rope in the first place. Instead, we continue to shake our fist at The Universe while carrying on a one-sided conversation with ourselves about how we should never have “trusted that something would come of it in the first place”.  By the time our schizophrenic-adjacent muttering-and-pacing kicks in, we are so spun out and insane over the thought that we are now lost. We chastise ourselves because we trusted The Universe to take us somewhere that we’ve never been, in order to get us to where we need to be. We completely forget that we willingly went on the journey in the first place.

This is where Darkness strikes the death blow. It waits until we are worked into a four-year-old lather, pacing up and down alleys in this unfamiliar neighborhood, sputtering under our breath to ourselves about how we can’t get any cell signal in this Nowhere Place and how stupid we were to go on the journey in the first place. It follows us and waits until we have twisted and turned so far off of our path that no one will hear us scream as It traps us at the end of a dead end, and torments us with our own insecurities about trusting ourselves.

We, not Darkness, have just created, and allowed ourselves to be trapped in, our own worst hell: The notion that we have been abandoned while blindly trusting our Parent Creator to get us safely to our destination. At least, that is how it FEELS. However, we’ve learned that feelings aren’t always reliable, and with a little perspective, we are able to see how this all really came to play out:

Because of our loss in faith regarding The Universe’s ability to anchor us in the future to the destination that is best for us, we panicked and let go of The Hope Rope, mid journey. We could have, at any time, taken a few seconds to calm down, reach out, and find the rope. Or, look around the street and find the frayed end, after Darkness broke the rope. We could have tied that rope to our current location, and continued onward, because as long as the energy of Hope has two anchors, it can fulfill its function. Instead, we bought the Illusion that we were suddenly separated from our Parent Creator, and we strayed farther and farther from the last known location of the snapping rope, until we got lost down twisted dark alleyways. Like a true predator, Darkness only stands a chance with us if we are separated from the pack.

If you are feeling like you have lost the grip on your Hope Rope, reach out and feel around, to see if it still there. Chances are, it is right where you left it before you were hit with a wave of doubt about the journey that you are on. If you can’t find it, don’t panic. Perhaps Darkness had time to torpedo the rope. Just look around under some refuse in the street called “doubt” and “fear”, find the rope, and make a decision to tie it to your new location — even if it is halfway through your journey. I promise you that The Universe did not give up on Its end. The Universe did not give up on you. Your Parent Creator will never give up on you, or your journey, as long or tumultuous as it may seem.

If you’ve looked everywhere  — under every corner of your own doubt — and you can’t find the snapped end of the rope, just call for another line to be thrown to you. The Universe, who threw you the first line, will throw you another. Start fresh, tie your anchor point down in the midst of the strange neighborhood, and continue on in your journey. Sometimes, the very act of The Universe tossing us a second Hope Rope is enough to get us through. The key to success is believing in the process – believing that the Hope Rope is indeed – tied to your perfect destination.  Without belief, Hope is nothing.

Some may be finding that no matter what they do, they are lost down alleyways and incapable of believing that a Hope Rope is possible. If you find yourself in this situation, let me offer you a little perspective, to offset how you are feeling. Though your life may seem bleak, and though all of your best efforts may seem like they have net you nothing, this is truly only an illusion. True, overdue rent is not an illusion, and neither is divorce, or custody loss, or the death of a loved one, or the termination of a job. Those items are real. The feeling that “nothing else greater will ever come along”, however, is not a real outcome, although it feels “real” in the moment. The illusion is that you are forgotten, and that there is nothing greater. You are never forgotten, even if halfway through the journey, you are lost in unfamiliar territory.

We are not guaranteed a bump-less ride in life. But we are given many, many energetic tools to help us navigate through the rough patches. Hope is an enormous energetic tool, a lifeline to our next greatest destination. Never lose faith in an energetic system that is eons older than we are, as a species. Hope is our guide line. Faith is the knowledge that we can catch The Hope Rope when it is thrown to us. Belief is the fuel that keeps our hand on the rope, even if we don’t know to what or where it is attached in our future – even if we don’t understand why it has been strung through some of the challenging places that we must travel. The energy of Hope is a wink from our Parent Creator. It was firmly in place, and working with gusto, long before the 2008 Presidential election.

Now. Don’t even get me started on the energetic properties of “change”.