What is spiritual hope?
Let’s start with what it is not.
It is not naive.
It is not magical.
It is not about a savior saving you.
It is not about a future moment that is happily ever after.
It is not putting hope into ideas and entities that do not exist.
The spiritual hope that we cultivate on the path of spiritual freedom is grounded in the reality of possibility.
Spiritual hope is grounded in empower action in the present moment.
Spiritual hope is located in you.
Let’s talk more.
3 False Spiritual Hopes and Religious Lies
One type of spiritual hope is built around future expectation and entitlement. If you do the right things, you’ll get good things.
This form of spiritual hope sets up a lot of people for existential crises when life goes in another direction than your ego expects. And life will go in any direction it chooses.
How to Deal with an Existential Crisis
A second spiritual hope is also built around parental authority figures projected onto deities.
Again and again, I see people hoping that a magical being will save them. It doesn’t matter if we call that magical being, “God,” “Allah,” “Jesus,” “Shakti,” or someone else. We are looking away from the present moment to something or someone that is not here.
Instead of freeing you, this false hope typically built around a mother and/or father figure enslaves you to support that is not coming. But rest-assured, your ego will come up with fifteen more beliefs that your spiritual belief is true or that it is actually manifesting in your life when it isn’t.
The third false spiritual hope is all the toxic religious and spiritual beliefs like Heaven and karma.
Heaven is in the future, which links back to the first false spiritual hope. It doesn’t matter what is here now. You are working to get to a “better place,” in this case the reward of Heaven. That leads many people to hoping for something better instead of working on dissolving their issues now.
Karma can be even worse. Along with hoping to get to a better life in the next life and find liberation from the wheel of samara, I have heard people actually blame themselves for their traumas.
“Oh well, I must have been a very bad person in a past life to deserve this trauma.”
I have literally heard this.
Let me be clear:
You do not deserve any trauma!
You are not burning off past life karma. The people who hurt you are wrong for hurting you in this life. There is liberation from that pain in this LIFE. Now, we have to get to work healing you NOW.
Again and again, so many religious and spiritual concepts and hopes are not grounded in the present moment.
This robs you of REAL hope.
These beliefs make you continue to suffer needlessly.
Breathe When Your Ego Is Confronted
I know this spiritual awakening blog post is confronting to many of you. I understand how the ego wants to defend its beliefs as if they’ll keep you safe.
I understand the importance of religion and hoping for better futures.
I don’t immediately bring things like this up with those people who are most in distress.
Breathe.
Instead, I give you tools like the above prompt of breathing and returning to awareness. These tools empower you so that you can build the emotional capacity to handle this truth.
I offer you spiritual tools that you have to do so that you can BE YOUR HOPE.
Yes.
The real spiritual hope lies in you.
Your real hope lies in your ability to see reality and take action in the present moment to lead yourself out of the darkness of unconscious ego.
The light of real hope lies in the here and now.
The Poison of Unconscious Hope
Letting Go of Ego Fantasies
Again and again, we prefer our ego fantasies.
That’s why you have to practice the tools that I and other spiritual freedom teachers lay before you.
That helps to disrupt your ego story with your actual experiences instead of imagined ones.
When you refuse to sincerely do a spiritual tool like coming back to awareness to observe your inner states and ego dialogues, what you’re saying is that you’re already right. What you’re saying is that you’re scared to really look and find out you’re wrong.
Remember this:
The truth can always take another hard look at it.
The present moment has nothing to hide.
Awareness has nothing to hide.
Gravity has nothing to hide.
These are realities. I don’t need to defend them. I can point you in their direction to find out the truth for yourself.
The ego, however, has 5 millions things to hide.
My friend, come out of hiding.
Come back to awareness.
Let go of these fantasies that twist you up in expectation and waiting for the future. Your life is already here waiting for you to truly live it.
Learn How to Be Your Own Spiritual Hope
In my one-on-one sessions, I guide you in learning how to be your own spiritual hope.
So much is possible for you when you surrender to reality.
I can’t ever fully describe it to you.
You have to walk it.
As you walk it, again and again, you’ll have a choice. Do you return to your old ego fantasies and false spiritual hopes, or do you do the work?
It’s a choice that doesn’t feel good and easy at first.
Then it gets easier.
Then it gets harder again as you work through the easy attachments–the stuff you’re already ready to get rid of.
However through sincere inner work, what felt dark and terrible inside of you is brought to light.
You integrate with the parts of you that got stuffed into the shadows of your unconscious ego and body. You feel whole.
The onion peeling continues until there is just you and the realization that
“I Am.”
