About the true meaning of hope

It's the hope that FUELS us.

CARE check*: Where do you go when your hope tank feels low?

Do you make it a priority to refuel?

HOW do you refuel?

Do you look around you for hope or do you look within?

Where does hope live within you?

What gives you hope?

I hope this week’s letter will feel nourishing and hope generating: We have each other and we are hearts in motion. We are the solution—we just need to remember that when the problem feels too heavy to carry or even acknowledge.

I LOVE YOU

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In case this letter gets cut in the email, you can click HERE to read the full post now :)

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Hi CARE friend,

How are you today?

It’s a very tenderizing world we live in, right? And today I’m wondering if we can let that be okay. If we can let that be part of the experience, part of the curriculum, part of the game. If we can trust that it will serve someday, somehow and that good can come from any situation—if we let it unfold long enough—because good is what we are made of.

It’s 10 degrees outside… New York is covered by ice as if to invite us into a long, reverent pause and an intentional surrender to powers that cannot be controlled by force.

Those powers include the weather of course, but it also includes the force yielded by our unconscious collective shadow.

The white coating seems to be here to help us swallow what cannot be digested and to remind us that there is comfort and protection to be found, even in what feels like the darkest days.

And as the light caresses the ice, it is magnified, giving our surroundings an overwhelming glow of kindness and hope… as a promise and, again, as a REMINDER that there is good to be found in every event.

Monday was Martin Luther King Jr Day. That was what mattered most on Monday:

The legacy that one deeply embodied heart could leave on Earth—even after having lived for a much shorter time than the world needed him to.

Yes, it was ironic given what was going on in the country whose soul he had stood up so vibrantly for… but beyond the irony, to me, it was a symbol of HOPE.

Hope for what can be done. Hope for the guidance of Love... Hope for the lemonade we’re going to make from the sourest lemons.

Now I’m not here to talk about politics, other people do that so much better than me. I’m not here to discuss the electoral process itself, again it’s not my place. I’m here to tend to the fears of those who know that words and beliefs matter… which sucks when one of the most powerful men on Earth doesn’t believe that we are all equal, worthy, precious, made of Love and for Love.

It sucks when we see that most country leaders have forgotten (or never let themselves learn) that Love and only Love can ever heal, LEAD and prevail.

It sucks because we literally have a world—as it relates to the human networks I mean—led by Fear.

And Fear is not to be demonized! You know me. I revere all our emotions. (And when I don’t, I know I’m the one who lost the plot.)

Emotions are good. Emotions are our guideposts and guardians. They are valid, needed, and they’re the gateway from soul to form. Emotions are the hallmarks of our glorious humanness and the roots and proof of our sacred humanity. Emotions are the gateway between the two.

Fear has a crucial role in our lives. Fear is here to help us know when we must pay attention.

It’s crucial to remember that Fear doesn’t equal danger, but that Fear always means that our consciousness needs to be expanded.

Our consciousness of what’s happening around us. Our consciousness of our inner world. Our consciousness of where the power dynamic has been disrupted... Our consciousness of our own inner power leaks.

Fear is here to SERVE. Fear was never supposed to lead.

Fear is here to tell us to let go, to leave or to zoom in. Fear is not here to tell us how we should treat others—or not even ourselves for that matter.

Fear is here to remind us that our source of power lies within.

Fear is a TOOL, not a master.

And so what do we do when Fear has taken the lead?

We come back in. That’s all we can do.

And I would like to invite you to read it again in another way: that’s ALL we can do. Because that’s so much more that we could ever know.

Let us remember those before us who modeled how to change the world for the better:

They stood up. They marched. They sat down on the Earth.

They prayed. They sang. They wrote.

They modeled the power of silence.

They used their presence and their voice.

Those were the masters of peace on one end and our greatest artists on the other.

We tend to celebrate the warriors in a world where the wounded masculine has taken over, but those have never been the true heroes of our times.

And I know that most of us are starting to realize it at the deepest level—beyond our relentless conditioning and beyond the battle between awareness and instinct. We’re starting to not only know but BE that truth:

War solves nothing, Love heals all.

Love heals all… It’s not cliche because corny looks cute in movies, it’s cliche because it’s true.

And if the mind thinks it is childish to believe that, it’s because the mind confuses what is childish with what is childlike and what is childlike with weakness.

The mind only compares itself to itself, and since it expands with age (or at least is supposed to), it believes that adults are cleverer! But the mind’s definition of an adult tends to be a disembodied brain… So are we really sure we want to trust the unenlightened mind’s over the deep knowing of a child that is still embodying the love, stardust, wonder and potential we’re all made of?

Byron Katie always reminds us that defense is the first act of war. Because one cannot be at war alone. It takes two to argue. It takes two to fight.

We can stand in each other’s way or we can let people do what they will and find another way that serves.

I believe that’s what Jesus meant by turning the other cheek. If you’ve ever mindfully released your anger on a cushion, you have seen first hand that even the most overpowering energy will let go when it is received and not fought back. On the other end, we’ve all been trapped in anger circles where we all only add fuel to the other person’s raging fire.

When anger is released in a way that serves, it awakens us and fills us up with wisdom. And when Fear is loved, it turns into courage.

We are the alchemists. We are it. We are what we need. We are the solution. And we have each other.

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear”. I have this quote from MLK’s framed in my living room. I look at it often and every time it feels like breathing for the very first time. Like coming alive. It’s that kind of magic spell that never becomes less powerful... It’s a reminder that is always needed, that always applies, and that always feels timely because it is timeless.

We need to remember that hate does next to nothing to the hated object. Hate lives within us. It corrupts our thoughts, suffocates our hearts and leads us into destruction—of self and others.

Contrary to common belief, we don’t make each other feel.

No one can do that. Our thoughts drive our feelings… Nothing else.

I can feel love when you’re around because, to me, the way you act feels loving, thanks to the way I think and receive your energy and act. I can also feel terribly offended by what someone considers to be a loving gesture because it doesn’t align with what love means to me!

We don’t make each other feel.

If I want you to feel my love, I need to understand your love language and to learn what your nervous system needs to receive what I want to offer. If I want to feel your love, I also need to understand why you behave the way you behave and tend to my nervous system’s capacity to keep me open and soft when you’re around.

So if I hate someone or something, the only person that feels that pain for sure is me. This is why loving is in everyone’s best interest! Love is generated from the inside out. That’s how it flows into this world.

And so does hate.

If I hate someone for being hateful, I am at best unconscious and at worst a hypocrite. After all, aren’t I doing to them what they’re doing to me?

Now let’s remember that hate in itself is not evil! It’s a vibration.

The vibration itself is harmless if alchemized by a loving heart. Hate is a mixture of Fear and Anger, so hate that is embodied and felt into completion will turn into the wisest and fiercest source of courage. It will turn into a volcano of Love that has the power to reshape the world we have into the world we hope for.

What we need most right now, in a world where there is so much suffering, so much crisis in need of urgent care, so much terror cutting people off from their essence, their will to live and their innate ability to trust Love, is Hope.

We need to be hopeful—and that can only happen if we are hope FULL.

We need to fill ourselves up with hope.

Because CARE friend, we MUST remember that Hope is a choice.

Hope is also action.

Hope takes surrender AND hope takes intention.

Hope is remembering that there cannot be a solution before the problem arises but that Life is love in motion and that where there is a storm, there is a rainbow… The darkness is a nursery of stars.

And there’s nothing bad about the darkness itself! The darkness is what is unseen, unknown, unprocessed or unmanifested. The darkness is very fertile ground.

We need the darkness just as much as we need the light.

As a reminder, too much light has the exact same consequence as too much darkness: they both turn us blind! We’ve just learned to revere one and reject the other, but that’s not because we got wise, that’s because we got lost.

The darkness is where Life is born. Think the universe! Think the womb. Think the insides of our hearts… Think a seed into the ground. There’s sacredness in the dark.

The light is how Life grows. Think the Sun. Think of a smile… Think of what you find when you look in their eyes. Think of a baby plant. There’s sacredness in the light.

Sacredness is made whole when Light and Darkness dance into each other.

Hope is knowing that the descent is the way to the ascent. Hope is knowing that we need the sturdiest roots to be able to grow into the trees that enliven the world.

Hope is also remembering that it is easier to do our shadow work when our shadow is on display… And our collective shadow is now on the front page of every newspaper: climate change, wars, inequalities that drives the mind to suffocate the heart in order to be able to rationalize.

Hope will not be found on those front pages though. Hope doesn’t stem from outside sources… That’s why some think that hope can kill us! If we confuse hope with reliance on external circumstances or people, or with an inability to accept that what is is and that what was not was not.

Hope can only be created from the center of your heart. Hope can only be manifested from the inside out. Animals, plants, the Earth, Love… they all do their part. It’s time for us to do ours.

And how do we do that?

By refusing to lie to ourselves when it hurts.

By letting our eyes cleanse our bodies and release rivers of healing water onto the ground.

Let’s feel our sorrow. Let’s melt into our grief and let it lead us into rebirth. Let’s acknowledge how much it hurts until our grief can be alchemized into the kind of kindness that we all know we came down here to breathe in and breathe out.

By letting our bodies shake into the fire that will fire-fallow our lands back into fields of gold.

Let’s feel our anger, let’s feel our rage. Let’s free that inner voice that has the power to burn our scarcity mindset into the ground and that wants us to chant in unison: “Not under my watch! Not to those I love… Not to anyone, EVER. Not for one minute more”.

In the air as in the ground, water and fire are what links darkness and light… So that Life can be and become. So that Love can win and take form.

And we also need to remind ourselves time and time again that Hope is not found only in the grand gestures or by focusing on the problem at hand. Hope is born out of safety.

Safety as it relates to a felt experience. Safety as it relates to our bodies.

Safety is determined by our nervous system. Safety is felt when we are soul connected and heart led. Safety requires embodiment and safety requires an enlivened spine and a soft heart area.

Safety, again, comes from the inside out and has nothing to do with the external. We’ve all at least once felt terrified in a warm bed, surrounded by people we love… and a lot of us have experienced how safe we can feel in the eye of a storm when connected to the truth of who we are.

So when we need hope the most, we need to find our way back home to the home that lives beneath our skin. To that inner sanctuary that lives within us and that is always inviting us in, to find shelter and restore.

And how do we do that?

By doing what we love. At least once a day. If only in the smallest way.

By connecting to what makes US feel good, inspired, loving, loved and… awed.

The beauty of a sunset. The promise of a sunrise.

The laughter of a child. The joy of a dog.

The grace of a flower. The majesty of a tree.

The playfulness of a book. The depth of a song.

The softness of our skins. The tenderness of a kiss.

The smell of a favorite candle. The warmth of a blanket.

A quote that hugs our heart. A conversation that widens our mind.

The music of our lives. The rhythm of our bodies.

The precision of a painter. The vastness of the sky.

A heart-shaped cloud in the sky. A rainbow that has reached the ground.

Learning something we didn’t know we didn’t know and that we didn’t know we were yearning to know.

Hearing them say hello. Telling them I love you.

The taste of your favorite food. The delight of giving yourself the treat you longed for.

Dance. Stillness. Sleep. Movement.

The light peaking through the window. An artistic shadow of the wall.

Water when you’re thirsty. A hand holding yours when you needed it the most.

Tending to our wounds. Surrendering to our joy!

Proving to ourselves in the smallest way possible that we have our own back.

Showing to someone in the sweetest way imaginable that our heart is happy they’re alive.

The list is yours to continue my dearest.

Fill yourself with what makes you know that hope is not only a choice we get to make, it is also our default energy when we have found our way home into our heart.

Hope is found by doing what we CAN, right here, right now—and witnessing that we have so much more impact in our everyday lives, in our immediate environment that we realize and give ourselves credit for.

We cannot help everyone, but we can help someone. We cannot do everything, but we can do something. We cannot always make it big, but most of the time we can at least make it tiny . We cannot change the world at large, but we can change the world inside—and that will influence the world all around us, in ways that are obvious to our hearts even if they’re hard for our minds to grasp.

It’s as hard and as simple as that:

We are not powerless, we are embodied power waiting to be called forth.

We are not alone, we have each other! and we have the source of Life within ourselves.

No, we cannot shield our loved ones from hurt, but we can blanket them in love.

No, we cannot shield ourselves from pain, but we can love our pain so fiercely that it turns into a healing elixir for the world.

All Love needs is Hope to reclaim the world. Which is convenient because Hope is made of Love… and because Love is what we’re made of.

So let us be hope FULL.

Let us remember Gandhi's guidance when we need it the most. Let us be the change we want to see in the world.

Let us embody the love we are and remember that it is ALL we can do!

Let us be activists of Love and healing agents of change.

Let us remember that the work that is needed without always, but only always starts within.

Let us be the light that the shadow needs to turn into gold.

Let us be hopeful indeed…

Let us receive Fear’s invitation and let us respond to it with the Love it is here to awaken, unleash and bring into form.

Let us remember that even when we didn’t choose the beginning of the story we are a part of, we can reclaim the pen NOW and make damn sure that this story becomes a testament of Love.

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear”

—Martin Luther King Jr

With kindness, love and light—knowing that all three are born in the sacred darkness that we do not need to fear anymore.

leo