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Greetings, friends.

There's a growing body of research, science about hope, its impact on health, on mood,

on emotions, and it also has a really central role in spiritual unfolding.

It gives us energy on the path, it opens us to possibility.

So last week and now this week, we're in a process of

exploring hope. If you missed the last one, it's available, you might want to listen to it first.

These are favorite talks from the archives that I chose that really look at what is authentic

hope, spiritual hope, and what are the shadow sides

of hope? What blocks hope? And how do we cultivate hope in a way that really allows for

deepened healing and awakening? Okay friends, may this serve your hearts and your spirits.

The last session, our class, the focus was on the role of hope on the spiritual path

and I was contrasting spiritual hope to egoic hope, a kind of more narrow, grasping kind of hope.

And the mark of egoic hope is that we're wanting certain outcomes to come to pass in the future.

So I hope I'll get a raise or win the Olympic gold or whatever it is. So there's

a kind of narrowed hope. And with it, along with the grasping, there's a kind of a fear

that it won't work out. And there's a real narrowed attention. It's like we miss the

universe around us because we've got this idea of we want just something in particular.

A favorite example has always been this story of an older woman who's kind of sitting on a

bench, a park bench in Miami, and very disheveled man and tattered clothing comes and sits

down next to her.

...