The last class last week, we explored the role of hope in spiritual life, and I spent

some time contrasting what you might consider as egoic hope, which is hope that's fixated

on certain things going well for myself or certain people, and it's usually got some

grasping and some fear mixed into it. I contrasted that with what we might call spiritual

hope, and spiritual hope perceives life as unfolding in a way of awakening consciousness.

So there's some innate intelligence that's behind the unfolding, and there's some trust

in it and a love for that, and that gives what we call spiritual hope. And I like very

much the way Hamid Ali, a wonderful teacher, described that he said, hope is a state of

trust that everything will be okay. It's a feeling of optimism, an attitude of openness

and true receptivity to what the unfolding of being presents to us. Okay, so there's

this egoic hope, and then there's a kind of hope that really can nourish our spiritual

life. So I was on the phone with my mom a couple days ago, those of you that come regularly,

my mom's 87, and she's very often at this class sitting over here, and so she wanted

to hear what I was giving talks on, so I told her about this talk on hope. And she

started humming. So I thought I was boring her, and then she burst out in song, and the

song was, I'm stuck like a dope with a thing called hope, and I can't get it out of my

heart. How many of you know South Pacific? Anyway, it's called the cock-guide optimist.

So that was, so I thought I'd share that that's another version of egoic hope, and I promised

her I'd let you know my channel for Dharma teachings with her. It's another version

of hope springs eternal. So mature hope. It's not about fairness. It's not like if I work

really hard on this project, it'll be a just reward. There's nothing about deserving

in it. It's not that personal. I read in one rather strange newspaper, a small article

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