MaXIMIze - Hope vs. Faith

As I was reading the May 21st entry in 365 Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes, it struck me that while hope and faith may be related, they are not the same thing.

When you have hope, you are waiting for something to happen - being passive instead of being active. You sit at the crossroads and wait for direction. With hope, you wish upon the star and wait for fate to happen. Most often, because no action was taken to ensure success, what you hoped for does not come to pass. And then you wonder why, never learning the lessons in order to grow and ensure success in the future.

When you have faith, you may rest at the side of the crossroads for a while to recover before choosing a path and walking firmly upon it. With faith, you have a goal in mind, and put in motion the actions required to gain that goal. Even if that goal is not attained, you will have at least made the effort to do so, and you will have learned what works and what doesn't to better ensure success for future endeavors.

And as the song says, "there are two paths, but in the long run, there is still time to change the road you're on."

So which do you choose - hope or faith? Passive or active?

It is one thing to be walking the labyrinth and finding your way out of the maze. It is another simply to be walking in circles.This is what happens when one continues to follow the same path and expecting different results.

MaXIMIze by Shepherding Your Being

I ran across this quote on Twitter today (@philo_quotes):

The human being is not the lord of beings but the shepherd of Being. – Martin Heidegger

With all that is going on – thinking I’m moving forward in life only to fall backward again and feeling like I’m stuck in the round about even though I know healing and moving on is truly an iterative process – this quote struck a chord deep inside of me.

How can I be a better shepherd of my part of Being?

Another item I read today – Joey Garcia’s advice column “AskJoey” in the Sacramento News and Review, 3 May 2012 issue – also struck a chord in me. In her column, Joey notes, “Every relationship is a invitation into spiritual evolution.”  She goes on to advise the questioner to dive into the waves of loss or abandonment that may move into her life, for beneath the waves is “…clarity about the amazing person you are.” She further advises the questioner to “…ride the [waves] and practice deeper self-love and compasson.”

And to cap that, on the same page in the print edition, the Meditation of the week is:

Everything that needs to be said, has been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. – Andre Gide

The question following this quote is:

What voice do you ignore?

I would beg the question, what voice do you pay attention to?

To follow on to that thought, what voice should you pay attention to?

In other words, where should your focus be, really? The fear of drowning in the waves of negative thoughts and emotions? Or diving into those waves, going below the surface to see the beauty that lies beneath?

I’ll end this post with a poem that I wrote on the last day of April – which was National Poetry Month, by the way – that encapsulates the journey, the riding of the waves:

Ride the wave of pain
Until it dumps you on the shore
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off,
Slough through the sand until
The tide pulls you out
To ride the wave once more

You can substitute other negative words for the word “pain” in the first line – fear, grief, anger all come to my mind.

I would also add the idea that at some point, either the waves subside or they toss you so far up on the beach that you can easily scurry away from the sand to the forest and meadows above.

As I stated in an earlier post, a setback is at set-up for a comeback.

Namaste!