Against Hope – Spokes of the Wheel

We all start a task with the intention of its fruition delivering some satisfaction. Indeed, it is disgruntlement with a condition and the anticipation of gratification in remedy which drives us.

This goal-bound will toward accomplishment is distinct from hope. Hope is an attachment to a cherished situation: a wish for something outside one’s control. Otherwise one could work one’s will and see what comes of it.

Hope is a wimpy comfort emotion, the positive polar opposite of fear’s negativity. Hope springs from the imagination and is sustained in psychospace as nearly tangible – for if hope were remote, its comfort would be scant. A distant hope is a forlorn thought. Psychospace is the mental map of topographical proximity that conceptual frameworks occupy.

Those in the Collective – the great wad of humanity – live in ignorance of reality. A tiny percentage of humanity is at an elevated level of consciousness: from enlightenment to realization.

Those realized – in unity consciousness – have an existential grasp of the gulf between perceived actuality and reality. The profound insights of the world’s religions emanated from realized teachers (gurus) but have often been warped by lesser men who do not even comprehend what gurus experience firsthand.

The cultural and scientific paradigms of the world come from those in ignorance. They are all almost entirely wrong, as my Spokes of the Wheel books show.

Ignorance is itself mental illness, as the mind occasionally whips itself into a frenzy emotionally or cognitively for its own self-stimulation. Some people enjoy the inner spectacle, as it makes them feel “alive.” Others in the Collective are duller in vitality: either by nature or by practice in insulating themselves from the predations of nattermind (the inner independent agency which is commonly called “the mind”).

In all instances the Collective have diminished awareness, as the mind does not want its victims to see through its own pretenses; though flashes of what life could be with an elevated consciousness are sometimes seen. These are what Collective psychologists call “peak experiences.”

To be emotionally attached to something outside one’s control is a flagrant symptom of ignorance. This condition is the essence of hope.

Hope exemplifies the distinction between ignorance and enlightenment. Succoring optimism for the future, hope “spiritually” nourishes those enslaved to their minds. (Spirituality is lamentably misunderstood by the Collective.)

Those enlightened have no need of hope. The present moment is sufficient. For that is all existence ever is.

Here is the insipid instance of conventional ignorance that inspired this essay:

Christian van Nieuwerburgh, “‘Hope’ isn’t mere wishful thinking – it’s a valuable tool we can put to work in a crisis,” The Conversation (21 September 2020).