Illusions of Hope

Some of our illusions are more harmful to us than others. One of the more pernicious ones is hope. It's pernicious because it prevents us from living in the present moment, and from accepting ourselves as complete.

Hope is one of the numerous illusions produced by our beliefs and values that distort our perception of ourselves and the outside world. And it's this distortion of powers of mind that cause us to believe our present conditions are worse than what they really are.

At some point in our lives, we all hope things will get better. Sometimes we just feel powerless. We daydream by creating fanciful images of a better future. This is all part of the mind game played out everyday by our beliefs and values.

Whenever we rely on hope, it means we believe we don't have the power to obtain the things we desire to possess in our lives. And by our reliance on hope, we diminish the powers of mind to produce the things we desire.

In other words, we stop working on discovering the power in our minds and beginning  hoping for miracles to make us feel good about ourselves.   And regardless of how much we hope our lives will get better, we still must empower our minds to do the work to make it so.

Some of us hope that the world will change and people will all get along with each other. While some of us hope everyone will be able to get a job, own a home, and live the ideal dream. Yet it is this hope to change things outside of us that's responsible for our illusions.

Whenever we gain enough clarity in our minds, we can clearly see that there's nothing right or wrong with the world. What we perceive as right and wrong come from our beliefs and values.

Our judgments about ourselves and the outside world are nothing more than interpretations produced by our beliefs and values. In other words, we are using illusions to interpret illusions.

There is a reality that exists independently of our beliefs and values. This is the reality we cannot see because it's distorted by our beliefs and values. It's a reality that everything is all right in world.

There are no great problems facing us, except those produced by beliefs and values. Our minds  manufacture problems to inextricably tie us to the illusions expressing themselves as realities.

This causes us to establish spiritual and moral principles, which are products of our beliefs and values, to assist us with interacting with the outside world.

After we play the outside mind game for awhile, we begin to accept less in our lives than we are capable of producing for ourselves. This limited perspective of ourselves cause us to desire things we see others possessing.

It's rather obvious that from these beliefs and values we begin to hope. So our hopes become desires for things outside of us. This means we can stop hoping for things by searching within our own minds for our completeness.

We were born complete and perfect to express what we need to do on this journey. We have in minds the blueprint for everything we will ever need on this journey.

We just have to learn how to know that we are, for example, apple trees and not orange trees. And to be who we are, we don't need to compare ourselves to others.

So today we bury hope and resurrect the powers of mind. All the power we need is in our minds. And when we discover this wonderful truth, we will no longer have to hope to get better. We will know that we are already complete, but we can't see this in ourselves because of our beliefs and values.

All power is in our minds. This is where prayer, meditation, faith, hope, and our interpretations of ourselves and the outside world exist.