Gaia and the sorry-go-round of hope

‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’ was originally penned by Dante Alighieri, an Italian philosopher, who wrote the poem around 1320 in his famous book Divine Comedy. The words (originally penned as ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter in.’) were transcribed on a portal arch as one entered the gates of Hell.

Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.


Although quoted ad nauseum by those describing a transit into a place where the journeyman had little faith in what is to come, this phrase applies equally to any spiritual journey, whether it be in overcoming an addiction, a diagnosis and subsequent treatment of a life-threatening illness or even the approaching death. But hope is antithetical to faith. Hope expresses doubt and incredulity that the seemingly impossible (spiritual transformation) can become possible. Faith, the opposite of hope, is a scientific formula, utilising logical reasoning based on the three pillars of wisdom: experience, research and knowledge. If someone has a life-threatening illness, we do not hope the patient will recover. We approach the illness with evidence-based medicine, an empirical understand of time-tested modalities that have been shown to work and avoidance of those which are at best untested, unproven or harmful. Hope is when our treatment has failed in spite of the best application of medical wisdom. It is the application of hope that signals our entry through the gates of hell, i.e. that we have failed, or our wisdom has failed us.

In these testing times, the circular reasoning of hope, where we look up for salvation, or allow those with ‘contacts’ or ‘influence’ to fix the woes of the world, which in the past did nothing, must be relegated to the new paradigm of universal self-ownership. Someone who is faithful to the cause of spiritual evolution must walk the talk. The M$M want us to give over our rights in exchange for greater loss of liberty, to allow others to ‘fix’ our problems, and for us to vegetate and watch salvation arrive via the IMF, MIC and ETs. As my father once remarked, ‘his acronym couldn’t even rescue a homonym’. Don’t rely on the CIA to intervene on your behalf, or the good ol’ USA to save the fallen in the Middle East. Whenever we relinquish responsibility, what dies first is self-esteem. Only a subservient man has the weakness to enslave his soul to another. The acceptance of responsibility can be harsh, but it is the price of liberty. Individual liberty starts at first knowing one’s own mind and heart and fostering an understanding of who we are and where we fit in this complex and troubling world paradigm.

We do not have to hope that the world will come out right in the end. We have the scientific know-how to solve all our planetary problems, from global hunger, environmental poisoning, to economic strife. We have known the solutions since the 1970s. What is lacking is the motivation. Even if we entered the gates of hell, we should never abandon faith. Abandon hope by all means, for there can be no doubt that humanity’s will to survive eclipses all personal and global acts of self-destruction. Suicide is found not in our genes, only in the ‘other’ who we have given our esteem.

This beautiful world, though she lay on her hospital bed, is still loved far more than she realises. She is our lover, our partner. She deserves our prayers, our faithful administration of tender nursing, our reverence and continued care.

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