When is a H.O.P.E. Group not a H.O.P.E. Group?

When is a HOPE Group not a HOPE Group?

Simply put: when it is not a safe place in which to share your story and your concerns… to be who you really are. Has this ever happened? Sadly, yes, but rarely… to the best of my knowledge, less than ten times in a total of over 6000 H.O.P.E. Group meetings. And because it has happened, I publish this blog post to help you recognize danger and how to respond to it. I am very healthy because of H.O.P.E. and H.O.P.E. Groups, as are hundreds of other human beings, and it is my desire to share this rich experience with you.

Please keep in mind that the entire H.O.P.E. process grew out of my natural ability to listen quietly, without judgment, to what another human was telling me about the parts of their story that had the most harmful effects on their life.

I sense that I have always had a belief that every human being had value or at least the potential to find that value. Listening with open heart and mind made it possible for that value to grow into a worthy ideal to be lived.

That listening – what the Quaker educator, Douglas Van Steere, called “holy listening” – sets the stage for our true core – our soul – to come forward and declare itself. It takes courage to tell one’s story from one’s core. It takes courage to listen to it from one’s core. It takes transparency and vulnerability to open one’s core. All of these states are possible in H.O.P.E.

For this to be universal is an impossible ideal; for those wounds of the soul that some of us come to heal are going to take more than one lifetime to develop the compassion that cuts the ties – the attachments – to those people, places, and things that cause the wounds.

The depth of the holy listening – compassion – needed to cut – indeed, to forgive – these attachments varies from individual to individual and from circumstance to circumstance. Some stories are black holes that have incredible capacity to soak up the energy of compassion faster than the attachments can be forgiven… truly a “demonic” situation in which the wounded person hides his or her demons that become more energetic. Now, they begin to reveal their presence in harmful behaviors that usually first reveal them selves in small and subtle ways. It is here that people in a H.O.P.E. Group will begin to feel uncomfortable – unsafe – the response to which is contained in the GoldBook.

Now is the occasion for remembering that the H.O.P.E. Group comes together to find wellness… that remembering that we can come to love ourselves and others by forgiving rather than judging… that wellness comes from the discovery of peace of mind… that comes from understanding and letting go of guilt and fear… that this is a choice which lies within each one of us… that the power of which is the power of love… that helps us realize the promise of hope (that things can make sense, regardless of how they work out, as Vaclav Havel would have us know.).

And, should a participant violate these principles, the power of love makes the “prime directive” of H.O.P.E. work: “Do no harm. Do some good. Benefit someone.” And the person or persons who make the group unsafe can leave the group… or the group can simply leave them… close down.

If your group has become unsafe, we will help you restore that safety. Human minds working together can restore that safety better than letting fear perpetuate the harm.

It is all healing work that makes up a vital component of our metamorphosis… and I leave you with the timeless and beautiful image of Psyche to remind you that we are in the midst of our greatest metamorphosis.
Metamorphosis-blog

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