We have now passed the winter solstice and have entered a new year-long cycle. Probably not many of us know what is going to happen to each of us during the coming year. There are many possibilities; it is something that was decided a long time ago, staged by our own will. We do not know whether in the coming year some kind of accident or suffering will befall us, just as we do not know whether we will experience some particular joy or pleasantness. For each individual being the new year can be a period filled with great light and happiness, just as it can be filled with an experience of intense darkness. And since human beings at the beginning of the new year normally have no idea of what the year is going to bring them in the way of good or evil, pleasantness or unpleasantness, the only thing they have to live by is hope. We all hope for light, pleasantness and wellbeing. And we stimulate this hope by wishing one another a "happy new year".

Hope is all that remains of the light from Paradise or the higher world that the beings, in the form of Adam and Eve, have left behind. This light in the darkness can never ever be extinguished. The term "hopeless" can never be applied to the living beings' future. In no situation whatsoever can the future be said to be "hopeless". Only created things can be "hopeless". A suit of clothes can be so worn out that it is no longer possible to patch it, since the material around the patches tears. To patch such a set of clothes would be hopeless, that is to say it goes against the facts to expect it to do any good to patch it. Here the expectation, that is to say the hope, cannot become a reality. And the same thing applies to all everyday articles. A machine or a tool can be so worn out or so over-repaired that it would be hopeless to repair it any more. But a being that has such a set of clothes, or such a machine or tool, will nevertheless hope to be able to acquire new articles to replace the worn out ones, even though he is unable at the moment to see how that can come about. Something dark or unpleasant can never ever reach such depths that it completely destroys the human being's hope. Things can come to an end, but the hope of acquiring new things to replace the things that can no longer be used still exists in the being, regardless of whether he acknowledges it or not.

There are human beings that in a given situation are fond of stating that there is no hope for them, but these human beings, whether consciously or unconsciously, are lying. What they are describing as hopeless is the fact that they cannot at the moment see how they are going to be rescued from the unpleasant situation, and consequently it is easy for them to describe it as hopeless. But deep down these beings are certainly hoping to become free; even committing suicide in such a situation is based on the hope of achieving a state preferable to the current one. A being can also have an incurable illness that is rapidly leading towards the destruction of the organism or body, towards what we call "death", and from the point of view of the body the situation is hopeless, but behind this hopelessness there is still burning a tiny flame from Paradise. Also here the being is hoping that the destruction of the body does not mean his total annihilation. He is really hoping for a life in a world beyond this one. But this does not mean that everyone is willing to acknowledge this hope, in fact beings sometimes try to assert both to themselves and others that they absolutely do not believe in any other existence and one often hears them state, "when you are dead, you are dead and that's the end of everything". But this hopelessness is an imaginary hopelessness, one based on self-suggestion. Hope is actually an inbuilt, cosmic, organic process that cannot possibly be brought to a halt.

Hope is therefore not something imaginary, it is just as real an organic function as sight or hearing, but for the difference that it is by nature mental and designed to be activated particularly when all other vital functions have failed. Hope is therefore a tiny paradise-like or cosmic flame of light that is perceived by the being as a vague sense or expectation of a greater light. It is one of those organic functions that are eternal and that are rooted in the super-consciousness. All living beings have therefore, in keeping with the temporary needs of their consciousness, the flame of hope burning within them, and it is turned up till it becomes a strong light particularly in situations where the other senses are unable to keep the darkness at bay. We therefore all have with us in life a tiny, glimmering flame from Paradise, a tiny flame of life's eternal, enormous light, a tiny flame from the Godhead's own eternal radiance. But, as already mentioned, this tiny flame can sometimes be hidden behind ideas that we have acquired as a result of self-suggestion, and we end up with a mistaken view of this tiny, heavenly light within us. Hope is a cosmic, organic function that in every dark situation releases an expectation of light into this darkness, a liberation from possible unpleasantness.

Hope is therefore an inner source of light that reaches the day consciousness. And it is here that this source of light becomes clothed in thought and takes a form that we can put words to. Hope therefore takes on an outer, day-conscious, literal form. As this literal form is created by the kinds of thoughts that govern the being in the area in question, hope now becomes a concrete desire or wish. The being can therefore end up hoping so strongly to obtain for example a certain position at work that the hope has become nothing short of a desire or a hunger. If the being does not obtain the position that he desires this gives rise to a catastrophe in the consciousness, namely the mental agony that we call "disappointment". When such a disappointment occurs the individual thinks that his hopes have been dashed, but this is really not the case. The flame of hope in fact remains totally untouched. What has been dashed is the idea, which the being had formed in his thoughts with the help of the cosmic flame, or energy, of hope. The being can therefore, through his way of being or the functioning of his thought, make hope into a preparation for disappointment. So one can hope in the right way and one can hope in the wrong way. If one hopes in the right way one will never suffer disappointment and life will be unbroken happiness. If one hopes in the wrong way life will be full of disappointment, sorrow and anxiety.

The flame of hope is a neutral source of light. It will always be present, and we can kindle and stimulate our desires and wishes with the help its energy. It is a question of having the right desires and wishes. We can just as easily use the energy of our hope to stimulate and promote bad desires or intentions as we can use this fire to stimulate and promote good and loving desires and intentions. If we use the flame of hope to promote intentions that go against Nature or life, we will eventually come up against disappointments and the unhappy fate that is a result of them. If we promote natural, loving intentions, the flame of hope within us will come into contact with the keynote of the universe in our outer surroundings, and an energised wave of wellbeing will quiver through our consciousness. We call this wave of energy "joy". And joy is the highest sensation of wellbeing and happiness in life. Hoping in the right way therefore with absolute certainty brings us joy, in the same way that hoping in the wrong way brings us disappointment and thereby sorrow and hardship.

So how can we make sure that we hope in the right way? – By controlling our desires. Desires begin as mere tiny sparks, and in the course of time we connect them with the energy of hope. And after this connection has been made they become large, awake day-conscious desires that demand to be fulfilled in order that we can be happy. It ought to be perfectly obvious that it makes no sense to get used to having desires that cannot be satisfied and that can therefore only lead to disappointment and an undermining of life.

Would not life become pessimistic if we were not to hope for the best in the people we meet? – On the contrary. To hope for the best in everyone can never be to hope in the right way. In many cases it would be to hope for something about someone that they could never fulfil. So what then? We then meet the stored up disappointment with respect to that particular being. From being disappointed in a being it is an easy step to showing antipathy, indignation and anger towards that being, something that the being in question is totally guiltless of. The fault is not in the other being but in ourselves. There is nothing that he or she can do about the fact that we hoped for something that did not exist. So it is therefore a question of finding a way of hoping only for something that is absolutely real, something that absolutely does exist. With respect to our neighbour or our fellow human beings, this means not hoping for anything other than what is the really true. It is not such a good idea to hope that a certain being should be an angel, when they are so primitive that they are clearly only able to be a bandit. We should not hope that all our fellow beings should be angels. Such a hope will prove to be a belief in something that does not exist. So in this respect one should definitely not harbour hopes in any other being than oneself. One should involve oneself more and more in the desire and wish to learn to be able to hope in the right way, to learn to only be able to hope and thereby desire those things that are real, those things that exist in order to promote life.

So what is it that promotes life? – Everything that has a part to play in building life up, everything that is able to be a joy and a blessing for other beings. That is where we should direct our energy, without hoping for any kind of payment, in fact we must expect even persecution, scorn and derision as payment. Whenever one can focus one's mind in this way, one is protected against disappointments. And whenever one is protected against disappointments, one can only experience life as being full of happiness and joy. Regarding one's fellow human beings, one has to accept them in their mental colours as they are, and not as one had perhaps hoped in advance that they would be. One will then not be hoping for the impossible. And the same applies now at the beginning of a new year, when we stand looking ahead. It is a question of letting time work its spell, and accepting things as they are rather than as we perhaps today hope or would like them to be. With such an attitude we will not end up hoping for something impossible. This makes it easy to understand Christ's words where he says that we should not worry about tomorrow, each day has enough trouble of its own. This of course does not mean that one should not make all the arrangements necessary for one's job or existence, such as making appointments, signing contracts and doing all the other things that will secure one's livelihood into the future. Christ only meant that one absolutely should not moan and shed any tears about the future. It might possibly turn out to be bright and happy in a completely different way than at the moment seems possible, or in a way that one would today hardly dare to hope for.

Regarding the new year, however, we know quite a lot about it. We know that we are now on the way towards the spring, we know that in a little while life will begin to make itself evident in the plants, trees and flowers, we know that the birds will begin to send their thousand-strong song of praise soaring heavenwards. We know that after the spring will come the warm, balmy days of summer, with sunshine, colour and light covering the continents and oceans. We know that autumn will then follow and that the fields and forests will wither. We know that Nature will wither with radiant joy, and will be ethereally beautiful in its death. The autumn colours are in no way inferior to those of the summer. We know that after the autumn comes the winter. To look forward to these seasons can only evoke joy and a good feeling. Here we are hoping for something that is not impossible. But if we now begin to hope that there will be no snow or freezing temperatures in the remaining part of the winter, and if we hope that the spring will be completely free of cold spells, hail or occasional snow storms, and if we hope that the summer will have a certain number of sunny days or perhaps be completely free of rainy days, and likewise that the autumn will be just as we at present would like it to be, we have made the preparations in our mind and our life for a whole series of great disappointments. Have a look – even in such an ordinary, everyday area as this, people are making life hard, instead of leaving it to Providence and being happy with things as they have at some point been determined in the world structure. As we have not the slightest influence over how many days there will be when it freezes and how many there will be when it thaws and how many days of sunshine and how many days of rain there are going to be in the coming year, it would be foolish and a total waste of energy to complain about it.

As all our fellow beings also find themselves undergoing the seasons of a large cycle, and are at present in the winter zone, it is reasonable that people are more or less "without leaves", in other words without so very much consciousness, and therefore cannot be perfect. Some have come quite a long way into the spring, while others are still asleep in the frosty nights. It is therefore not possible for them all to have the same springtime radiance. Some have an extremely obvious high, humane character and one can sense the burgeoning life of spring in these beings. Others appear to be more robust and rugged. Their life is still very much in its chrysalis stage and as such can only surround them with a representation of death and colourlessness. We have not the slightest influence over the character traits of these fellow beings, just as we cannot represent an evolutionary step or a summer manifestation that we have not yet reached. To torture one another with antipathy, slander, indignation and anger on these grounds is therefore one of the most foolish things one can do and is entirely based on false hopes. One has expected something in Nature and one's fellow beings that did not exist, and so one has to come back to real life, disappointed. The only thought concentration that can cause the flame of our own inner hope to unite with reality or with the life-flame in all our outer surroundings, thereby offering us the greatest experience in life – contact with the keynote of the universe and the resultant experience of bliss or joy in being alive – is exclusively the hope that we can be allowed to be, in all areas, at one with neighbourly love.

If at the threshold to the new year you turn your thoughts and your attention towards Providence calling out: "I hope and wish to be a joy and a blessing to everything in the new year that you enable me to come into contact with; beyond this there is absolutely no need for me to have any other hope whatsoever, since only your beloved will can be done, and that is my greatest joy" – peace will then settle in your mind and you will sense the presence of the Father. And going with Him into the new year will cause all the shadows of the night to vanish.