One step above Humility

The next energy level up from Neutrality (Humility) is Willingness.  The associated emotion is optimism, the process is intention, the life-view is hopeful, and the God-view is inspiring.  

It seems to me I like to work in this level.  At the Community House the word Hope is all over the place.  We have intentions setting every week for our house members, and every New Year for our Consciousness Explorations community.  Inspiration is the foundation for the way in which I connect to my creative drive.  

I am sure I waiver, and know I can easily drop down into the negative emotions (especially wanting) but as for my positive counterpoint, Willing seems to fit my profile.

There is something I have read about Hope that was written by Rudolf Steiner and has always stuck with me.  In hope there is also a kind of wanting, a wishing that can keep me stuck.  I am holding on for dear life, rather than trusting and letting go.

He spoke of Hope itself being impotent, but when infused with other aspects of soul-force it would fulfill its promise.

GA 58. Metamorphoses of the Soul: Paths of Experience I — The Mission of TruthWhile the creative thinker unites his Ego with the future and gets free from himself, the reflective thinker can look to the future only with hope, for he has no part in shaping it. He can only hope that things will happen. Goethe shows his deep comprehension of the myth by endowing the marriage of Epimetheus and Pandora with two children: Elpore (Hope) and Epimeleia (Care), who safeguards existing things.
If a Promethean man were to stand before the world and speak of the future, he would say: “I hope for nothing. With my own forces I will shape the future.” But a reflective thinker can only reflect on the past and hope for the future; thus Elpore, when asked whether this or that will happen, replies always, yes, yes.
Goethe wished to show that an understanding of the real nature of truth will unite humanity and foster love and peace among men. Then Hope, also, is transformed in the soul — Hope who says yes to everything but is powerless to bring anything about. The poem was to have ended with the transformed Elpore, Elpore thraseia, coming forward to tell us that she is no longer a prophetess but is to be incorporated into the human soul, so that human beings would not merely cherish hopes for the future but would have the strength to co-operate in bringing about whatever their own productive power could create.

Steiner further describes hope as a part of the feeling life, that flows from us as an expression of the soul.  The difference between the lower aspects of this emotional flow, here he gives the example of impatience, is the involvement of higher aims and goals. 

GA 115. Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit — At the Portals of the Senses
Observe, for example, those phenomena within the life of feeling that come under the head of concepts like impatience, hope, longing, doubt, even despair, and you have points of contact between these terms and something spiritually tangible. You perceive that the origins of soul processes like impatience, hope, longing, and so forth, are nothing but different expressions of the constantly flowing current in its striving for satisfaction of the forces of desire and for decisions through the forces of visualization.
Impatience is a desire flowing along with the current of the soul, and it does not cease till it terminates in satisfaction. Reasoning powers hardly come into play there. Or take hope. In hope you will readily recognize the continuous current of desires, but of desires that, unlike those of impatience, are permeated by the other element of the soul life, that is, a tendency of the reasoning powers toward a decision.

Hope has a direction that is oriented towards the betterment of mankind.  Hope is the motivator for that positive action.  Hope is a critical force for the advancement of humanity.  Without hope we drop down into despair when we see all of the corruption and negativity in the world.  Perhaps hope itself is not the final piece in the puzzle, but it certainly would make it impossible to move past the current challenges without it.  Without hope, we would be lost in the sea of despair.

GA 130. Faith, Love and Hope — Faith, Love and Hope, the Third RevelationWe know about the future just as much as we need to know. Life would be impossible in the physical world were not future events to be preceded by hope in this rhythmical way. Would anyone make a table to-day without being sure it would not be destroyed in the night; would anyone sow seeds if he had no idea what would become of them? It is precisely in physical life that we need hope, for everything is upheld by hope and without it nothing can be done.