"Hope is vision: it is the capacity to imagine and see a better tomorrow. Hope is a new vision of the future, different from what you are living in the present.
"Visions are integral aspects of most religions, which have always offered a vision of a better life, whether by sitting at the right hand of God in Christianity, by returning to the promised land in Judaism, or through illumination in Buddhism and Hinduism. Every religion offers a vision of hope to inspire us. The external portrayal of these visions in great works of art, musical as well as visual, has enriched and uplifted human beings throughout history.
"Spatial-visual intelligence has saved lives in the most drastic of circumstances. Whatever the form of entrapment — prison, war, illness, or the darkness of our own mind — we desperately need to give substance to the word hope by making it an active part of our lives before catastrophe strikes. To visual-think needs to become an active verb. We must learn visual thinking before we find ourselves in difficulty.
"You can make hope come alive by training yourself in the active visualization of tomorrow, this afternoon, next week, or next year. I am speaking of more than a momentary hope to lift your spirit. I am proposing to convert active images of hope into a way of guiding your life. Sometimes your mind goes vagabonding in the future hoping for the best. At other times it falls into negative projections and visualizations, depending on the mood of the day. If you do not train your mind actively and consciously, you can become a victim, not only by accepting whatever images occur in your present, but also by taking seriously any negative visualizations of the future.
"It is possible consciously to plan a future with hope, by actively constructing the visualizations you wish to make happen. Although it may be necessary to change your visualization as you go along, nevertheless it serves as a guiding star. Your brain is energy."
