The function of the developed human mind is to find a balance between the inner identity and its outer world, or the spiritual and material worlds. The lower mind with its craving, fear and blind attachment, attempts to will desires into being. With the qualities of the Anahata, or spiritual heart, there are spiritual tendencies that help bring an inner desire into being in a more discerning and less impulsive manner. Hope is the inner belief that what one truly and deeply needs will manifest itself into being. With the purest hope there is no manipulation by the will to bring the event about, but the self rather relies on the power of belief and faith to bring wish into reality. So the medium of the activity of this psychic instinct (as well as others in the Anahata) is neither through the sensory and motor organs nor the imposition of will, but through the eminence of intuitive thought.
Of course people often hope for selfish and trivial things due to the pull of the Manipura (3rd chakra at the navel) tendencies on the Anahata (4th chakra), but the propensity of hope potentially has the sublime function of giving one an inner sense of knowing, despite any lack of empirical, sensory experience. When the Anahata is purified it has the capacity to understand the meaning and ideal of form in the deepest sense. When the heart is pure one can intuit the underlying meaning of a given situation. Here one’s own elevated thinking can apprehend the subtle, cosmic intentions that are being thought into being by the Tao, the Divine Mind. An inner sense of certainty ensues from this along with the belief that goodness will somehow come to fruition, despite the limitations of the personal will to force it into being.
The power of faith or hope is one of the most profound capacities of the human mind. The reason that faith has been so highly regarded as a great virtue by all of the so-called higher religions is that it places the power of will into a force higher than the individual will and egocentric authorship. It thereby helps to bring about the realization that the cosmic will is supreme and gives one even greater faith in the benevolence of the cosmic moral order. This inner, intuitive certainty further inspires one to transcend the turmoil and incessant anxiety of a self separated from Brahma, the Supreme Self.