I see hopefulness as a stepping stone from hopelessness to feeling better Now. When we find ourselves in a Now that we don't prefer, it is easier to get from hopelessness to hopefulness than it is to get from hopelessness to feeling good Now.

This is really a great question and I'm not sure if i can answer it properly. However here are my ideas.

First I want to adress Tolle's and Kinslow's reasoning behind those quotes. Dr. Frank Kinslow is a former student of the TM Meditation school. Eckhart Tolle was also very into eastern philosophy schools. Those schools originated from buddhist philosophies. The major premise of Buddhism is that all desire is a ego thing and therefore human kinds greatest enemy.

So in Buddhism wanting anything or launching new desires is a bad thing.

No desires = no wanting = no lack feeling = feeling neutral or good = being the whole you

So there is a difference between this buddhist world view and for instance Abraham and Bashar.

Abraham and Bashar advocate that desire is a good thing. They say that wanting or having desires are necessary to expand (which is the universes only job). But they don't advocate to stay in the wanting state. Instead they recommend to have as much desires as you want as long as you align with them. Aligning is the same as feeling that you already have what you want.

Having desires and aligning with them in your mind = no wanting = no lack feeling = feeling neutral or good = being the whole you

Turning now to your question if hopefulness is serving me. Being hopeful means to me that I feel good about my desire. So there is no lack feeling in hopefulness.

However I realized that sometimes I can feel hopeful about a particular part of my desire. But at the same time there can be another part that I can't feel at the moment (because i feel good and hopeful) which can be a lack or resistant feeling.

Here is what i mean.

Let's say I decide that I want to have a new car. So I think about my desire and my first concern is that I don't have enough money. I open Stingray's Focus Blocks Spreadsheed to move my vibration about my financial concerns to a hopeful place. I feel better the more i write new statements. I go from desperation to hopefulness. Now i feel good and I don't have financial concerns anymore, no lack feeling.

Then i do some focus blocks or positive aspects to get in the vortex. After a few minutes I'm in the vortex and don't feel like doing more vibrational work.

Would my hopefulness vibration about that car serve me? It could serve me. I don't feel a lack feeling when I think about my financial situation, right? However there can be another resistant belief/feeling to the desired outcome.

Maybe I don't have financial concerns now but I believe that I don't deserve a new car because I didn't work enough (belief: "You must work hard to deserve it!"). Or i could believe that my neighbours could be jealous and they could take my name in vain behind my back (belief 1: having new nice things is dangerous. belief 2: I need the approval of my neighbours to feel safe)

Of course you could work on those beliefs too. But after being in the Vortex personally I don't want to do vibrational work anymore. I don't feel like digging into and discovering other limiting beliefs. I think that's why @Stingray came up with Manifesting Experiment 4 so one can eliminate all limiting beliefs at once.

This is why I also like the Sedona Method goal setting approach to that. It can be tedious and sometimes it takes many hours. But after you are finished you feel "hootless" about your desire. You really don't care if you get it or not, which of course is the "already having/being at peace state" that Buddhism, Abraham and Bashar espouse.

Basically you write down your desire or goal and all advantages and disadvantages to your desire. Then you let go of all. You clear it all. You let go of all the negative and all the positive. At the end you completely let go of wanting. So you feel hootless or feel a having state although it makes no sense to the logical mind.

If a desire is a cake then hopefulness is the frosting.
Sure having cake without frosting is ok but how much better is a frosted cake!
peace

The problem with hope is this: if you are in a state of hope, you are not in a state of fulfillment. Hope is a tag you attach to a state saying "I can enter this state". If you don't go ahead and enter it, it doesn't matter.

Think of it this way: It is like having a bank account with millions but never using any of it. The money needs to move from "over there" to "over here", it cannot be in both places at once. So hope adds to the bank account, or rather, it recognizes that the money is there and that is great, it is awesome, but the money in the bank account doesn't spend itself. Without hope you don't even realize there is a bank account. But recognizing it is not enough, you have to move that money, to reorganize it, to exchange it for the things you want in your life. Otherwise it is as if you did not even have the money. And if you don't use it, you lose sight of it, you lose that hope because you forget the money is there, or start doubting that you can spend it. That is why hope is temporary.

Hope is a positive emotion, but ideally it is a transitory state on the way to Bliss, Passion, Joy, etc. If you are bouncing up against Hope, perhaps desires on that subject are very specifically focused and you need to detach/soften a little and become more general in your expectations.

Ideally we want to be at peace with Hope and not feel like we are constantly "checking" our progress.