Expectations vs Experience
A hard swallow is that we experience suffering again and again until what we've read and heard and learned in our heads enters into our behaviors. Yoga serves as a bridge. How? It's a school of thought that knows the mind is the source of suffering, and it's solution. When the mind is locked in, it can do not anything, but pathways to progress open up that are invisible when it's agitated, dull or fickly hopping about.
The mind is amorphous, and is known by it’s guna-s, bheda-s and bhumi-s, qualities, types and levels. This clues us into the difference between the meditative mind and the mundane mind, and each of their impacts on the quality of our lives. Through meditative states, the mind becomes balanced, calm and able to sustain a one-pointed focus, we are not latching onto imaginings, pre-conceptions and goals, but moving with awareness. We’re not projecting, but experiencing. The parts start talking to the whole, and our mental framework and action is integrated. We listen, hear, respond from a sense of now-ness.
Otherwise, what we want and don’t want wind up taking the front seat. Like windshield wipers, likes and dislikes, wants and don’t-wants get rid of what’s in the way; however, if we shut them, the rain’s on the windshield. And we have to wait it out, because it’s got its own cadence. We may forget to breathe and accept the rain as part of the experience, as we may forget that expectations can sabotage many a good thing. They keep us in the future, meanwhile we lose sight as we currently prepare and tend to our lives. Expectations put undue pressure on us and others. They keep us linked to results, meanwhile we miss out on helpful cues, signals and signs that promote clarity and trust in ourselves and the path of our lives. We ignore what’s before us and replace it with what we want, a recipe for dissatisfaction, if our longings go unfulfilled.
It’s meditation that teaches us the difference between healthy, role and responsibility-based needs in relationships and our need to control outcomes. Between forcing and allowing. Between clinging and letting go. By honing the process of meditation, we are not mastering a tool, but practicing how to release expectations and be open.
Think of a recent expectation that’s robbed a circumstance of its splendor. For example, I so wanted to plan a vacation for my 50th birthday, upcoming. And I did! Truth is, with income tax and property tax season, with professional opportunities to tend to and work that needs to be done around the house and needing to support my family, I can’t. In my mind, I should be having a week-long celebration. In reality, I cancelled my trip today. I just can’t swing it. And I’m disappointed. And challenges have otherwise arisen during the last couple of days. And I’m sitting here like, oh this birthday season is so meh. But I’m also catching myself and realizing I’m disappointed because I’m hyping up this milestone like it’s the be all end all. With practice, the doldrums are dwindling. The gratitude is rising. Age is a number. I feel well. I’ve already received countless blessings, gifts, love and heart-warming invitations; meanwhile I brood and nearly sabotage this. Until I sit with what is, rather than what I wanted to me. And I turn my mind around. I turn my emotions around. I turn down my expectations. And step into the next phase with a sense of self untethered from the wants and needs, linked to the light and the lights in my life.