Contemplate… and suddenly you realize the answers have been there all along.
It’s late and I’m perusing YouTube, time traveling back to periods in my life, simply by listening to music I haven’t heard in years, feeling pretty melancholy. Maybe its the music, maybe its Facebook and the recent re-connects to people from a long, lost past, maybe its the full moon, maybe its the slow realization that we are leaving the country and life as we know it, or perhaps its a culmination of it all. I’m transported back to times when it seemed my whole life was still ahead of me, living with an innocent sense of timelessness. I’m standing back there looking ahead, thinking not–too-hard about a place I’m supposed to eventually get to, and here I am, now, at that place wherever it is - looking back but still looking ahead. And, yet I am experiencing a similar, yet deeper sense of timelessness now. It, too, is innocent. Innocent with an ever growing trust, and from that trust comes the ability to look my fears in the face and clearly see them for what they are – maya, illusion. It is the spiral of life, to come full circle, but the spiral ascends and we never truly come back to the same exact place. I’m called to quote the proverb “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” In this notion we come to understand the timeless current that flows beneath everything we experience in this world. The ongoing vibration that never ends, the vibration that resonates within us all …and its sound is AUM…
Namaste
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
No Expectations
Let Go… and suddenly you are finding freedom in every new moment.
Sri Yukteswar said, “I do not expect anything from others, so their actions cannot be in opposition to wishes of mine.”… Whew. THAT’s a tall order for us lowly, unenlightened ones, eh? I believe, herein lies the key to ALL successful and peaceful cohabitation with fellow human beings. When you really think about it, you have to consider the question: what is the root cause of any struggling relationship? Yes, expectations. Expecting others to be… what… well, like US? I think pretty much, since this is all we really know. And, this calls to mind another quote: “We don’t see people as THEY are, we see them as WE are.” We can only see through the eyes of our own histories, usually leaving others to fall short of ideas of what WE consider right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or not. Then who suffers? BOTH parties. One person is left feeling judged or inadequate and the other, steeped in disappointment. By dropping expectations, dropping the history that shades our beliefs, by coming to each moment for exactly what it is, a “new” moment, unlike any other that has come before it, there can be no disappointment, or as Sri Yuketeswar says “no opposition to wishes”. This is a constant, second to second, moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day (well you get the idea) discipline in awareness.
So, the next time you find yourself disappointed in someone, check your responsibility and the part you may be playing to perpetuate that emotion… I’ll bet somewhere in there you’ll find it has something to do with expectations - and within this new awareness you will find the capacity to let it go!
Sat Nam!
Sri Yukteswar said, “I do not expect anything from others, so their actions cannot be in opposition to wishes of mine.”… Whew. THAT’s a tall order for us lowly, unenlightened ones, eh? I believe, herein lies the key to ALL successful and peaceful cohabitation with fellow human beings. When you really think about it, you have to consider the question: what is the root cause of any struggling relationship? Yes, expectations. Expecting others to be… what… well, like US? I think pretty much, since this is all we really know. And, this calls to mind another quote: “We don’t see people as THEY are, we see them as WE are.” We can only see through the eyes of our own histories, usually leaving others to fall short of ideas of what WE consider right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or not. Then who suffers? BOTH parties. One person is left feeling judged or inadequate and the other, steeped in disappointment. By dropping expectations, dropping the history that shades our beliefs, by coming to each moment for exactly what it is, a “new” moment, unlike any other that has come before it, there can be no disappointment, or as Sri Yuketeswar says “no opposition to wishes”. This is a constant, second to second, moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day (well you get the idea) discipline in awareness.
So, the next time you find yourself disappointed in someone, check your responsibility and the part you may be playing to perpetuate that emotion… I’ll bet somewhere in there you’ll find it has something to do with expectations - and within this new awareness you will find the capacity to let it go!
Sat Nam!
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