Unravelling Expectations

It began with a need for sleep and became a way of life.

I never could have known how my life would have changed.  It has been a complete awakening to how much life is a perspective which we create. 

As I have spent time dissecting and diving into my life in all phases; from in utero, baby, child, adolescent and adulthood, I have been able to see the stages in which I was altered.  I say altered because experience impacts us deeply.  From before we are children our subconscious mind has begun to receive and as we age, this same subconscious mind runs the show. 

When we are in the womb we receive from our mother, her environment and her overall state.  Our subconscious mind begins receiving and forming our worth, values, views of love and acceptance when we are most susceptible as children.  Over time these impressions leak out into our relationships, habits and how we treat our self and others.  When we begin to realize the subconscious mind has been programmed to react in certain ways to deflect pain, thank you Ego, we simultaneously realize we are able to reprogram our minds.

What happened to me that I felt drawn to meditation?

What was so intense in my youth that I could not sleep, I wanted to die, I hated my body, I hated my family, I was in so much hatred, my entire being was sour.

I didn’t know why.

My parent’s divorce hit me pretty hard but that’s not that bad.  I would convince myself I had no reason to be upset.  I am glad I was able to do this because this is one of the reasons I am still alive.  What I know now on reflection (thank you again meditation) is that it was a giant accumulation of a number of things that all affected my self-worth.  When we hold little to no self-worth/self-esteem, the rest of our life suffers.  It becomes a disaster as we attract those who treat us how we feel and we attract jobs, money, food, everything that we feel we are deserving of.
Accepting gifts is a simple example.  How do you receive a gift for what you believe to be no reason? Do you feel the need to buy them something to keep the score? Are you able to say thank you with a smile or do you say thank you as you hide your face by looking down? Are you able to think of something you have done for this person over the span of your relationship that may warrant a gift? Are you able to see that you are deserving of a gift simply for being you?

When we have low self-worth we do not understand how to receive something as simple as a gift or coffee without needing to return the favour.  How can we expect to receive love honestly if we feel we always owe that person something for simply loving us?

Love, the four letter word everyone wants to love but really hates. Think it is a coincidence that love and hate are both four letter words? Why have so many of us built up resistance to love? How could we have lost so much trust in one another?

Love is a gift that guides.  The issue humans face with love is that we have been shown what love is through a lens other than our own.  Parents, friends, movies, relationships, siblings, all show us what love can look like.  Some of us see stable love and others not so stable.  We are told what love is and that we must have love from someone, we must have a partner. This places a lot of stress around love and finding “the one” without taking into consideration that love between friends is just as strong. Innocent love is what love is.  When we place expectations on relationships which is a tendency a lot of people possess, we no longer experience the love that is in front of us but rather, we face the love that we are expecting to come.

Expectations are one of the things that will choke us to death.  If we are always expecting something to become or be different or to be a certain way or be to forever, we get pulled away from what currently is, whether that is a good or a bad experience.  We must remain present to witness the good or bad experience and utilize that to evolve.
It is unfair to place expectations on others.  It is unfair to project your expectations onto others.  This can be a little challenging at times for those of us who are more sensitive as we always consider others.  When we are not considered, it hurts pretty badly. 

How are we hurt by this?

We can be hurt by this because if we feel someone has harmed us and is unable to apologize, we try to understand why they are not apologizing - what did I do wrong? The blame becomes our own.  Something we can do instead is understand that the other person may be unable to see the harm they are causing others.  Maybe the reality would cause them harm to own that responsibility and they do not know how to process that.  Maybe they feel ashamed of what they have done and when we feel ashamed we hide from that which we are ashamed of.  This is where our compassion comes in to play.  When we tune into our compassion we are able to offer a deeper level of forgiveness and understanding to those who are unable to ask.  This act of forgiving others without their words or actions provides a huge level of freedom to the forgiver. 

We can only control ourselves and how we react and act to situations.

Letting go of these expectations of how someone should act is all part of letting go of the expectation of love.  Love can exist between a human and an animal, a human and plants, a human and a human, a mother and her child, a father and his child. 
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There are so many different levels to love that it is totally unfair to place an expectation that was created out of misunderstanding and falsehoods onto something as expansive as love.