My wife and I chatted during our walk today about the unrealistic expectations we take on sometimes.
Meditate for 5 minutes every day this month. Expectations of Dalai Lama type poise, clarity and equanimity invade your mind.
But then someone cuts you off in traffic. You flip them off. You feel disappointed in self. I mean, you meditated daily for a whole month? What gives?
Your mom gets sick. Terminal illness. 5 years into her illness, you begin to genuinely feel the fear, pain and suffering of observing your mother suffer tremendously over 5 years of her life. Why did it take 5 years? You had meditated almost daily during that stretch? Embarrassment, shame and frustration take over your mind.
Even Spiritually Advanced Beings Need to Be Realistic
My wife's mom passed away in early May after a tough, traumatic year for her and my wife.
My wife began slowly and steadily processing grief over the prior 4 months. Even if a part of her wants to be beyond the grief because she is more spiritually advanced than most of humanity, she understands how she is not enlightened. She does not add layers of expectation, pressure and delusion to her experience.
She simply learns to accept where she is.
Terminal Illness Perspective
My mom got diagnosed with a terminal illness in 2012. I began genuinely processing the fear and pain triggered from her diagnosis in 2017 after she went into hospice.
Dear folks kindly mention, “Not being able to imagine what it feels like” to see your mom wither away and basically die in her body, losing her memory, personality, and virtually every aspect of being human, simply existing in a bed and being force fed to survive.
I would reply:
- yep; you do not know these emotions until you intimately experience observing someone you love suffer deeply not for a few weeks or a few months, but for years of their life
- truth is; *I* did not imagine or embrace what transpired before my eyes for a long time because I resisted fear-pain triggered, the product of my unrealistic expectations of self
I expected to be way too spiritually advanced to suffer deeply from my mom's diagnosis because I had spent years – and many thousands of hours – meditating and facing my fears.
Turns out, I deluded myself with grandiose expectations of myself. After a few painful experiences, deep, hefty fears triggered in my being. I cried, cried and cried even more deeply during these fear-purging sessions.
I finally accepted my mom's experience. Peace of mind overtook my being. Calm invaded my meat suit. I largely faced, felt and released the pain of seeing someone you love all but die, while living, over the course of years.
Of course, this process of embracing fear and feeling it out occurred on and off over a number of months, then years. But nothing would have happened unless I released completely unrealistic expectations of myself and my spiritual advancement and realized where I was.
All of Us Are Students
Sometimes, I playfully address my readers as “Young Blogging Padawans” but in truth, even an alleged Jedi Blogging Master like me is a student. We are all students, learning more about ourselves every day. The more I know, the more humble I become because I realize that on a cosmic scale, I know absolutely nothing.
Remove the heavy burden of unrealistic expectations from your shoulders. While you're at it; release expectations all together. Wherever you are now is where you need to be at.
Know yourself. Be humble. Look at yourself in the light of truth. Own where you are right now because this is the perfect place to be.
Owning where you are creates peace of mind, balance, poise and rapid personal growth because you stand grounded in truth, not illusion, coming from this type of energy.
Stop expecting to be beyond where you are right now.
You are where you need to be.
Humble yourself to see where you truthfully are in the present moment.
Proceed from a more relaxed, peaceful, non-resistant energy to glide more through life's experiences.
