Dealing with expectations through meditation

 

Meditation helps with uprooting the disturbance or disappointment caused by unfulfilled expectations. When you meditate without any attempt to control your mind, you will sooner or later arrive at the conviction that thoughts, feelings and body sensations are arising and disappearing all by themselves without any volition on your part. Your response to those phenomena is also not directly in your control.

For example, in meditation, on some days the mind will drift in a daydream for many minutes without you being aware, whereas other days, you are aware very soon that you are daydreaming. Sometimes, you may be annoyed by your thoughts, but on other days you spontaneously accept them or are even amused by them.

Meditation also helps us to ‘let go’ of expectations, by allowing the mind to rest more and more in the present moment. By opening the mind to being more aware through regular meditation, we become more and more fulfilled and calm in the moment. The mind gains the ability to spontaneously accept people and situations as they are. Consequently, regular meditation will, over time result in fewer expectations and less disturbance and disappointment over unfulfilled expectations.