The impulse for #expectations and ideals is automatic in our experience of the world. From a young age and throughout life we define our expectations by how we are treated and what is given or taken from us. This inherent aspect of beingness is not only mental construct. It is also instinctual. The basic needs for survival are an instinctual craving and expectation to be fulfilled by others or oneself. #IdealisticExpectations, standards, or imposed requirements for life beyond basic needs evolve from one of the most beautiful parts of our minds; #inspiration, the #desire to create. This attribute of humanness is a drive that has need of fortification and perpetuation, in order to sustain a sense of #contentment about living. You could say it's about being more than the #InstinctualAnimal self that most would define as "#humanity."
In our efforts to create our #vision or ideal we define #expectations of ourselves, of others, and of the world. How well we keep our agreements and meet those expectations and how others or the world do or do not, greatly affects our perceptions of the world. The outcome or continued struggle affects #TheNarrative we carry about ourselves. When one seeks to have an affect to feel fulfilled the concept of control and the conflict of what we have control over arises. Have we assessed the motive of our #expectations? Do we need or do we want to have these expectations met? And how much control do we have over the outcome? These questions must be asked internally in the trivial moments of going to the store for an item you plan to purchase and it being unavailable, to the moments in a relationship when someone is saying or doing something doesn't feel good or enough for you, to the moment of putting all one's efforts on a job promotion and achieving it.
If we all have expectation, #InspiringIdeals, needs, and wants in this world, then we all are co-creating our experience. Control becomes less and less broad in our understanding of how others and the world will fulfill our expectations and more fine tuned to how we can use control to work out our own ability to fulfill basic needs and ideals or to release disappointment that arises from their lack of fulfillment. #SelfControl can offer us a moment to step back and re-assess if we understand what it is that is unfulfilled. The same creative #inspiration that defines expectation may be reworked to a concept that is more #attainable or dissolved altogether if it isn't serving us emotionally and mentally. Thoughts of expectation, control, need, and how we perceive the world are deeply intertwined in the #optimism or #pessimism one obtains in each situation.
Remembering to have #compassion for self and others with the understanding that we are all working out the experience of expectations, met and unmet, in our journey through life allows the opportunity to discuss and share our perceptions of a situation in productive ways. This opportunity to share is essential to letting go of the need to control others or the world around us and to honor the co-creativity we have the power to learn from, heal from, be served by, and achieve with. To live in flow with less need for control and expectation of others to live by our #desires is necessary. It is not about having high or low expectations. It is about needs and desires. It is about making requests and #communicating those needs and desires to give them a clear opportunity to be met and honored as a "co-creative contract." Many expectations focus on the external world to satisfy something inside ourselves. The co-creative contract may be applied directly to conversations and #agreements when processing inner conflicts of the ego experience and the deeper center of one's true nature within. This is in regard to our perceptions of the world and our "way" in it.
#Humility is a teacher. It is a core element of #adaptability. The balance between #humility and ambition must be reached to surrender oneself to the forces of life and love, and to feel the rhythmic dance of being "one with the flow." #Expectations are intimately connected to trust. When expectations are met, #trust is strengthened. When they are not, #trust is lost to any lesser or greater degree. This connection of trust and expectation is reliant on the awareness and the #communication of basic needs and ideals. One must have #accountability in their communication to have #integrity and refined #clarity in the outcomes of expectations met or unmet that affect their perceptions of the world and their own personal #narrative. Over time the erosion of trust and the inflation of trust may result in illusion. The #illusion grows by our attachments to the outcomes of our expectations. This is why many spiritual practices teach #trust without attachment to expectation and humility for what is given and what is taken.
The sense of #harmony and subdued sense of #suffering is enabled through releasing one's attachment to expectation, to needing what is unnecessary, and to the outcomes of our experience that create detrimental perceptions for how we create and achieve in the world. The #invitation is to practice less attachment and to be a #WitnessOfSelf, others, and the nature of existence. It is natural to have expectations and attachments. Finding the balance of enactment and yielding in our co-creativity is the way to perpetuate dynamic flow beyond the #resistance of disappointment and the ebb and flow of our perceived success. This is the #opportunity to learn, to expand, to redefine, and re-potentiate in our creation, by the perceptions of our expectations. #Expectations have the power to fortify us in productive ways and to impede our progress in confining ways. Our perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world are relevant to our #attachments for what and how we actively or passively engage in the experience of every day.
Excerpt From the writings of Julie Hightman