Week 5: Receiving …… ergo
Balanced expectations This section really will be an analysis of what I believe. Many changes have come about since I’ve begun to seriously & diligently “work” the Buddhist dharma teachings. This is the whole point of them: The world isn’t made different; the practitioner is. And then the world changes in response, rippling out …………
We can say “we’ve changed the world”, but really it’s that we are perceiving the world differently, so everything that happens from there is different. Ripples ……. Because of these changes within me, I have to re-examine everything —>> So, beliefs about expectations that I’ve held in the past, well, I guess I’m unsure of just what they are now ……….
When my world view was predominantly Wiccan, I believed wholeheartedly in the idea that what you send out returns to you three times (or ten, there’s some variation here). I don’t really DISbelieve that, now — the gift within this teaching is to make people very conscious of what they do & don’t do, how they think & don’t think. This is a good thing! But I still always have been more convinced that ‘what we get from life’ has much more to do with the karmic burdens we’ve constructed. That is, we have to live out the consequences of our thoughts & actions, in this life, & eons of others. It’s entirely self-created, so it’s not a means of avoiding responsibility at all —>> “I did <<whatever>>, so its natural consequences will come around, & I have to play them out.” The main reason I moved to having a guru, Amma, & working the dharma teachings is to learn to avoid creating karma (“bad”) to make fewer natural consequences that are troublesome for my future, & for the world as a whole. Buddhism offers you the opportunities to learn how to make those changes within yourself, the ones that will help you avoid re-creating the troubles you’ve had in this life — this is the ‘suffering’ the Buddha was teaching about, the natural consequences of your own actions, & your responses to them, & what that creates in turn.
Like I said, this examination of my beliefs & ideas re expectations (& many other things too!) will undoubtedly continue, which is part of what my blog is about. There’s so much that we absorb from our family of origin, schooling, culture that we mostly don’t ever really look at. All those presumptions sit quietly within our psyches, guiding us, leading us. And until we begin to minutely examine those for some reason, we may never be aware that “the way it is” doesn’t necessarily have to “be the way it is”. Hmmmm ………….
Jeez, re-reading those previous paragraphs makes me see what I DO believe re expectations: I believe that
when I change myself “for the better”, I bring about some alteration in the fabric of space-time through which I live & move.
Ergo, I re-create the future.
Hmmmmmm ……….
It is all so crazy sometimes, isn’t it? It’s never black and white. Well, I suppose that’s my best reasoning for why expectations always fall short…because you are assuming you know what is…and we don’t. Hahaha…guess I have to remember that words can never be the truth, only point toward it.
So right! Words are, at best, only sign posts….. but they can be good ones, haha
I like your point about why expectations fail: we think we know what is, but don’t. Food for thought …… er, good sign post.