In speaking of No Expectation What does that look like ..seeing that there is no separate entity yet in this plane where there is body activity ..Do we not expect to get paid when going to work , or the car to stop when I put on the breaks , to be satified of hunger when I eat etc tks gary.
Dear Gary,
There is a distinction to be made between personal and impersonal expectation. In the case of personal expectation, the belief in separate personal entities is involved, and their happiness is at stake: you expect something, good or bad, for yourself as a separate person or from others as separate persons. In the case of impersonal expectation, nobody is involved: “If an object is released from a certain height on the surface of the earth, it will fall to the ground” is an impersonal expectation.This distinction is sometimes not obvious. Example:
“I expect my hunger to disappear if I eat enough” is an impersonal expectation, “I” refers in that case to the body, not to consciousness.
“I expect to be happy if I eat enough” is a personal expectation. The second “I” refers to the body, the first “I” to consciousness. A you can see, ignorance is in this case the result of a lack of discrimination between the true self, consciousness, and an object, the body.
This second type of expectation disappears automatically when the belief in a separate consciousness, on which it depends, disappears. The term “no expectation” used by some sages refers to that disappearance.
My teacher, Jean Klein, once told me: “Don’t expect anything (for yourself or from others) and you will get everything”. These words had a great impact on me, and their truth has kept revealing itself since.
Most affectionately,
Francis
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