Wu Wang is hexagram 25 in the Zhouyi. It means “no expectations.”

Wu Wang means both an “unexpected” incident and the freedom of being “without expectations.” It is experiencing life with a clear open mind—no fantasies. —Translation by Liu Ming

The advice of the hexagram is to Relax plans, open up and let go of goals.

This past week, I have gotten this hexagram several times and encountered situations in which my ability to follow the indication of the hexagram was tested or challenged. This is one of the beautiful ways in which the world guides us.

We receive an instruction from our teacher or another respected source, and we think “Yes! I will do that!” Immediately, a string of situations arises that illuminates our habitual karmic tension and provides us with opportunities to relax, or not.

If we have developed some clarity, while we are making an effort to follow the instruction, we become even more sensitized to the tensions and attachments shaping our conduct. This is an important, although uncomfortable, part of the teaching.

In several situations this week, people forcefully spoke to me about big projects or plans I imagine I would like to carry out. The people had different motivations. One in particular I very much appreciated because this person reflected back to me a kind of conduct I have often engaged in—playing the role of the confidence inspirer. “You should do that! Move forward! Go for it!”

The situation was comical. The universal Guru was playing a practical joke. At the same time, Self was lovingly communicating to Self, reminding me of my habit of pushing forward and providing yet another opportunity to relax and follow the guidance as given.

But I want to particularly address our expectations of other people. A big part of living with “no expectations” is letting go of our expectations of other people. This is extremely difficult for most of us.

We have some inbred karmic orientations. For instance, we might be generally angry, or jealous, or all-knowing, or self-denigrating, or unable to deal honestly with pain, or territorial. These general orientations greatly flavor our expectations of other people. We think people are out to get us, or exist to serve us, and everything in between.

We also have expectations based on our history of experiences with people.

For instance, you have a friend who feels passed over and expresses it by always criticizing and denigrating others. Every time you see this friend, it’s the same story. You are consciously or unconsciously worried that one day, this disapproval will be directed at you. So you participate in criticizing others in order to be on your friend’s “side.”

Now you have set up a situation in which your friend’s fixation is feeding off of your expectation.

Or, suppose you have a child, or a spouse, or a roommate whose behavior is not what you wish it were. You try to deal with it as best you can. You discuss and “process,” but you find that you are always in a state of nervous anticipation that the behavior you find so bothersome will be repeated. Even when this person is not around, you compulsively imagine them doing the very thing that is so irritating!

We should recognize a few things here.

Nothing in this world is fixed. Infinite potential is our nature even when we express limitations.

Real ahimsa, or nonviolence, is first and foremost letting go of these fixed expectations of others. Why? Because when we fixate our view of someone, we basically reinforce everyone’s ignorance of their true nature: infinite potentiality.

So, even if someone is continually exhibiting the same compulsive behavior, each time we meet them, we must remember that they are also infinite potentiality. We must try to relax and not feed the situation with our own tension. We must acknowledge, if only to ourselves, that a situation can change in an instant.

No matter how stuck a person is, there can always come about a situation in which they too relax. When all we do is continually reflect tension back to another, it is like adding more bars to a cage. We should try to enter into every situation with others with some degree of innocence. We should leave a little room for the unexpected.

This does not mean that we should not try to keep our children safe, or ask a roommate to do the dishes. It does not mean we should stay in a situation that is harmful to our own process of self-realization. It does mean that we should try to relax our habitual anger, disappointments, projections, and expectations.

We can communicate what needs to be communicated without any expectations or projections. Sometimes this, in and of itself, provides what another person needs to discover more freedom. But it is really not up to us.

We must also relax any idea that we are “helping” the other person or “giving them space.” What we are really doing is following our own practice of recognizing our real situation and acting in accordance.

Which brings me to the second point: Responsibility.

We are one hundred percent responsible for our reactions and responses. Most of the demands and expectations we place on others are simply a reflection of our own lack of responsibility for our situation.

Our compulsive expectations, demands, and fantasies are some of the “technologies” that our small self or “I” deploys to fortify itself. It only seems as if the problem is the other person. The real “problem” is that small self is always on the prowl for reinforcement. Our expectations of others are part of our identity formation.

The bottom line is: We want others to behave in a certain way so that we can be more comfortable, feel less scared, less alone, and so on. But it’s really not other people’s job to make the world safe for our fixation on “I.” And as practitioners, we must face this full on.

When we take responsibility for our situation, we begin to relax our death grip on those around us, and the situation changes for everyone. This is natural law. If one person stops feeding a situation, the situation is no longer what it was. We are no longer what we were.

Again, though, your primary focus should be on your attitudes and behaviors, not on “fixing” other people. And sometimes when we relax and take responsibility, other people don’t like it. They want us to keep our contract of “you support my fixations, and I’ll support yours.” They get angry. So we want to stay relaxed and stable in our practice, knowing that working for our own realization is compassion even if, from our limited perception, it sometimes doesn’t seem that way.

Wu Wang means allowing inappropriate situations to move out of your life naturally and, equally, allowing new situations to arise naturally without pushing and shoving them into existence.

Wu Wang is an expression of the fundamental aspect of authentic and appropriate action: It is guided.

Guided by what? Guided by the totality of a situation. Guided by Nature. Guided by the World Self. Guided by the world process. Guided by the divine. You can express it in any number of ways.

Our insistence on plans, projects, and projections, on “me, myself, and I,” is like static obscuring our ability to hear divine guidance. Have you ever thought or said, “I knew I shouldn’t have done that!” Well, until we begin to relax, our entire lives are like that.

As we relax, we can receive Nature’s guidance more directly and clearly. We can let go and follow the unfolding. This is, paradoxically, freedom.

OM Shanti,
Shambhavi

Posted by Shambhavi on August 11th, 2006 | Explore More! Tags: karma