Your Expectations Are Your Cage

SHAMBHAVI
There's a famous story that some of you might have heard around the spiritual water-cooler. It's about the Gurdjieff community, which still exists, but it was one of those wacky traditions just made up by one guy. I think he's Russian or was Russian. I'm not exactly sure.

But in any case, there's a famous story about him. He actually had a lot of movement practices that he developed. If you look on YouTube, you can find these movement practices. They're very funny. They're kind of robotic.

It had something to do with the marriage of technology and spirituality, and I'm not really sure. But in any case, there's a story that they had this community, and there was somebody who came and became part of the community who really just annoyed the crap out of everybody.

Whatever this guy's behavior was, everyone just found it really awful. And eventually, they kind of chased him off. And this guy was leaving, and he was outside where he was just about to leave.

And Gurdjieff ran after him and said, Please stay. I'll pay you to stay. [laughter] Because he felt it was good for people's sadhana if they had somebody who was really really annoying around. [laughter]

And I wanted to bring this up because it relates to two things that are very important for us to consider. Maybe it relates to infinite things that are important for us to consider.

But one is that one of the biggest obstacles that we have right now in this time and place, in this culture. To sort of going deeper into our sadhana. To understanding what spiritual community is really about. To really understanding how to work with a teacher and being willing to do all of these things.

Is that we have a very strong, many of us, firmly held concept that things that are uncomfortable aren't good. And that in some ideal world, we would be comfortable all the time. We would be around people who never annoyed us, and everything would be easy and always succeed.

If we look at how we've internalized the American-self mythos, this is how we've internalized it. Everything should be good. Everything should be always improving.

We should always be comfortable. And being annoyed or upset by something is bad. This is a huge obstacle to spiritual life in general. Whether you're studying with a teacher or not.

And I bring this up because occasionally someone says to me in private because they think it's a private thing, I don't want to come to satsang. Or I don't want to be part of the community because somebody is annoying me. Or I'm angry at somebody, or I don't like somebody, this thing.

And this just happened recently. And I said to this person, there are, whatever, 45 people who are sort of in a group of people from Jaya Kula that are working together more closely.

And I can tell you that it's a statistical improbability that only one of those people is ever going to annoy you or upset you. [laughter] This one person that you're annoyed with or upset with is just the tip of the iceberg. [laughs]

And that we are just a motley crew of messy humans, and people are going to disappoint you. They're going to upset you, they're going to anger you, and annoy you.

Some people never will, some people will, you don't know. But this is just part of being in a community of people. And it's also part of what we're working with in our sadhana.

If we had a community of people who never annoyed each other. No one ever got angry at anybody else. Everyone behaved perfectly according to your expectations. What would you do when you stepped out the door? You wouldn't be able to handle it. [laughs]

Everything would just seem completely chaotic and unmanageable. The idea is that we're in a community with these disparate, messy people so that we can learn to recognize and respect everybody's unique dimension. And to be more relaxed around all the different ways that people are showing up.

The flip side of that coin is that you each have expectations. These expectations are composed of things that you've learned from your cultures, your families, your religions, an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend, whomever you learned it from.

You've learned some internalized ideas that you either are aware of or aren't aware of, how people should behave. How they should dress. How they should walk. How they should sound. How they should talk. How they should act in certain situations. How they should treat you. All these different things.

So here we have in this space right now, I don't know, 20-some people. Each of you has a different set of expectations. This is part of your unique dimension. Think of me trying to fulfill all of your expectations all at once.

I'd be like someone being electrocuted. All these opposing flows and contradictions. How would anyone do that? One of our greatest sources of suffering is our expectation that people should meet our expectations. [laughter]

This is a huge source of suffering for us. So when you're thinking of that in terms of being in this community, which is training wheels for being anywhere, obviously, we don't want to create a sterile environment.

Which then we go out of the sterile environment and become completely beset by everything that's happening in normal life. This is a petri dish of normal life.

And think of each person here having a unique dimension, including a set of expectations that are causing them suffering. And you'll realize that you are just one bundle of expectations, but there's 45 or 50 bundles of expectations in the community.

No one can meet all of those. It's a lost cause from the beginning. [laughs] And the idea isn't that we're going to run around throughout the rest of our life trying to find people who meet our expectations. God, what a yawn.

The idea is that we're just going to be in life being curious about what is and relating to how things are without those expectations. More with a sense of curiosity. And less of a sense of rigidity and expectation.

Your expectations of people in the community of a spiritual tradition, of a spiritual teacher, whatever those are, they're basically just your cage, right? Your cage making it impossible for you to be feeling love and compassion and intimacy with 99% of the world.

Because even with those people that you are very close with, maybe a partner, a spouse, or a best friend, or whomever. A beloved teacher. Even with those people that you've spent years negotiating with, even those people aren't meeting all your expectations.

Think of how ludicrous the whole enterprise is of trying to never be upset with anyone or have anyone be upsetting or annoying or angering and having everyone meet your expectations. It's just ludicrous.

If you want everyone to meet your expectations and never be upsetting or annoying, what about everybody else's expectations? Don't they get a fair shake? You tell me to lighten up. You tell me to get serious. What am I supposed to do?

That's just a short circuit, if I tried to live by everybody's expectations. [laughs] So think about that. Next time you have reactions to people here, They are your reactions. They're your reactions. That's fine. They're material for you to work with.

But don't expect anyone else to live in response to your reactions. Because then I want you to immediately think of the other 45 people in the community and their reactions and demands. Yours are just in the mix.

The other aspect of this is that your spiritual life is for you. Coming to satsang is for you. Sitting on a cushion and doing sadhana is for you. Relating to the teacher is for you. Relating to the people in the community is for you. To wake up, to discover more freedom.

If you come here with your little orchestra baton waving, wanting everyone else to do shit, you are not doing anything for yourself. Except reinforcing your way of life that you came here with.

I think that the 12-step program thing of take what you need and leave the rest is a beautiful thing to remember. Don't sit around waiting for other people to be a certain way before you get a spiritual life. That's not what it's about.

If you waited to get what you want, if you wait for everyone else to conform to how you think they should behave, you'd be just waiting forever. Forever and ever and ever and ever. [laughs]

But now on a different topic, people are even afraid to take what they need because they don't want to be seen to be needy. Because when we ask for what we need or what we want, that's very vulnerable. And some of us are not willing to do that. So we play it cool.

But all of these things are just in your way. They're just 100% in your way. Think about the beauty also of just being with a group of people that you didn't choose. All doing this messy thing together. It's very poignant and very beautiful.

STUDENT 1
I have a related question. I was thinking about my expectations of life and how I cycle between hopefulness and hopelessness. And I was thinking about the way you talk about expectancy instead of expectations, and also the hexagram, no expectations. I wonder if you could riff some more about that?

SHAMBHAVI
Sure. In between hopefulness and hopelessness, there's actually something else. Like, what's actually happening. [laughs]

STUDENT 1
I did get taste of that.

SHAMBHAVI
Right?

STUDENT 1
Yeah.

SHAMBHAVI
Hopelessness is about what's not happening. Hopefulness is about what isn't happening but could happen, you think. And in between is this vast territory of life that's actually happening.

So that's what we want to be paying attention to. But expectancy means that we understand we're in impermanence, and that impermanence is full of wisdom. It's made of wisdom.

That impermanence is like a grand parade. Things just keep rolling along. Everything just keeps changing. It's like this panoply in front of one's eyes. Life and color and form and circumstances and people and losses and gains and everything just happening all the time.

So expectancy means that we live in expectancy of that arrival. That this life is just continually arriving right at our doorstep. And it never stops. That's the expectancy, that we're just looking at what's arriving and we're relating to that.

Expectancy also has an attitude of curiosity about what is arriving. Or we could say the guest that's always arriving, meaning the host. Meaning Lord Shiva. Always arriving in all these forms.

So a sense of curiosity. This is something that we also lose a lot because we worry. We're so self-absorbed that we lose our attitude of curiosity towards what is actually happening. And a sense of wonder that anything's happening at all. That all these things are just continually going on.

You know, it's magic. Incomprehensible, really. It outruns any possible idea we could have about it, which is also marvelous. So that's the expectancy. That curiosity is the main thing, this always arriving, that we're just relating to it.

One of the former spiritual communities I was involved in, I was always struck by how boring some of it was. Because the people in the community were so self-absorbed that they really never read a book or talked about anything but themselves. [laughs]

And I'm happy to say that's not quite the case here. But we want to have a sense of curiosity about what is going on. Not just despair. Not just hopefulness. Not just complaint. Not just expectation. Not just worry.

We want to just have a sense of plain-old curiosity about it. Even like somebody who annoys us, like just curiosity. Why is that person annoying me? As I said, there are no annoying people. There are only people who are annoyed.

Why is that? What is our annoyance really talking about? Or what is our disappointment or our anger or our sadness? What is it really talking about? Because we can always walk backward from these reactive conditions to the absolute. To wisdom.

There's always a through-line between our most contracted way of reacting to things and wisdom. So we have to get in the habit of doing that instead of trying to make everyone else make us feel better. [laughs] By conforming.

But the funny thing is that if everyone did conform to our expectations, our reactive emotions would just continue anyway. Because there are patterns. They don't really have to do with what's happening.

They're actually divorced from what's happening. Anybody who has a pitta constitution like me knows this. If they have any self-awareness.

One time, I went into a diner. It was actually this really old cafeteria that I don't think they have anymore, called an automat. Where you get food, and it's in these like refrigerated cases with turns—the food turns, and you pick little pre-made dishes off of these little turning shelves.

So my aunt actually got deviled eggs out of one of these turning things. And then complained about something to do with them. Sent them back to the chef. She had a very pitta constitution. You can find anything to complain about. [laughs]

STUDENT 2
Just a quick comment. It was at the cave of the heart retreat, and that just really showed me how you not giving me what I want or expect, just how important that is.

SHAMBHAVI
Yeah. I don't know what it was I didn't give you, but people want all kinds of things from the teacher. You come to any teacher with all the different things you want from everybody, and then some.

But a lot of those things, 90% of those things, are an ask that the teacher participate in your same-old same-old patterns with you. So you're approaching the teacher to participate on your terms, basically.

Or with an expectation that that relationship is going to be just like other relationships, but maybe more supportive or something. A lot of a relationship with someone who's really engaged in working with a teacher is about not getting what you want.

Because then if you don't get what you want, you see what it is that you wanted. And you can start to explore that and start to learn about why that's limiting you. Why whatever it is that you want is limiting you.

And then recognizing that there's just so much more available than that thing that you think you want. You want instant chocolate pudding, but the teacher's offering you creme brulee. [laughter]

If you keep asking for instant chocolate pudding, what am I going to do? I either have to give you instant chocolate pudding and wait for a better day. Or I have to say no and wait till you notice that there's some creme brûlé in my hand. [laughter]