Anyone who starts to Practice expects something.
This is because in our daily lives, in listening to our body and our emotions, something is wrong. It is difficult to determine what "something" is, it is not defined, it is not clear but it is there.
We can believe that everything is going well and that we are moving towards a practice to "refine" the perfection of our perfect ... but actually not, if all went well, if we were in tune with life, the phenomena and changes, we should not be looking for a practice.
We try to forget and cover this "empty" feeling by a feverish activity, many with sex, shopping, drink and food, but there is only pathological love relationships and dependency or television.
This external "filling" cannot overcome our internal emptiness.
The discovery of an opportunity of another choice, to meet with a teaching that should "help", has created a new disease: Expectations.
Now that we have found the solution in a spiritual practice or energetic (it's the same thing!), We want results!
Like at the market, we invest 10 euros in carrots and we want a lot of vegetables ... unfortunately it is a little different with regard to the practice.
The Practice must pass through three distinct stages that we tend to mix up and and which lead to a real confusion (we should not be confused!).
These three stages are:
* Training;
* Intentional Practice
* The Natural Practice.
In the training phase we will work the exercises and practices which are not the Essence itself.
For example, in the years of meditation exercises we learn to feel the "meditative state", but there are no exercises which are meditation (see "we should not be confused").
We must understand that in the training phase, we do not practice, we learn to practice.
We seek to integrate intellectual exercises so that they become "habits" and are used with the minimum of intent and imagination.
Take the subway, when you go for the first time in your life to a destination which will become a daily trip, like a new job or a new apartment, you are very careful on the trip. At each station you watch where you are relative to the destination, the route that you have and every step is a discovery. You stay on an alert and mentally: "I'm in the right place?" "will it be long?" ...
After two trips, two hundred or two million trips, you're sitting, relaxed, knowing every part of the progression of the train, and you can even have an activity, such as reading or work, without missing your stop.
This is analogous to the end of the learning phase, which is more or less long according to the people.
We leave the training phase when we can do this exercise without thinking, without going to memory (or very little) and a soft and almost silent intention.
"But I am never out of the learning phase!" I hear you say ...
well yes! Hence the immobility of the practice that you undertake!
Thereby hindering the transition of training of the practice of awareness of these two stages.
When we learn, we do not really evolve, so do not Expect!
In the absence of Expectations, you'll slip into the practice. Voilà!
When you start to practice, after a more or less laborious learning phase, phenomena may occur.
These perceived changes are another possible blockage to the accomplishment of your training. In the phenomena, which do not matter, we have the unfortunate habit of attaching to a host of unnecessary thoughts.
This attachments to the moments of perception of our practice reminds us that we "expect" something, the results ... "I am currently feeling this or that?", "Am I on track?", "Is this a sign of accomplishment? "... so many questions about phenomena that do not matter who we bring to this expectation, this need to know that it will get better, that we are good students.
In practice, and into our daily life, we must seek our own Natural.
It is actually quite simple in theory, practice for nothing else but practice, for no purpose, and find the Enthusiasm in this Way.
Our practices take us back to a loss of our mental structures, our structure separated from the world, our ego. This loss of structure is fatal to our mind, it blends into the rest of the universe and makes us lose our individuality.
In our daily practices, our ego will survive on the basis of new limits in our teaching: then comes our commitment to our beliefs about our practice and our Teacher, waiting to feel better and become better and all these recent resistances of survival of our discriminative mental activity.
We can practice by strengthening our minds and our imagination, going to the opposite of what we release, and amplifying the sensation of unease linked to our "me determined and unique".
This Process will multiply our expectations because it is worse and worse, under the guise of mystical-spiritual-energetical confusing and destructive.
As an example we can mention is the bogus "non-violent" in some ways that are ready to kill "meat eaters", or beat up those who insulted their guru…
To go in the direction of a peaceful practice, practice is the goal of practice. It is good to try!
When practice begins, nothing changes.
We're not going to transform into anything. It is unnecessary to grow our hair and to eat incense, or dress in Orange…we will stay as we are.
All the changes that we are trying are a way to hide this expectation that we lack: the bright colours of our garments will alleviate the stiffness of the body and the sadness of our thoughts, forced sessions of "silent" meditation (in appearance) will parody an internal silence which we lack, the soft-spoken voice and the non-violence will conceal as much of our fear as of others and the world.
All attempts to visibly change into others is a way to demonstrate our performance, our mind tries to show that we are right, that we are better than others, different ... still expecting to be better!
But the practice does not change us, the performance does nothing, we will remain what we were before our birth and which will continue after our death.
In everyday life, we "work" just relax in silence and make us what we are, without the acquired blockages and without mundane conditioning.
There is nothing to seek, nothing to add. We will gently practice without expectation; to what we are.
We will not add anything or learn, we will seek to return to a spontaneous phase with the changes of life. Without a morbid, compulsive use, for which the mind is used in everyday life.
Without getting lost in the maze of our imagination, which is based on the past and projecting hopes in the future, we live free in the present.
Leaving the time line, we will enter the world of perceptions without the filter of the world of thoughts. Without this bad link to the time of past and future, we leave expectations: we abandon the fantasy of the imagination that comes from the past and we don't plan hope in the future, there is no more expectations, we Practice, we Live, we are Free
While the secret of the Practice, is the Practice.
This simple practice that demands only that we follow what we are advised by our Teacher, our feelings.
By implementing these simple and practical teachings, we are moving towards our life with this clear sensation and empty of compulsive thoughts.
The relaxation allows us to live in peace and silence, without attachment to the images of an imposed separation from the world.
Oh, by the way, the feeling of unhappiness is long Gone.
