An expectation is a strong belief that something will happen or be true in the future. This might sound helpful for achieving your goals, and some sense of what’s next is always present in your awareness. However, expectations that are tightly held as necessary future outcomes are more likely to serve as distractions from being present in the moment.

All of you have expectations about most things. Most expectations are thoughts that originate in memories. With unconscious cultivation, they become predictions of future experience. Expectations readily become a pattern of thinking, and it is easy to get lost in your expectations. If you understand the mechanics of how you unconsciously lock yourself into expectations that do not serve you, you can find effective ways to free yourself from such patterns.

Many patterns of thought arise as defenses built around memories of parts of you that were wounded. You set up expectations to avoid the pains of your past revealed by memories. Even amid contrary evidence, it is easy to think that whatever happened before will happen again. Expecting a hurtful outcome can contribute to revisiting painful experiences. However, once you see yourself doing this, your spiritual maturity can reveal a deeper truth. You can discover that you no longer need these patterns that arose out of fear of future pain. You no longer need patterns of thought that have anything to do with not being who you really are. Realizing that you no longer need these patterns is the first step to releasing yourself from those patterns.