Expectations and the Restless Mind

Expectations and the Restless Mind
by Deana Tareshawty

Sat Chit Ananda Guru Ki Jay

Brimming with renewed enthusiasm for my Sadhana after the weeklong retreat, I started making plans for increasing my daily spiritual practice. My priority was going to be my Sadhana. I began with affirming that, every day, I was going to follow the retreat schedule.  I was going to get up early to chant and meditate. Then contemplate and journal. Then chant more before having lunch, and so on, according to the schedule. Any time I needed for mundane life was going to happen in the 2-hour window of the schedule that took place in the afternoon, or wait until after dinner, in the evening free time.

As mundane life started to creep in with tasks and responsibilities that could not be fit into that 2-hour window, I began to get discouraged. Soon, I experienced that old familiar shift happening within me. Peace and joy was replaced with a restless mind and agitated emotions. I started to judge myself, becoming critical. I started blaming others for my lack of discipline and complaining about my life circumstances that appeared to be a cause for why I couldn’t adhere to my schedule.

By the Grace of Kedarji and the miracle of the Shaktipat Kriya process, I had awareness that what I was experiencing in my plan to advance my Sadhana, was a kriya to point out a weakness in Sadhana.  My old habits of control, manipulation, praise, and expectations, were paying me a visit.

The Mind Loves the Places it Frequents Most

Gratefully, I didn’t wander too far down the rabbit hole of the ego idea’s expressions and distractions.  Due to my spiritual practice, and keeping the company of Kedarji, I remembered the wisdom he shares with us regarding the power the mind has to dictate our experience of Joy or suffering in the thoughts we think.

I took time to contemplate why I was having this experience. What thoughts and beliefs did I allow to consume my mind. I observed that I had so many expectations about my Sadhana. Expectations I didn’t know I had that were hiding under the level of my conscious awareness. Expectations that I loved to place on myself to become obstacles and excuses.

These expectations were fueled by the restless mind and mental conditioning I held connected to instant gratification and in wanting a God of convenience. What I planned was too ambitious and unrealistic. There was no flexibility and spontaneity. This type of thinking is an old habit I have that I never paid attention to where making change in my life is concerned. This was nothing new. My mind loves to frequent this type of thinking. I have done it all my life.

When engaging a new skill or making change in my life, it’s all or nothing in my mind. Big plans and big ideas. When things don’t go my way, because I am not realistic in setting goals and making steady progress in the foundational steps, it’s ok to give up. I gave it a shot, and it just didn’t work out. These expectations, along with my thinking, is one way I keep the exit door cracked open to abandon my Sadhana and the practices at the first sign of challenge.

It’s A Game of the Mind

It is the big game in my mind that made me entertain this thinking and understanding. In this way, expectations kept me in a cycle of pain and suffering by constantly believing Sadhana is hard. The game the mind plays is in the thoughts that there are so many practices I must remember and master, and that Sadhana means I have to go live in a cave and leave the world behind.

Sadhana is about taking the practices into mundane life and using them to experience the joy in daily living, to see God in everything and everyone, moment to moment.

What I observed was that I was forgetting the important instruction offered to us by Kedarji of  “Just for the day I am on” to stay in the present moment. All my planning was sending me into a future that does not exist to create an opening for the restless mind to expand and flourish. When I couldn’t meet the very high standards and expectations I placed on myself, I used that as an excuse and a reason to revert back to my old bad habits. My suffering in Sadhana was linked to these great expectations.

Looking back over my notes from the weeklong retreat, I dug into the lesson Kedarji offered in “the inner self is the stage, the senses are the spectator.” Here he shared that, “there is a great illusion by the senses and our attachment to them. They give us false hope, a feeling of comfort, that is empty. They leave us empty, in and out. The senses are very deceiving.  We superimpose, and in this, there is no way expectations can be met. To continue to meet expectations, we have to continue to choose pleasure and pain.”

You Get What You Meditate On

By Grace, to make my observations, understanding and awareness truly known, I had the direct experience of how expectations and the thoughts of the restless mind breed suffering.

During this time of year, in Southwest Florida, the threat of a hurricane and severe weather is a constant. The week prior to me picking up my husband at the airport, we had daily active thunderstorms that dumped large amounts of rain and flooding some areas. Adding to that, a bridge was out for repairs that was pushing traffic to other routes, causing congestion and long delays. In my mind, these factors were the beliefs I held around what I was expecting to experience driving to the airport. I worried over and meditated on these conditions for days, plotting and planning my route and how I would manage driving in blinding rain and traffic.

The day of, I was consumed with anxiety, agitation, and fear. I sat for meditation, but was so restless. I was so very attached to this pain and suffering of worrying about traffic, timing and blinding rain, that I would not surrender to the joy of a quiet mind. I wanted this suffering because I identified as this suffering. This suffering was what made Deana, Deana. Meditating on this suffering gave me something to complain about, and feed more self-defeating thoughts.

I worked myself up into a headache, and nervousness that impacted my digestive system and bladder. I kept checking the weather for when the storm was coming so I could get to the airport before it. And then, I was so paralyzed with fear of getting on the road that I kept finding things to distract myself with to delay getting in the car and going.

To my surprise, when I got on the road, there was no traffic. The storm held off. As I merged on to the freeway, contemplation #1 of the Ashtavakra Gita from “Contemplations on the Ashtavakra Gita,” by Kedarji, that I had been contemplating that week, welled up in my mind.

The contemplation states: “To attain liberation from the ignorance of worldliness, attachment to objects of sense must be destroyed. When the attachment is broken, the practice of tolerance, sincerity, compassion, contentment and truthfulness is an easy matter that brings the experience of joy. “

I started to smile in that moment because I knew my Guru was with me.  I felt joy in having this  Kriya to remind me that I am responsible for where my mind frequents. I create my own heaven or hell by the thoughts I think.

I was so very attached to worldliness, objects and the enjoyment of pain in experiencing them, that the joy of the Self was veiled.  I had expectations of having a bad driving experience, so I was creating my own suffering. My experience was a result of where my mind was frequenting. It was a reminder that I was on my way to becoming the restlessness that I obey if I continue to reach for this mental conditioning.

Lifestyle is the Remedy

Every day I am learning through my direct experience of how a restless mind impacts my experience of joy in daily living. Through the power of Grace, I am shown the proof of how a restless mind impacts my experience of joy in situations and circumstances, how it breeds fear, stops me in my tracks and stalls, not only mundane life, but my Sadhana as well.

I opened this blog sharing the expectations I had to reenergize my Sadhana. This was an example for me to see how I contract by reaching for mental conditioning, causing the pure joy of enthusiasm I held after the retreat to subtly shift it into ego driven enthusiasm in wanting to own and manipulate outcomes. I saw that I was subtlety slipping back into my old comfortable and familiar lifestyle of doubt, fear, worry, anxiety, unhappiness, satisfaction seeking, doership and so much more.

A spiritual lifestyle helps me gradually become established in the indescribable Joy of the Self  and is the remedy to quiet a restless mind.

Through my experience, when I stay engaged in my daily spiritual practice, of meditation, chanting, Seva, and Japa, my life improves. This creates a chain reaction that sets me up to address the restless mind in the moment with right understanding, Grace, and joy.

Deana Tareshawty performs her selfless service as Vice President of our public charity, The Bhakta School, in addition to serving as a program leader and harmonium player. She also serves on our Board of Directors. Additionally, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and a double minor in Biology and Chemistry. She is a certified Ecology of Well-Being practitioner and the owner of Inspired Wholeness. She is also a trained Reiki Master in Usui Reiki.