I have been battling some health issues recently and was perusing my favorite Taoist sites looking for inspiration when I came across a wonderful site called personaltao.com. The fellow who writes this site is a Taoist Master who does a great job of simplifying and applying Taoist philosophies.
A quick tangent, this great guy lives in Hawaii, as do many of the western Taoist masters I have come across. This leads me to believe that visiting Hawaii is an absolute must for my future, there is surely a reason that taoists seem drawn to these islands.
So back to my story. I did not necessarily find something to help my health issues, but I did find a piece of advice that he gives to people new to Taoism concerning expectations. I would like to share it with you.
Taoism teaches a person to drop expectations. The more expectations you have for your life, the less you will become.
A Taoist lives life without expectations, living in the here and now fully.
Since most people need a few expectations especially when dealing with important future experiences. Here is a trick.
Create only a single expectation at a time for that future experience. For example: An expectation you will smile or have some fun. Thats it! Don’t place any learning or changing into your expectation. If you do , this actually plants the seed for the opposite to occur, By creating a single simple expectation such as smiling, this then becomes something you can always fulfill since you can empower that action to happen. Any expectation more complicated or relying on something outside of yourself, just sets up the future to not meeting your needs.
Dropping expectation is very very important within Taoism.
I could not believe how much this advice resonated with me. I have had a long relationship with the idea of expectations, I believe in a relationship it is important to be clear about expectations. But this idea of going into an experience expecting nothing but a smile is in my opinion a priceless treasure of advice. I can't wait to put this into practice.
