Question: How can I kill expectation?

Sri Chinmoy: Let us start with hope. Hope is power. You may think that hope is nothing but imagination, but inside hope there is power. There are many people who don’t hope. Either they don’t know how to hope or they don’t want to hope. But this is the wrong attitude. Hope is not delusion. Hope is not mental hallucination. We hope to do something good or to become something good, so hope is good. Now expectation is also a power. We should expect something from our life. We can’t ruin our lives like ordinary people. We can’t waste our time like ordinary people. We expect something good, something divine from ourselves. We must not say, “Oh, we do not want to become good.”

But eventually we have to give up our expectation. We will do our best, but we won’t expect anything. First we shall start with hope, then we shall expect to become good, then we must say, “I will do the right thing. I feel that it is my duty to do the right thing, to pray and meditate, and it is God’s duty to give me what He wants me to have. At the same time I must not fix it in my mind that God will give me something just because I am praying.” We shall not fix a date. We shall not say, “On such-and-such a date if I can’t become perfect, then I am giving up the spiritual life; I don’t need God.” That kind of idea we must not cherish.

Some people are of the opinion that if we please God once in His own Way, then naturally He will please us also in our own way. But this is a very tricky way of dealing with God. God’s bargain is not like that. Whenever I say that if you please God, then God will also please you, I do not mean that if you please God in your aspiration-life, then God will fulfil you in your desire-life. One time a disciple of mine told the other disciples, “Let us please Guru in his own way, just once. Then he will please us also in our own way.” But this idea is absurd. I do say that if you please me once in my own way, then I shall please you in your own way. But you have to know that if you really please me in my own way, by that time your will and my will have become one. I execute only the Supreme’s Will. I have no will of my own. So if I execute the Will of the Supreme and you have become one with my will, then naturally at that time your will becomes the will of aspiration and not the will of desire.

When we are able to please God, we shall not ask Him for human things but for divine things. God Himself is more than eager and anxious to give us those very things. At that time our will and His Will automatically become one. So the best thing is to do your best every day and leave it up to God to select the hour to fulfil you.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Transcendence of the past, Agni Press, 1977
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