Insidious expectations
[Level 1: Transitional] When consistency accidentally leads to expectancy
NOTE: I originally wrote this February 18th, 2025 for the HealthyGamer Memberships platform for the group of folks on there interested in spirituality and what was fondly referred to by the community as “The Weird Stuff”. Over the next few days be working through my backlog of posts I’ve either made on there or saved in draft and never actually got around to publishing. Anyway, on to the content!
I know it’s something that’s been brought up time and again, but based on a realization I had from my own experiences over the past few days, I feel like it’s worth a reminder: expectations can be very subtle.
It’s been 4 months since I’ve gotten much more intentional and consistent with my practice and diet (eating mostly sattvic, cutting out all coffee, alcohol, THC). As the months went by, it slowly felt like my meditation sessions ironically fell off in terms of depth and intensity. I logically knew at the beginning not to expect anything or nothing would happen. But, paradoxically, the more days and sessions I spent not expecting anything, the ever so subtly more I unconsciously expected something to happen. It wasn’t until I stopped sticking to my diet and practice so rigidly for several days in a row while on vacation that I noticed the meditation sessions that I did do during that time go noticeably better. It was only now that I realized that was because I truly had no expectation of getting to any state of deeper consciousness while not adhering to my diet and routine.
Consistency is key, but consistency and expectations seem to go hand-in-hand, despite being repeatedly told not to expect anything. It took me breaking consistency to realize the expectations were still silently growing in the shadows.
Current Reflections
Reading this post now, 9 months later, I realize I was completely relying on my senses to tell me meditation was “working.” If it didn’t feel deep or intense, I thought I was failing.
Then I read Saint John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul a couple months ago and had one (or many, I should say) of those “oh SHIT” moments. (Side note: I highly recommend the modern translation published in April 2024. Even if you’re allergic to religious literature, this book will mess you up in the best way.)
Turns out there’s a whole thing called the “Dark Night of the Senses” where meditation starts feeling dry, empty, boring and it’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s a sign you’re going deeper.
“Nothing seems to be happening” ≠ “nothing is happening”
I’ll probably write a whole post about this book (I bookmarked the hell out of it because it described my experience so eerily), but for now: if your practice feels flat, maybe that’s actually progress. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.