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Expectations are Frustrations Waiting to Happen

Gurudev Shri Amritji

 

Introduction

Every human being is born whole. But as you begin to identify with the external world—your body, your relationships, your name and history—you gradually lose awareness of the changeless Presence that is the source of your being. Instead of living from wholeness, you begin to live from a fragment. You try to fill the gap of that lost wholeness with people, possessions, accomplishments, and approval.

This is how expectation is born.

Expectation is the silent voice of separation. It says: “I am not enough as I am, and you must give me what I am missing.” You begin to expect love, safety, fulfillment, and joy to come from others. And when they fail to meet those expectations—as they inevitably must—you suffer. Not because they failed you, but because your expectation was rooted in a misunderstanding.

The outer world was never the source of what you seek. The love, joy, and freedom you are searching for do not come from others. They arise only when you return to the Source within. What you expect others to give you is what you have forgotten how to give yourself.

This booklet is an invitation to remember.

Each section is a doorway into a deeper understanding of how expectation operates—and how it creates the very suffering you are trying to avoid. As you read, you are not gathering information. You are returning to the inner space of witnessing where change becomes possible—not because the world changes, but because you do.

The teachings presented here are not abstract. They are practical. They are drawn from direct experience and are meant to be lived. When you begin to withdraw your expectations from the outer world and reclaim the power of your Presence, a transformation occurs. In that moment, you are no longer the seeker of love. You are the Source.

Let this be the beginning of your return.

 

1. The Invisible Source of Conflict

The experience of reality is the only real experience. But rarely are you present to receive what life is offering in this moment. Most of what you call experience is not reality at all—it is a reaction to reality. It is fabricated through the lens of your past, filtered through memory, and measured against your expectations for how life should be. You are not experiencing what is. You are experiencing what your mind does with what is.

The moment you try to adjust the present experience to make it more comfortable, familiar, or acceptable, you are no longer meeting life directly. You pollute the purity of the present with the residue of past preferences and future projections. The mind gets to work labeling, modifying, and organizing the experience, not to understand it, but to accommodate your story of how things are supposed to be.

Why is it so difficult to remain present? Because you are carrying the weight of everything you’ve ever been taught, every conclusion you’ve ever made, and every story you’ve ever told yourself. These are not neutral memories. They are charged impressions—likes and dislikes, desires and fears. When you enter the present moment, you bring with you the entire baggage of who you believe you are. And that baggage cannot enter the narrow gate of Now.

The present moment is too small to contain your history. It is too narrow for the ego to pass through. It does not accommodate who you were or who you want to become. It only accommodates what is. This is why it is called the razor’s edge.

Your experience of the now is constantly in conflict with the expectations you bring from the past. You measure each moment against an image or a memory of what once was or what you believe should be. When the present does not match the remembered joy or the imagined ideal, you reject it. You say, “It’s not supposed to be like this.” But who decides what it’s supposed to be? That judgment does not come from reality. It comes from your conditioning.

You are not experiencing this moment. You are experiencing your resistance to it. The present is pure, but your interpretation of it is polluted. What you call “reality” is often just a modified version of life, processed through expectations, memories, and fear.

You collect labels for every experience—good, bad, right, wrong, success, failure—and then carry those labels into your next moment. You go to a restaurant and have a beautiful experience, and next time, when it’s not the same, you say, “How come?” The memory of what was becomes a weapon against what is. This is how boredom arises. This is how relationships grow stale. This is how life becomes a drudgery. Too many labels. Too many expectations. Too many disappointments.

Meditation is the path back to what is. It is the return to the sacred space where you already are. The most difficult place to reach is the place you never left. But to be here, as you are, without judgment, without trying to change, fix, or improve—this is the essence of spiritual practice.

You do not need to become spiritual. You need only to be who you are, as you are, in this moment. That is the most difficult task. And that is the only doorway to freedom.

Practicing Presence When the Past Intrudes

1. Label the Labeling

Throughout your day, observe how quickly your mind assigns a label to each moment:

• “This is good.”
• “This is boring.”
• “That shouldn’t have happened.”

Practice: When you notice yourself judging or labeling, pause and silently say:

“This is not reality. This is my story about reality.”
Then, ask:
“What is actually happening right now, without my interpretation?”

This simple inner question opens a space between reality and your reaction.

Sit With What Is – Meditation as Unpacking the Now

The ego cannot sit still because it survives through movement—of memory, of preference, of resistance. Meditation creates the stillness where the baggage of your history can be seen and surrendered.

Practice:

• Sit in silence with eyes closed.
• Let the breath move naturally.
• As thoughts or memories arise, do not follow them. Simply say:

“This is not now.”
Or:
“This too arises and passes.”
Return to the breath.

Even two minutes of this daily re-trains the nervous system to choose presence over projection.

The Razor’s Edge Check-In: “Am I Here?”

The present moment is the narrow gate through which only Presence can pass. Throughout the day, ask yourself:

“Am I here—or am I comparing this to something else?”

Practice:
Set a recurring reminder on your phone that simply says:
“Now is not then.”

Each time it goes off, stop and return to your senses:

• What do I see, hear, feel?
• What is happening before my mind interprets it?

Release the Phrase “It’s Not Supposed to Be Like This”

This single sentence is the ego’s signature move. It reinforces the illusion that the moment should match your memory or ideal.

Practice:
Each time you hear yourself thinking or saying some version of this phrase:

• Replace it with:

“This is what is. Let me meet it as it is.”

This is not resignation—it is acceptance of what is. 

1-Minute Daily Reflection: The Polluted vs. the Pure

Before bed, reflect gently:

• Where today did I meet reality?
• Where today did I react to a story, memory, or expectation instead?

Practice:
Without self-blame, simply notice.
The more you see clearly, the more your presence grows.

Contemplation to Keep Close

“The present is too narrow for the ego to pass through. It does not accommodate who you were or who you want to become. It only accommodates what is.”

Let this truth be your mirror. Write it somewhere visible. Read it before meditation. Let it soak in when resistance arises.

 

2. Expectation and Separation – How the Ego Projects Lack

Every expectation is a silent judgment.

It may not be spoken, but it lives within you, carried from the unresolved past. Each time someone does not act the way you wanted or imagined, you react. But what is it that you are reacting to? You are not reacting to the person. You are reacting to the echo of your own unhealed memory. The judgment was already there. The person only triggered it.

This is how expectation creates separation. You imagine the conflict is with the other, but the root of the conflict lies within. The other is only the screen upon which your inner division is projected. You are not seeing them as they are. You are seeing them through the filter of your own unmet needs, unfulfilled desires, and unconscious conclusions.

This is why every expectation eventually becomes a disappointment. You expect from others what you have not yet been able to give yourself. You seek from them the love, the acceptance, the understanding that your own ego-self has not yet learned to offer to you. When they do not deliver, you blame them, not recognizing that it was your expectation that failed—not the person.

If your partner does not meet your need for approval, you say, “They don’t care.” If your friend doesn’t respond the way you hoped, you say, “They’ve changed.” But what has really happened? Your own hidden demand for a certain outcome has gone unmet, and rather than take responsibility for the expectation, you make the other responsible for your disappointment.

This is how you become a slave to your expectations. You hand over your peace to others, making them the cause of your joy or misery. You hold them responsible for giving you what you desire—and when they fail, you become the victim.

The ego, by its very nature, lives in separation from the Source of love and wholeness within. In that separation, it feels incomplete. And because it feels incomplete, it tries to complete itself through others. But the moment you seek fulfillment from outside, you have already moved away from your Self. The very act of seeking from another affirms your separation.

This is the original wound.

The moment you expect love to come from another, you divide yourself from the Source of love within. The ego wants the other to fix what it cannot fix in itself. What I cannot do for myself, I want you to do for me. I cannot accept myself in my anger, fear, or sadness—so I expect you to accept me instead. But no matter how much you receive from the other, it never fills the gap created by separation from your Self.

The reactive ego-mind creates the illusion that love is something you can acquire from people, places, or things. But love is not an object. It is not something you get. It is what you are. The love you are seeking cannot be found in the object of your expectation. It arises when you stop projecting your need outward and return to the Presence within.

To release your expectations is not to give up your desires—it is to reclaim your power. Each time you let go of an expectation, you withdraw your projection from the world and bring your awareness home to the center of your Being. This is the shift from ego to essence, from separation to unity, from need to presence.

When you stop expecting others to behave a certain way, you begin to see them as they are—not as the cause of your suffering, but as mirrors reflecting the pain of your own separation. This is where healing begins. And this is where love—true love—becomes possible.

Practicing Awareness of the Trap of Expectation

1. Notice the Shift from Innocence to Expectation

Every pure experience becomes polluted the moment the mind says, “I want this again.”
That shift from presence to craving is the beginning of suffering.

Practice: Reflect on a time when a beautiful moment was followed by disappointment because you expected it to repeat.
Ask yourself:

• What did I lose when I tried to recreate the past?
• What did I miss by not meeting the moment as it was?

This begins to reveal how expectation hijacks joy.

Identify Subtle Forms of “Owing”

Expectation often hides in the belief that others owe you something—respect, attention, gratitude, love. But the moment you believe someone owes you, you turn them into a means to an end.

Practice:
When you feel hurt or frustrated by someone’s action or inaction, ask:

• What did I expect from them?
• What did I believe they should have given me?
• Is this need rooted in the present—or in a past wound?

This brings hidden expectations into conscious awareness, where they can dissolve.

Catch the Future-Oriented Bargain

Expectation is a contract your ego writes with the future: “If I do this, then I should get that.” This turns even spiritual practice into a form of control.

Practice:
Before beginning your meditation, yoga, or devotional activity, pause and ask:

• Am I doing this to arrive somewhere?
• Or can I allow this to be complete in itself?

Drop any hidden agenda, and let the act be the offering.

Create a Conscious Pause Before Reacting

When expectations are not met, the body reacts. The nervous system constricts. The mind protests. But this reaction is not required—it is conditioned.

Practice:
When you feel disappointment or frustration arise, take three conscious breaths before doing anything.
In those three breaths, observe:

• Where do I feel this in the body?
• What thought is attached to it?
• Who or what am I blaming?

This pause gives you space to respond from awareness rather than react from the past.

Reframe the Moment as It Is, Not as It Should Be

You are not upset because of what happened. You are upset because of what you thought should have happened. Every expectation is a “should” that places the mind in conflict with reality.

Practice:
In the moment of frustration or sadness, try replacing your thought with:

• “This is not what I expected, but it is what is.”
• “Let me meet this, not manipulate it.”

You do not have to like the moment—but you can still be present with it.

Contemplation to Keep Close

“Every expectation is a seed of future suffering. It does not live in the now—it lives in a world that does not yet exist.”

Let this truth become a touchstone. When you find yourself pulled into future hopes or past comparisons, return to this:
This moment is already whole. It needs nothing added. It only needs to be seen.

 

3. Desire – The Echo of Unmet Expectation

What you desire is not what you truly want. It is a substitute—an echo of something that was never fulfilled, a compensation for a wound you did not know how to heal.

Desire is expectation extended into the future. Every desire you hold today is rooted in an experience of lack from the past. Something you needed was not given, or something you loved was taken away. That perception of absence became a memory. And that memory, unresolved, turns into desire. It is not the object you want. It is the healing of the absence you could not resolve.

This is the secret: what you desire most deeply is not what you think it is. You may pursue success, approval, love, safety, or control, but these are only the surface forms. What drives them is the phantom memory of an unmet need. You are not desiring the present. You are chasing the past.

You learned this pattern early in life. When something essential—nurturing, attention, food, affection—was perceived as lacking, the child within you formed a conclusion: “This is missing. I must get it.” That conclusion became a story. And that story became the foundation for a lifetime of seeking.

Even if what you desire seems logical or worthy, it often carries within it a deeper compulsion. This is why people who attain great success, beauty, wealth, or influence still suffer from inner emptiness. They fulfilled the desire, but the underlying expectation—the unhealed sense of lack—remained untouched. The desire was never about the object. It was about healing the wound that generated the desire in the first place.

When you look closely, you will see that most of your desires are just attempts to rewrite history. You want the future to fulfill what the past could not. But the future is not your savior. It is only a modified past. If your motivation is to fix what was broken, you will carry that brokenness with you wherever you go.

True fulfillment does not come from acquiring what you want. It comes from recognizing that the want itself is based on a misperception. When you see the illusion clearly, the desire dissolves. You realize that nothing outside of you can complete you, because you were never incomplete. You only believed you were.

This is where the path of grace begins. Grace is not what you ask for. Grace is what you receive when you stop asking. When you renounce your demands, even in the name of prayer, you become available to something deeper. You stop trying to get. You begin to be.

The difference between desire and grace is the difference between effort and surrender. Desire is fueled by your need to complete yourself. Grace comes when you allow yourself to be whole. Desire chases fulfillment. Grace reveals it.

To live by grace is to live without demands. To be in the world without expecting the world to make you feel complete. To let go of every compensation, every winning formula, every belief that says, “When I get this, then I’ll be happy.” That is not happiness. That is bondage.

The real path of yoga begins when you let go—not only of objects and attachments, but of the very identity that was shaped by lack. This is why it is said: If you don’t erase your history, you are history. Only in the present, which contains neither past nor future, can you truly be free.

Let go of your desire—not because it is wrong, but because it is false. What you are seeking is already within you. The desire only blocks it from being seen. To dissolve the desire is to uncover the truth: you already are that which you seek.

Practicing Awareness of the Shift from Expectation to Desire

1. Watch the Moment When Expectation Becomes Need

Every expectation begins subtly: a quiet thought, a preference. But when it is not fulfilled, it grows into frustration, then becomes desire, and finally demand. This is how suffering begins—silently, inwardly.

Practice:
At any point during your day, notice:

• What am I hoping will happen?
• If it doesn’t happen, do I become disappointed or reactive?
• Is this hope becoming a need?

Naming the moment of shift gives you the chance to disarm the cycle before it solidifies into suffering.

Track the Chain: Expectation → Frustration → Reaction

What you call anger or sadness often began as an unconscious expectation. That expectation, unmet, created inner tension—and you mistook that tension for truth.

Practice:
When you are emotionally triggered, trace it backward:

• What did I expect to happen?
• What did I believe I was owed?
• What meaning did I attach to not getting it?

This backward tracing breaks the illusion that your emotions are caused by others. They are caused by inner conclusions—many of which are unconscious.

Pause Before the “If Only” Thought

Desire begins when the mind says, “If only…”
If only they would listen. If only I had more time. If only things were different.

Practice:
Each time you catch yourself thinking “if only,” pause and say instead:

• “This is what is. Let me meet it now.”

This gently trains the mind to stop outsourcing peace to the future.

Practice Withholding Projection

When your expectation is not met, the tendency is to blame the other. But every projection is a form of self-abandonment—it distracts you from your own inner experience.

Practice:
When you feel someone has let you down, ask:

• What inner experience am I avoiding by focusing on them?
• What old fear or unmet need is being stirred?

Stay with the sensation in the body, rather than the story in the mind.

Empty the Mind Before Entering

Expectation fills your mind with assumptions. But Presence can only meet what is empty. When you approach people, places, or practice with a full mind, there is no room for truth to enter.

Practice:
Before entering a conversation, a yoga pose, or even a familiar space, pause and ask:

• “What am I bringing with me?”
• “Can I empty myself and simply receive?”

The less you bring, the more you can receive.

Contemplation to Keep Close

“Desire is a recycled expectation. It is not born in the now—it is inherited from the past. When you are free of expectation, there is no need to desire. There is only what is.”

Let this remind you that your longing is not wrong—it is just misplaced. What you seek outside is a reflection of what you’ve forgotten within.

4. Midlife Crisis and the Myth of Fulfillment

The journey of the ego is a journey in time. It begins the moment you separate from the loving Presence that you are and begin to identify with a self-image shaped by family, culture, education, and society. You learn who you are not, and forget who you are.

What you know about yourself—your name, your history, your successes and failures—is a learned identity. It is useful for survival in the outer world, but it is not who you truly are. Beneath this surface self is the silent, changeless background of Being, the eternal Presence that does not come and go.

The ego-self, born of separation, is constantly seeking to reclaim the unity it has lost. But because it has forgotten the Source within, it looks outward—to parents, partners, children, careers, possessions. It believes, “If I can find the right person, the right job, the right experience, I will be whole again.” This search is what most people call a “life.” But it is only a postponement of fulfillment.

In time, the illusion begins to crack. What once seemed promising now feels empty. The marriage, the career, the dream—all of it begins to lose its power to satisfy. This is what you call a midlife crisis. But it is not a crisis. It is a calling.

The very systems that you hoped would complete you now feel like burdens. The people you leaned on cannot carry your inner weight. The rewards you chased now feel like traps. What you called success becomes a mirror of your dissatisfaction. This is the sacred moment when the soul knocks on the door of your identity and says, “Enough. Look within.”

The crisis arises because you have been trying to fulfill an inner hunger with outer food. You’ve been asking the world to give you what only the Self can provide. You’ve tried to fill a spiritual emptiness with emotional, physical, or material experiences. And it hasn’t worked. Not because you failed, but because it was never going to work.

The ego, like the prodigal son, went looking for love in the outer world. But the outer world was never the source. It was only a reflection. Every time you seek from another what you have not given to yourself, you deepen the illusion of separation. You adapt. You perform. You offer kindness, acceptance, humility—but not from wholeness. From strategy. From survival.

This strategy may help you win temporary approval, but it does not bring peace. It reinforces the core misunderstanding that you are not already whole. And so you suffer—not just from what others do, but from what you believe you need them to do. You suffer from your own expectations.

You expect your partner to make you feel loved. You expect your child to reflect your worth. You expect your job to fulfill your purpose. And when they do not, you feel abandoned, betrayed, or ashamed. But the outer source did not fail. Your expectation did. The failure is not in the person or situation—it is in the belief that anything outside of you can complete what is already whole within.

This is the turning point. The moment when fulfillment becomes possible—not because the outer world changes, but because you stop asking it to.

The practices of I AM Yoga®, Yoga Nidra, and Quantum Breath Meditation are tools to return you to your Self. They are not techniques to fix your life. They are invitations to remember who you are before you tried to fix it. When you enter the state of witnessing, you shift from reaction to response, from separation to presence, from ego to essence.

Here, fulfillment is not something you achieve. It is something you uncover. It was never lost, only overlooked. What you sought in the world, you now reclaim in the stillness of your own Being.