The Stillness Prior to Expectation

Just as TS Eliot instructed his soul to ‘be still and wait without hope, for hope would always be hope for the wrong thing’, this waiting without waiting invites us to divest our attention of any expectation for something special. Waiting, relieved of the tension that pulls us towards the future, stands revealed as simply being – fully sufficient in itself. If we believe that recognising our true nature is a special future event, we live in a state of subtle tension that prevents us from seeing we are already that for which we hope. Our being is not something special that will happen to us; it is present now as our very own self, shining quietly as the knowledge ‘I am’. As the impulse to attain, become and understand subsides, our being emerges from obscurity. Boredom and expectation are two sides of a coin – as expectation dissolves, the peace beneath is revealed.