For all we know, we could wait at a red light and it might never change.  That's happened before.  Or, it could start flashing amber.  Or, it could change to blue.  Or, stranger things could happen.  When we have set ideas about how things should manifest, of how things will happen to us, we're limiting the possibilities of luck, chance connections, grace, and miracles.  When we're set on something, and it has to happen that way, we're closing the door to wonderful surprises.  When a hand keeps grasping after something, it's not open, waiting to receive.

We have expectations about everything in life.  We expect that something will come in the mail, that we're going to have a fantastic vacation, that a stock will rise 40 percent by January, that the new people in our lives are going to do wonderful things for us, that our children will succeed in life.  By projecting these expectations, we're attempting to order reality.  Not only are we proclaiming how reality should be but we're also deciding that we know what is best for us.

This is the height of egotism.  Ego or I-ness cuts us off from our Source and separates us from our Higher Power.  The force of ego is about making its own mountain for all the world to see, and standing tall at its summit.

As our spirituality develops and we live more in higher consciousness, we exist more fully in the present.  Existing in present time, we're less aware of ourselves and time, flowing in that higher consciousness, so that time begins to feel almost elastic and almost nonexistent.  That elasticity is the beginning of eternity.  Beginning to enter into eternity is not possible unless the ego is surrendered.  When we're attached to our expectations--in effect, demanding that events unfold according to our will--we are energizing our ego and telling our Higher Power that we know best.

Relinquishing expectations is not being passive.  It's the opposite; it's freeing ourselves to concentrate on the task at hand and to flow with what is truly so.  What is so is the reality occurring now, which we need to recognize and respond to.

Eliminating expectations does not at all mean that you stop your good intentions.  You can form the intention and let go of it, letting your Higher Power work out the details in your best interest.  That is humility.  A humble person can have potent intention but relinquish nitty-gritty expectations about the how and when.  In humility, you surrender to your Higher Power and want your attention free to be with that Higher Love.  The greater the immersion in that Higher Love, the less strident the ego's demands.

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