The Power of Expectation

In his youth, Swami Kriyananda discovered an amazing law of life – the Power of Expectation. He describes this law in The New Path:

I hit upon what was, as far as I knew then, a novel theory: To be lucky, expect luck. Don’t wait passively for it to come to you, but go out and meet it halfway. With strong, positive expectation, combined with equally positive action, success will be assured. With this simple formula I was to achieve some remarkable results… Expect to be lucky, then meet luck halfway with a vigorous, positive attitude.

In his book, Kriyananda verified the Power of Expectation in various ways including passing an exam without studying (not recommended) and he also used it while hitchhiking to Mexico. During his travels, he attracted and expected Lady Divine Luck to meet him halfway and help take care of him.

The mind with consciousness creates objective reality…

The mind has power. Why don’t you try it in your life and see how it works for you? The mind with consciousness creates objective reality and magnetically attracts situations.

The question is – can we also apply this principle inwardly in our meditations? Can we expect luck of inner experience in the form of deep perceptions? Usually, we are taught not to expect anything when we meditate. We learn that we are practicing and serving in the spirit of karma yoga – without desire for any specific fruit or expectation of anything. Otherwise, if we are attached to outcomes, we may find ourselves frustrated and closed off from other experiences that may be waiting for us. Yet, this is only one side of the coin as Paramhansa Yogananda advises us:

Meditate unceasingly and deeply, expecting nothing but bliss.

Q&As

-If I expect bliss in meditation, will I find it sooner?
-YES! because your inner antenna is tuned to that frequency.

-If I expect inner beauty, will I see it sooner?
-YES! because your inner gaze is tuned to its frequency. It is as if you had consciously opened the door to it.

-If I expect God to come to me, will I experience Him/Her sooner?
-YES! because your awareness is tuned to that Holy Presence. If you look for a pearl, you find it sooner.

The Inner Gaze

The quality of your gaze in meditation is of immense importance.

The quality of your gaze in meditation – the way you look into the inner world during meditation is of immense importance. Reflect on this a moment and ask: “When I close my eyes and look within in meditation, what do I expect to find?” A little peace? Emptiness, darkness, or thoughts and personal feelings? In that case, your gaze is not attuned to the right frequency.

If, however, you start your meditation with the thought, ‘The Kingdom of God is within me,’ expecting to joyfully enter into it, you automatically apply the Power of Expectation – you will enter that Kingdom sooner.

Let’s say that you meditate with the chakras considering this: When I utter the word ‘chakras’, how does it resonate in me? Do you immediately think of them as centers that feed the body with prana? Do you think of them simply as centers of energy or as places of psychological qualities?

All of these things are philosophically correct but still, your gaze will not be fully tuned – not resonating with their depth, magic, and bliss. You are not expecting the right thing and your frequency will not be optimally tuned.

Instead, if your inner gaze is more finely tuned, expecting bliss in the chakras, you will experience it much sooner. You can do that by letting Yogananda’s words from Autobiography of a Yogi sink into your mind.

The advanced yogi, withholding all his mind, will, and feeling from false identification with bodily desires, uniting his mind with superconscious forces in the spinal shrines, thus lives in this world as God hath planned.

Behind the spinal centers is God. If you concentrate there, you will find Him.

Examples

Let’s say you practice pranayama with the currents of ida and pingala in your meditations. What is your spontaneous association when looking at them inwardly? If you think that they represent duality and bind us to delusion, it might again be philosophically correct but your gaze is not well-tuned. Your expectation is dull.

If you instead look at these inner channels with Yogananda’s blissful words in your mind, your perception will be entirely different:

When you get accustomed to the coolness and warmth in this practice, there will be nothing in the world that you will like better… There is nothing in the world to equal this sensation… That is where His favorite haunt is – in the spine.

Let’s say you are a Kriya Yogi. Do you practice considering your astral spine a place full of karma? If so, will you ever be able to feel its glory? Hardly. It is much wiser to positively tune your inner gaze.

Try a little experiment: When you watch your spine in Kriya, think of it with the expectation that it is the altar of God, as Yogananda describes it. These words are full of light and you will more easily feel the divine brightness of your spine when you think of them during your practice. You will be tuning your inner eye to the correct frequency. You can also do so with these celestial words:

The sensation of the spine when awakened is indescribable. That is where your heaven is.
-Paramhansa Yogananda

Lady Divine Luck

In meditation, expect to be divinely lucky and meet Lady Divine Luck halfway. In this way, you will be able to successfully apply the Power of Expectation. This is what Swami Kriyananda meant in his book Awaken to Superconsciousness:

If you’re expecting someone to visit you, you won’t wait for him in the basement. If you’re expecting a phone call, you won’t drown out the sound of the telephone by turning on the electric blender. If you keep a grim attitude during meditation, you won’t be prepared for the experience of joy even if it comes to you. It won’t be your grimness, so much, that prevents you from experiencing joy as your essentially anti-superconscious attitude of skepticism, your resistance to the inner flow. Be joyful in meditation. Be peaceful.

The way to attune yourself to Divine Joy is to hold a joyful attitude. The true experience of divine joy as Yogananda explains in his poem Samadhi – is “beyond imagination of expectancy.”

Meditation means inner listening. Here is my last question: How are you listening?

Listening itself, as I use the word here, entails much more than listening with the ears. It means, among other things, the stillness of expectation, and complete mental absorption in whatever inspirations come. –Swami Kriyananda

A Task For You

Try to inwardly understand what Kriyananda means by the stillness of expectation. In that understanding, your meditation will notably change because you are wisely tuning your inner gaze to the higher octave of the Power of Expectation where the meditative Lady Divine Luck will be waiting for you.