How a trip to India taught us to trust in whatever the universe dished out.
I first travelled to India in 1976 on the overland route from London. I stayed several months and later returned for five months in 1985. Now it was October 2013 and I once again headed for the subcontinent, this time by plane and with my wife, Wendy, who had never been to India before.
Many things coursed through my mind: Would Wendy like it? How different would it be from all those years ago? And would the new reality clash with my cherished memories? Above all was the overwhelming feeling that we had so much to see, so much to pack into a month’s visit. The impossibility of seeing it all presented a huge challenge.
Then a realization arose: We will see what we see. Wendy and I decided that if we trusted in the divine order of things, all would unfold in elegant and insightful ways. Overprogramming and rushing from one stupendous site to another would not be conducive to truly seeing anything. This decision to let go of expectations and trust the universe to provide us with whatever we needed brought us several gifts.
The decision to trust the unfolding of experience through non-expectation can be practiced anywhere and at any time. Yet certain occasions—like dream vacations, weddings, deaths and transitions, new jobs, and new commitments—tend to turn up the expectation index and by so doing encourage us (in fact almost force us) to be attentively receptive to what is around us, both seen and unseen. We become attuned to what shows up without having to react or judge, which is tremendously liberating. This is seeing without expectation.
Some people, for example, have a very hard time with the intensity, apparent chaos, and stench of much of India. The traffic, the street life, the cows, and the smell of mingled dung, incense, carbon monoxide, and spice is too much for them. Likewise, the disparity between beggars asleep on the sidewalk and the people who cruise by them in their Mercedes sedans is jarring to sense and sensibility.
I can understand this. When I returned home to the clean, almost empty (by contrast) streets of the United States, I felt a Zen quality that was missing amidst the medieval riot of Agra. And yet I also missed that same riotous liveliness. I missed the opportunity to simply look and enjoy what might turn up next: a herd of pigs by the Taj Mahal or perhaps a serene statue of Shiva sitting next to a hardware store.
Jesus, the great embracer, invited us to “watch and pray,” and I believe he was pointing to this same gracious ability to observe with eyes uncluttered by concluded judgment. To watch and pray is to see mindfully, balancing observation with contemplation—which, in my experience, yields the blessing of compassion.
The first gift we discovered in practicing non-expectation is that it brings a deeply inhaled breath of relaxation to the proceedings. It’s okay, all is well. Our humanness can take a load off and let Spirit bring us through. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the relaxed approach Wendy and I took brought us a trip with no travel nightmares, no stomach problems, and precious few hassles. Even the ones that showed up unfolded into unexpected blessings.
The second gift of seeing without expectation is the sense of openness and expansiveness that arises as a result. I guess it’s about leaving room for things to show up. For example, I am a person who, once I feel I have a good plan in place, likes to stick to it. Upon arriving in one of the Indian cities we visited, Wendy decided that the hotel we had booked was not the one for us. I initially resisted, but then relented, and we chose an alternate accommodation. This proved to be an awesome choice, with excellent food, good company, an attentive guide, and loving hosts. We expanded into an enhanced experience simply by being open to it, in spite of my initial hesitation.
The third gift that trusting a benign universe brings to us is the focused power of clarity. Clarity is like a laser beam that shines through the mists of circumstance. Unity co-founder Charles Fillmore once said, “You can know by simply holding the thought that you know.” Trusting in what appears before the opened mind’s lens brings understanding, which is clarity’s closest friend.
We were presented with a challenge at a Sufi shrine in the now-deserted city of Emperor Akbar the Great at Fatehpur Sikri. Our guide told us that offering an expensive piece of cloth on the altar of a Sufi saint would guarantee a munificent blessing. We felt coerced into buying this fabric. When I demurred, a gift of flowers was suggested at a much lower price, but it was clear this was considered a lesser gift. I responded that I felt blessed by God’s presence always and that a special offering of expensive fabric was unnecessary. The seller of cloth was disgruntled, as if to say I was disrespecting a honored practice, but I felt that I had made the right decision. I was clear about it. When we walked into the holy place with our offering, I felt the energy in the shrine room as the officiant graciously accepted our gift. By choosing a course of action that I felt was in alignment with my beliefs, I received a rich blessing indeed.
Something unexpectedly joyous and wondrous arises when we approach the next step in life in this clear and open way, which brings me to the fourth gift—joy. We decided to take a backwater cruise in a houseboat in Kerala in south India in spite of the guidebook’s advice that such a trip was now exceedingly touristy. It was true that hundreds of houseboats floated side by side on the main canals. But unbeknownst to us, the captain of our particular houseboat had a home way out in the lagoons and he took us there for the night. We met his wife and family and his close relations. In the morning, we wandered the banks and lagoons of his village, meeting children, receiving small gifts from the villagers, and enjoying the lotuses floating in the water of the serene, palm-fringed canals of this Asian water world. Did we just luck out? Perhaps. We felt that our openness brought us a blessing that will remain with us always. The joy of that glorious dawn on the side canal in south India will stay with us forever.
The fifth gift rests in apparent emptiness. The power of the creative universe brings wonderful things out of the void. Letting go allows. It’s that simple. It opens us up to the marvelous experience of serendipity, when seemingly unexpected treasures arise apparently out of nowhere. Nowhere is a profound place. God creates out of nothing, and as children of God we can, too. We do not simply rearrange the elements of our lives, we allow for a delightful recreation of the entire field of awareness.
In the town of Ooty in south India, we began our nature trek in a most unpromising way. Our guide took us by auto taxi (a kind of glorified moped) to the edge of town. We thought we were going up into the jungle, not a suburb. But what unfolded was more than we could have imagined. We passed terraced fields of carrots reaching up into the forest. We followed bison trails through the jungle and spotted deer bounding over high ridges. We came to a rock-clad temple dedicated to the monkey god Lord Hanuman and followed the pilgrimage path down through tea gardens to the village where our guide lived. The view of the surrounding hills was magnificent and we felt blessed by our unexpected adventure.
Since I’ve been back in the United States, I have endeavored to maintain the same perspective on things that allows for relaxed, expansive clarity and joy. Yes, everything changes, but as the famous French proverb goes, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose—the more things change, the more they remain the same. The flow, although always bringing change, is the constant that encompasses our days. Cooperating with that flow and that transition gives us the gift of continuity and eternality.
In our travels through India, Wendy and I appreciated the ever-moving flow that brought us new landscapes, new people, new experiences, and new events. That blessing is available to each of us now. Because God is beyond space or time, we can experience this presence of order and wonder everywhere. As the great author Franz Kafka once said:
“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
I felt the rightness of these eloquent words in India and I feel it now. There’s excitement and adventure in visiting exotic locales, however it is not about where we are but about our willingness to be present wherever we are. Making the conscious choice to suspend judgment and release expectations frees us to appreciate life directly and this is always a revelation. That is my practice today: to bring the insights I gained in India into the seemingly ordinary events of my everyday life. I’m finding that the expansiveness that non-expectation brings allows for greater and greater blessings.