“Doubt if you must,” I tell myself daily, “but persist.”

Sue Bender

Chapter VIII, “Expectations,” in Sue Bender’s Everyday Sacred: A Woman’s Journey Home, explores the common expectations we put on ourselves. She writes about the expectations of parenting, writing, and dancing. She even writes about the expectations of our inner critique/”judge.” Toward the end of the chapter, Bender shares the Buddhist “esoteric bowl” practice. The instruction for the practice is to visualize placing all harmful, limiting, fear-based thoughts, along with thoughts of sweetness, joy, and love, in the bowl. Bender explains, “Blending the negative and positive makes it easier to to transform them into a proper offering – into nectar, ambrosia – a much richer brew. This is a purification ritual, a rite of renewal.”

The rules of expectations are a bit off now. Amidst it all, the Universe calls into question all expectations. The usual norms, guardrails, and boundaries look harsher under today’s light. Bender asks us to let go of expectations. Perhaps that is the heart of the esoteric bowl exercise – let go of good and bad expectations and all the judgement therein and allow them to transform into a healing tonic. I am not sure what letting go of expectations looks like right now. Being kind and gentle to ourselves and others? Making self care a priority in our lives? Taking time to forgive and breathe? Persistence in all of that – kindness, care, forgiveness, and breath – makes sense. In that context, life becomes about all of it, the beauty and the terror. Nectar and ambrosia, the much richer brew — the soul’s salve — are made from it all.