Maintaining a Consciousness of Positive Expectation
Positive expectation is not the same as optimism, and it’s certainly not wishful thinking. Optimism hopes something might turn out well. Expectation assumes it already has. That distinction matters, because consciousness doesn’t organize itself around hope — hope is polite, it waits its turn. Expectation is presumptuous. It walks in before the invitation arrives and starts rearranging the furniture. Most people spend their mental energy bracing for what might go wrong, then wonder why bracing is exactly what keeps showing up. Maintaining a consciousness of positive expectation means retraining that default setting — not for one good afternoon, but as a standing condition of the individuals consciousness.
Dr. Ernest Holmes taught that the mind is not a passive witness to life but an active participant in shaping it. He wrote, “Today I live in the quiet, joyous expectation of good,” Notice the word quiet. It is not a loud affirmation shouted at a mirror. Quiet, because real expectation doesn’t need volume; it needs consistency. In our study of Spiritual Principle we understand our subconscious mind accepts whatever is impressed upon it with feeling and repetition, which means a consciousness rehearsed daily in calm certainty eventually stops asking circumstances for permission. It simply expects. Not arrogantly. Just factually.
Esther Hicks, wrote “If you want it and expect it, it will be yours very soon.” Hicks is pointing out, wanting alone isn’t what’s doing the work. Expecting is what moves the energy of the desire forward. Plenty of people want a better year, a healed relationship, a business that finally breathes easy, and then spend the commute rehearsing every reason it probably won’t happen. That’s wanting with the parking brake still on. Expectation releases the brake. It doesn’t require pretending the bills aren’t due; it requires deciding, ahead of the physical evidence, which outcome gets to have your attention.
Les Brown said “No one rises to low expectations.” That line cuts in two directions at once. It’s true of the expectations placed on someone by a parent, a teacher or a boss and just as true of the expectations someone quietly sets for themselves before their feet even hit the floor in the morning. A consciousness that expects scraps will organize a life around scraps, competently and efficiently. A consciousness that expects abundance, dignity, and divine good will go looking for evidence of exactly that and, being a well-trained instrument, such an expectant consciousness will find it.
This is the reconditioning of an individuals consciousness at the heart of The Abundance Shift program, running throughout August — a five-week Sunday series, an Abundance Sound Bowl Meditation Experience, and a Potluck Q&A, drawing on the principles in Dr. Joe Dispenza’s Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself to help release the old patterns keeping expectation stuck on low. Nested inside it is The Prosperity Flow Program, a 31-day daily practice of affirmative prayer built on the understanding that prosperity is already moving through every corner of life and simply needs to be recognized. Each day brings a fresh affirmative prayer for abundance, a guided practice, and TCSL’s ministers and practitioners praying in agreement alongside participants — thirty-one days of deliberately raising the bar on what someone is willing to expect from a divine and orderly universe, until raising it simply becomes how the individual’s consciousness operates.