A science teacher and mentor once shared with me an anecdote about a time when she was leading her young students in an experiment. As the teacher, she thought she understood what the experiment was supposed to demonstrate. So, when the students’ results came back contradicting the lesson she thought they were supposed to learn, she was critical, convinced that the students weren’t following directions, weren’t “doing it right.” When the students kept seeing results other than what she had told them to look for, she finally went back and revisited the concept, “relearning” it… and found that the mistake was in her own thinking. Her false expectations had prevented her from seeing reality, and threatened to distort her students’ view of reality as well.
This is the danger of bringing preconceptions and expectations into our prayer. God is reality is all its truth, marvelous and unfathomable in totality through the mind (but not through the heart!). Our conceptions can have immense value in the truth they convey, but none of them is capable of encapsulating the full truth of God. When our conceptions give rise to stringent expectations about exactly how God will look, act, or be, we can miss the whole truth of God as God is, God who surprises us with visions and ways and possibilities for love that we have yet to imagine. The beauty of contemplative practice is the freedom from incorrect assumptions and the opportunity to know God “from the ground up,” as God is!