No, it's not realistic, because we put our perceptions onto everything. Everything from the past that we've experienced has all of its own information. I was talking before about moral shame, moral dread and the database that moral shame does. That's only a partial little bit of our whole life. But inside, you know, maybe we have a complete database of everything we've ever done. And we don't always remember it all, but it's all tucked away in there somewhere. When we encounter anything, we have a contact with our eye-sight, we have a contact with hearing. Anything. We immediately put a perception on it. Even though our perception might be wrong, based on our past.
It's almost impossible and could be impossible for average people to have no expectation of an experience, of a future experience. Normally we're going to put a story around it very quickly, whatever it is. Now with the Mindfulness/Mental Noting practice, in particular, we're trying to stop that. We're trying to stop the perception being so automatic. Even though it basically may be there 99% of the time. We're trying to be with just contact and just see it for exactly what it is. This is so much the practice.
Now maybe, and I can not say this with any certainty whatsoever, maybe an enlightened person doesn't have this sort of expectation and so on. But if they did, it would not stop them being enlightened, because there is nothing negative in itself of having an expectation. There is nothing negative in putting a perception onto something even though it might be wrong. For example, the dogs barking. Years and years ago, I used to be the four o'clock wake-up bell ringer. We had about 5 dogs at the time and whenever I rang the bell, all the dogs would race up the hill and start howling. They kind of danced around and howled.
Now, the perception that almost everybody puts on dogs howling at that time is it must be hurting their ears. Now let me ask you, if something was hurting your ears would you run towards it, or would you run away from it? Okay, I don't believe it hurt their ears at all. I believe they wanted to join in, and it was like music, and let's go for it, let's have a good bash. So the perception of the dogs ears are hurting could be what somebody puts on to hearing the dogs howling with someone ringing the bell. Somebody else puts on a perception "No the dogs seem to be having fun". Now it actually doesn't matter which one seems to be right or wrong. Even an enlightened person could put a perception like that onto something, make a mistake, and that's okay. Because when we think of enlightenment, it doesn't mean they're absolutely wise with every single characteristic and every dog aspect in the world. It just means that they've ended all their greed, hatred and ignorance of reality. Not so much ignorance of what dogs do or humans do. They can still make the mistake in that way.
So with experiences in our life there is going to be a type of undercurrent of expectation whether we're conscious of it or not, which then puts a perception straight on to every experience. Now this is different to actually having an expectation that is definitely related to it. A little example, people come to their second retreat, for all of you, when you came to your second retreat, did you have expectations of what would happen in the retreat. Usually yes. Based on what you've done in exactly the same retreat, you expect a certain thing. So that's a planned expectation. That's very normal, very common, almost everyone has it. Because they've done exactly that experience, they then plan inside themselves what they expect to happen.
Now somebody who's done maybe eight or nine retreats, they know it's silly to have an expectation like that, so they try not to have one. They try not to build up what will happen on Day 3, and what will happen on Day 4, and what will happen on Day 5 and so on. They try not to build it up, but it's still going to be under there. As I mentioned earlier, because that has been your experience, you know what has happened on Day 3, you know what has happened on Day 4, you know what sometimes may happen and may not happen. It's already under there. So it becomes an expectation even though it's not one that you consciously make. It's interesting in this way. Based on our past experiences, we have automatic perceptions we put on any experience whether it's brand new or not, immediately when we meet the experience, we put something on it.