Thoughts from Contemporary Taoism.
T. S. Eliot wrote in his poem East Coker, a part of the longer series Four Quartets.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
The words he uses are important. He is not advocating hopelessness, nor the closing of the heart which has no love. He is talking about waiting, that still silent place inside that is not bombarded with external stimuli and is not crowded by the ongoing, noisy, verbal, internal dialogue. Later in the poem he says, “Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.”
If we can find silence outside and inside us, we enter the place of waiting, without expectations about what is coming next or monologues about what has come before. Just fully and quietly present to the space.