Post by Blu on Mar 17, 2008 1:41:57 GMT -5
– Part 1 of 3 ~~ THE ATITUDES of GRATITUDE by M.J. Ryan
The most powerful agent of growth and transformation is something much more basic than any technique: a change of heart. ~~ John Welwood
The next step on the journey is to look at the attitudes of gratitude ~~ those beliefs that foster a sense of thankfulness. Attitudes are the underpinnings of action; as John Welwood implies, we can’t change on the outside until and unless we transform our thinking, transform the way we imagine ourselves and our reality. The good news is that we really can decide to see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty, and that decision will have profoundly positive effects not only on our happiness and that of those around us, but on the way our whole lives unfold.
LIFE IS a MIRACLE ~~ The Zen master Ling Chi said that the miracle is not to walk on burning charcoal or in the thin air or on the water; the miracle is just to walk on earth. You breathe in.
You become aware of the fact that you are alive. You are still alive and you are walking on this beautiful planet. The greatest of all miracles is to be alive. ~~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Thich Nhat Hanh Is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who now lives in exile in France. While living in Vietnam, he endured all kinds of hardships, including the killings by either the French, American, or Vietnamese military of family members and friends. An orphanage that he started was bombed. And yet he is a walking example of joy and gratitude. When asked how he survived such difficulties with such peace and love in his heart, he replied that every morning he used to ask himself what he could count on that day; sometimes it was only the blue sky and the brown earth, and the fact that he was still breathing in and out. But in counting his blessings, so to speak, he reconnected to the miracle that he was, at least for the present moment, still alive in this beautiful world. “Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful,” he reminds us. “How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural ~~ you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.”
Buddhist and Sufi teachers spend a lot of time talking about ‘waking up’, by which they mean I think, living life to its fullest because we are aware of living it moment to moment. Aware of breathing in, aware of breathing out; aware of chewing and swallowing our food; aware of placing one foot in front of the other when walking. Aware of seeing your infant son, of the effect of your words on a coworker, of the fact that your one foot is resting on top of the other.
Spiritual leaders teach that waking up is a process, that it doesn’t just happen once and for all, but must occur again and again when we realize we have forgotten the miracle of being alive, and in recognizing our forgetfulness, we wake to the miracle once again. In the moments we are wake to the wonder of simply being alive, gratitude flows, no matter our circumstances.
When times have been tough for me, I have done a similar practice to Thich Nhat Hanh’s. Before getting up in the morning, I have asked myself what I could count on that day, both externally ~~ that I still had a place to live and food on the table; and internally ~~ the deep love and trust, for example, that I feel for my friends.
It’s a wonderful antidote to worry and opens you to gratitude, provided that you really stick to what you can count on today. Sometimes I would find myself, for instance, when I thought about the fact that I had a house, saying, “Yes, but I don’t know if I can afford it tomorrow and what if the earthquake strikes, and . . .” Then I would choose to stop and say, “This is just for today. What can you count on today?” As we learn how to appreciate the miracle of being alive we will find the peace and the strength to face life’s challenges as they come.
THE UNIVERSE IS FRIENDLY ~~ Einstein was asked what he thought the most important question was that a human being needed to answer. His reply was “Is the universe friendly or not?” ~~ Joan Borysenko
For most of my life, I have subscribed to the “Watch out ~~ disaster might strike at any time, so don’t get too complacent” school. It probably comes as no surprise that I have suffered from chronic muscle spasms in my back and neck my whole life; even my body is perpetually tensed for trouble. By age forty-four, I was just plain sick of it, tired of waiting for the boom to fall, tired of clenching in fear rather than opening in expectation. So I decided to live as if the universe were friendly.
I have been meditating on Einstein’s question for over a year now, and I am convinced that how each of us answers it is the key to whether we are happy and joy-filled or not, and whether or not an attitude of gratitude comes easily. If we believe the universe is friendly, then we believe that life is on our side, that good things will come our way, and that even when bad things happen, they are bumps in the road designed to teach us to become more wise, more whole, more loving. In this view of the universe, gratitude flows from us naturally, as an instinctive response to the bounty we perceive all around us.
If, on the other hand, we believe the universe is unfriendly, then we see our life as an endless struggle against difficult odds, we believe that bad things are either random or sent purposely to torture us, that there is nothing we can count on and therefore we must brace ourselves for the next crisis, hoarding what we have. In this view, gratitude is very situation-specific. We’re grateful ~~ maybe ~~ when things go well, but we are always ready for the boom to fall and for it all to disappear.
I have lapses in believing in the friendly universe, particularly when things are going badly money-wise. When I forget, I take out a piece of paper on which I’ve copied down a piece of an Inuit teaching. “The inhabitant or soul of the universe is never seen; its voice alone is heard. All we know is that it has a gentle voice, like a woman a voice so fine . . . that even children cannot become afraid. And what it says is ‘Sila ersimarsinivdluge,’ ‘Be not afraid of the universe’.” It helps me remember that if I place my trust in the beneficence of the universe, things tend to work out. And if they don’t at least in the meantime I will enjoy myself a whole lot more and be more fun to be around.
LET GRATITUDE FLOW NATURALLY ~~ One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. ~~ Henry Miller
Nothing destroys a sense of gratitude faster than being told we ‘should’ feel grateful. Some ‘should’s are necessary e.g. in teaching manners to children (children learn not only by example, but by pairing instruction to example). But when we try to experience gratitude as a living force in our lives, guilt, whether imposed by others or by ourselves, is deadly.
We’ve probably all had someone in our lives tell us we should be grateful for something, or perhaps we say it to ourselves. Either way, this is the least likely way to promote an attitude of gratitude. As far as I can tell, gratitude is generated in two ways: one, by a spontaneous up-swelling of the heart toward the wonder of life and all its particulars; and two, by a conscious decision to practice looking at what’s right in our lives rather than focusing on what’s missing. Either way, we don’t get to gratitude by guilt-trips.
Guilt is a terrible motivator. It makes us want to run away from whatever is making us feel bad, and to avoid looking at whatever is underlying it.
I say this because I don’t want you, after reading this book, to go away thinking you ‘should’ feel grateful. I want to encourage us all to open our hearts and experience gratitude as much as we can. But I know for myself that there are days when it is impossible for me to feel thankful for anything no matter how hard I try ~~ and if that’s true for you sometimes, be gentle with yourself. The more you allow what is true for you to be true, and the less you ‘should’ yourself, the more space you create for the possibility of gratitude to quietly, softly enter your heart.
THE FLASHLIGHT in YOUR OWN BACK YARD ~~ Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you see, only the way you see it. ~~ Thaddeus Golas
I went to see my father in the hospital about a week before he died. He had suffered for years with emphysema, hooked up to an oxygen tank, barely able to move around, and was failing fast. Bedridden, he was on constant oxygen and medication; his six-root-two frame weighed only 130 pounds because eating anything but ice cream was too difficult. Every breath was a labored struggle. I asked him whether the quality of his life was worth all the effort. “I still enjoy being alive,” he responded. “Sometimes it’s easier to breathe and then I really enjoy just quietly taking a breath. I still enjoy reading the comics in the newspaper and watching the ball games on TV. My life is good.” He said not a word about all that he had lost, all that he would never do again.
When I was about to do publicity for ‘A Grateful Heart’, I talked to my friend Dawna Markova about how to speak about the power of gratitude. She’s great at metaphors, which are wonderful ways to looks at things from a new perspective. What she said I have carried with me ever since. “Gratitude is like a flashlight. If you go out in your yard at night and turn on a flashlight, you suddenly can what’s there. It was always there, but you couldn’t see it in the dark.”
Exactly! Gratitude lights up what is already there. You don’t necessarily have anything more or different, but suddenly you can actually see what is. And because you can see, you no longer take it for granted. You’re just standing in your yard, but suddenly you realize, the first flower of spring struggling to emerge from the snow; Oh, there’s a deer emerging from the scrub brush; Oh, there’s the measuring cup you’ve been looking for that your daughter was using to make mud pies. It’s just your ordinary old back yard, but suddenly you are filled with happiness, thankfulness, and joy.
That’s what my father did. Shining the light of gratitude on his life, he saw what was there that was good.
The great thing about the flashlight of gratitude is that you can use it day or night, no matter where you are or what your circumstances. It works whether we are young or old, fat or thin, rich or poor, sick or well. All we need to do is turn it on.
What it takes to turn it on varies from person to person. There was a renowned surgeon at a week-long workshop who, when asked what surprised or inspired him that week, said. “Nothing.” He was invested in being cynical. But something disturbed him, he knew he had “flunked” the test the workshop leader presented ~~ and he was the kind of guy who always ended up at the head of the class. So he began to look around for things to report to the leader. By week’s end, he was genuinely engaged in the excitement and wonder of life again. Even the other workshop participants noticed the difference.
IT’S ALL GRATUITOUS ~~ This is what binds all people and all creation together ~~ the gratuity of the gift of being. ~~ Matthew Fox
“My only son died five years ago; he was four and a half,” writes a contributor to Slowing Down in a Speeded Up World. “One of the gifts his death brought was an excuse to stop the rush. For the first year, I allowed grief to wash over me whenever I needed to, and I let myself be open to the healing that surrounds us in this incredible world. I had time for a hug and to talk with my friends; I had vast amounts of time to cherish four and a half years of memories.
“Nowadays it isn’t unusual for me to stop in my tracks when a rainbow arches over the bay outside my office window, or a tiny feather drifts down to me from the sky, or a child’s laugh at McDonalds’s brings tears to my eyes.
“I realize how lucky I am, not to have lost my son but to have had him for as long as I did. I’m lucky to have known the importance of certain moments that catch your soul and may never come again.”
Gratefulness, or ‘great fullness’ as brother David Steindl-Rast calls it, “is the full response of the human heart to the gratuitousness of all that is.” He and Matthew Fox remind us that truly every single thing we have has been given to us, not necessarily because we deserve it, but gratuitously, for no known reason, and that the same is true for every living thing. We are connected one to another, to sky and water and tree and snake, by virtue of being here together as part of the wheel of life. Whatever source we believe is the giver ~~ some concept of God or the randomness of the Big Bang ~~ the fact of our incarnation, the fact of the lizard’s skin, the rose’s scent, the blueness of the sky, is an incredible gift. None of us ~~ bee, flower, person ~~ did anything to earn this gift, nor is anything required of us in return.
When, in a sudden moment ~~ gazing at a field of daffodils, perhaps, or moving luxuriously through warm water, or listening to the painfully beautiful voice of Billie Holiday ~~ we are struck by the truth of this amazingly free ‘no strings attached’ gift, gratitude flows naturally from us, without effort. At such times, we don’t need to work at feeling thankful; we just are.
In such transcendent moments, we take our place in the great wheel of life, recognizing our connection to one another and to all of creation. More than that, we actually become part of everything, so that we experience the truth that there is no separation between us and everything else, sound, sight and feeling.
At such times, gratitude opens our hearts fully and we take in the love, the beauty, the joy that is ours to possess in every moment, in all circumstances. Through the gift of a grateful heart, we merge with the All and remember our rightful home.
A HABIT OF THE HEART ~~ In relation to others, gratitude is good manners; in relation to ourselves, it is a habit of the heart and a spiritual discipline. ~~ Daphne Rose Kingma
As a young woman in my twenties and thirties, I learned a great deal about thankfulness from Daphne Rose Kingma. We spent a great deal of time together working on books, and again and again I would watch her make a personal connection to the people who came across her path ~~ garbage collectors, long-distance operators; or the person selling coffee on the corner. No matter what was going on in her own life, no matter how rushed or upset she was, she took the time to connect. I’d hear her on the phone with the airline reservations desk. In the course of getting a flight she’d learn the woman’s name, where she lived, and the fact that she, like Daphne, loved flashing high heels. Daphne was so genuinely appreciative of the other person’s help that the person on the other end of the phone felt washed in a warm bath of love. It was then I realized that while gratitude was a feeling, it could be cultivated. I set out to emulate her (although I still am not as good at it as she).
One of the fascinating things about feelings is that they come and go, like waves in the ocean of our consciousness. Happiness, anger, fear, love, thankfulness ~~ they arise in response to some external or internal trigger and then subside. We feel angry, and then we don’t. We are ‘in love’ and then we aren’t. We feel thankful, and then it’s over. It’s particularly easy to see the tide of feelings in a child, where they come and go so quickly and uncensoredly. One minute my daughter is screaming her head off because I have left the room; I return and pick her up ~~ a big smile.
As we grow, one of our spiritual tasks is to move beyond this purely emotional response to life and begin to cultivate positive emotions as ‘habits of the heart,’ as Daphne calls them. What this means is that we learn to love even when we don’t ‘feel’ loving, be kind when we’d rather be surly, and feel grateful when we don’t particularly feel like being thankful. In this way, we turn feelings, which come and go, into conscious attitudes that we act upon even if we don’t ‘feel’ like it.
Our attitudes are our mental stances, the positions we hold vis-a-vis life. In some ways, our attitudes determine everything, because they are the glasses through which we see the world. Is the world a wonderful place or a hellhole? All of us know that the answer to that question depends on our attitude on any given day. Has the world changed? Most likely our thinking about it has. When we consciously cultivate positive attitudes, such as love, joy, and gratitude, we begin to ‘remake’ the world. We literally live in a different place because our attitudes about it have changed.
The particular beauty of an attitude of gratitude is that it instantly connects us to everything else. In an important way, it is the recognition of the connection, the switch, between us and the rest of life. And consciously recognizing it opens the flow: the more grateful we are, the more of an abundant sense of life we will experience.
For that’s the irony about the relationship between attitudes and feelings. The more you cultivate the attitude, even if you don’t feel it, the more you experience the feeling. The more loving we are, the more love we feel. The more joy we radiate, the more comes back our way. And the more thankful we are, the more we experience the richness of spirit that grateful feelings produce.
ATTITUDE IS the ONLY DISABILITY ~~ He who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms ~~ to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. ~~ Victor Frankl
My friend Annette needs a kidney transplant. Everyone who knows her is amazed at her grateful attitude. Upon hearing the news, rather than adopting a ‘poor me’ stance, she focused on the fact that while waiting for the transplant, she qualifies for a less invasive dialysis method. In telling me about the situation she proclaimed with a radiant face, “I am so thankful. I have four people who have volunteered to be tested to see if they can be a donor. Isn’t that great! Four people are willing to give me a kidney.”
I thought of Annette as I was driving the other day and saw a bumper sticker that proclaimed, “Attitude is the Only Disability.” While I am sure it was a slogan for disabled people’s rights, I suddenly realized its larger implications ~~ what we think about our lives, our attitude ~~ has the ability to enable or disable us. As many spiritual teachers have said, we cannot necessarily change our circumstances. But we have complete control over what we think about our circumstances, the meaning we attach to them. No matter our circumstances ~~ even, as Victor Frankl points out, in a situation as horrifying as a concentration camp ~~ we can focus on the positive and make a difference by virtue of our attitude.
Because of her attitude of gratitude, Annette may be ‘sick’, but she is not dis-abled. Through gratitude, she is enhancing her ability to renew and re-created, which comes, as Joan Borysenko puts it, “when we lift ourselves out of the familiar axis and see life from a higher perspective.” She is attracting all kinds of people who want to help, everyone from kidney donors and energy healers to coworkers offering to give her their comp time and folks volunteering to cook and clean for her while she’s recuperating. We all want to be around her because she is such a teacher of gratitude and joyfulness.
Like no one else, she has proven to me that gratitude is an attitude that can be consciously chose, no matter what our circumstances. We can focus on the negative and descent into a spiral of negativity and gloom. Or we can choose to look at what’s right in any given situation, and become a beacon of love and joy.
The most powerful agent of growth and transformation is something much more basic than any technique: a change of heart. ~~ John Welwood
The next step on the journey is to look at the attitudes of gratitude ~~ those beliefs that foster a sense of thankfulness. Attitudes are the underpinnings of action; as John Welwood implies, we can’t change on the outside until and unless we transform our thinking, transform the way we imagine ourselves and our reality. The good news is that we really can decide to see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty, and that decision will have profoundly positive effects not only on our happiness and that of those around us, but on the way our whole lives unfold.
LIFE IS a MIRACLE ~~ The Zen master Ling Chi said that the miracle is not to walk on burning charcoal or in the thin air or on the water; the miracle is just to walk on earth. You breathe in.
You become aware of the fact that you are alive. You are still alive and you are walking on this beautiful planet. The greatest of all miracles is to be alive. ~~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Thich Nhat Hanh Is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who now lives in exile in France. While living in Vietnam, he endured all kinds of hardships, including the killings by either the French, American, or Vietnamese military of family members and friends. An orphanage that he started was bombed. And yet he is a walking example of joy and gratitude. When asked how he survived such difficulties with such peace and love in his heart, he replied that every morning he used to ask himself what he could count on that day; sometimes it was only the blue sky and the brown earth, and the fact that he was still breathing in and out. But in counting his blessings, so to speak, he reconnected to the miracle that he was, at least for the present moment, still alive in this beautiful world. “Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful,” he reminds us. “How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural ~~ you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.”
Buddhist and Sufi teachers spend a lot of time talking about ‘waking up’, by which they mean I think, living life to its fullest because we are aware of living it moment to moment. Aware of breathing in, aware of breathing out; aware of chewing and swallowing our food; aware of placing one foot in front of the other when walking. Aware of seeing your infant son, of the effect of your words on a coworker, of the fact that your one foot is resting on top of the other.
Spiritual leaders teach that waking up is a process, that it doesn’t just happen once and for all, but must occur again and again when we realize we have forgotten the miracle of being alive, and in recognizing our forgetfulness, we wake to the miracle once again. In the moments we are wake to the wonder of simply being alive, gratitude flows, no matter our circumstances.
When times have been tough for me, I have done a similar practice to Thich Nhat Hanh’s. Before getting up in the morning, I have asked myself what I could count on that day, both externally ~~ that I still had a place to live and food on the table; and internally ~~ the deep love and trust, for example, that I feel for my friends.
It’s a wonderful antidote to worry and opens you to gratitude, provided that you really stick to what you can count on today. Sometimes I would find myself, for instance, when I thought about the fact that I had a house, saying, “Yes, but I don’t know if I can afford it tomorrow and what if the earthquake strikes, and . . .” Then I would choose to stop and say, “This is just for today. What can you count on today?” As we learn how to appreciate the miracle of being alive we will find the peace and the strength to face life’s challenges as they come.
THE UNIVERSE IS FRIENDLY ~~ Einstein was asked what he thought the most important question was that a human being needed to answer. His reply was “Is the universe friendly or not?” ~~ Joan Borysenko
For most of my life, I have subscribed to the “Watch out ~~ disaster might strike at any time, so don’t get too complacent” school. It probably comes as no surprise that I have suffered from chronic muscle spasms in my back and neck my whole life; even my body is perpetually tensed for trouble. By age forty-four, I was just plain sick of it, tired of waiting for the boom to fall, tired of clenching in fear rather than opening in expectation. So I decided to live as if the universe were friendly.
I have been meditating on Einstein’s question for over a year now, and I am convinced that how each of us answers it is the key to whether we are happy and joy-filled or not, and whether or not an attitude of gratitude comes easily. If we believe the universe is friendly, then we believe that life is on our side, that good things will come our way, and that even when bad things happen, they are bumps in the road designed to teach us to become more wise, more whole, more loving. In this view of the universe, gratitude flows from us naturally, as an instinctive response to the bounty we perceive all around us.
If, on the other hand, we believe the universe is unfriendly, then we see our life as an endless struggle against difficult odds, we believe that bad things are either random or sent purposely to torture us, that there is nothing we can count on and therefore we must brace ourselves for the next crisis, hoarding what we have. In this view, gratitude is very situation-specific. We’re grateful ~~ maybe ~~ when things go well, but we are always ready for the boom to fall and for it all to disappear.
I have lapses in believing in the friendly universe, particularly when things are going badly money-wise. When I forget, I take out a piece of paper on which I’ve copied down a piece of an Inuit teaching. “The inhabitant or soul of the universe is never seen; its voice alone is heard. All we know is that it has a gentle voice, like a woman a voice so fine . . . that even children cannot become afraid. And what it says is ‘Sila ersimarsinivdluge,’ ‘Be not afraid of the universe’.” It helps me remember that if I place my trust in the beneficence of the universe, things tend to work out. And if they don’t at least in the meantime I will enjoy myself a whole lot more and be more fun to be around.
LET GRATITUDE FLOW NATURALLY ~~ One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. ~~ Henry Miller
Nothing destroys a sense of gratitude faster than being told we ‘should’ feel grateful. Some ‘should’s are necessary e.g. in teaching manners to children (children learn not only by example, but by pairing instruction to example). But when we try to experience gratitude as a living force in our lives, guilt, whether imposed by others or by ourselves, is deadly.
We’ve probably all had someone in our lives tell us we should be grateful for something, or perhaps we say it to ourselves. Either way, this is the least likely way to promote an attitude of gratitude. As far as I can tell, gratitude is generated in two ways: one, by a spontaneous up-swelling of the heart toward the wonder of life and all its particulars; and two, by a conscious decision to practice looking at what’s right in our lives rather than focusing on what’s missing. Either way, we don’t get to gratitude by guilt-trips.
Guilt is a terrible motivator. It makes us want to run away from whatever is making us feel bad, and to avoid looking at whatever is underlying it.
I say this because I don’t want you, after reading this book, to go away thinking you ‘should’ feel grateful. I want to encourage us all to open our hearts and experience gratitude as much as we can. But I know for myself that there are days when it is impossible for me to feel thankful for anything no matter how hard I try ~~ and if that’s true for you sometimes, be gentle with yourself. The more you allow what is true for you to be true, and the less you ‘should’ yourself, the more space you create for the possibility of gratitude to quietly, softly enter your heart.
THE FLASHLIGHT in YOUR OWN BACK YARD ~~ Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you see, only the way you see it. ~~ Thaddeus Golas
I went to see my father in the hospital about a week before he died. He had suffered for years with emphysema, hooked up to an oxygen tank, barely able to move around, and was failing fast. Bedridden, he was on constant oxygen and medication; his six-root-two frame weighed only 130 pounds because eating anything but ice cream was too difficult. Every breath was a labored struggle. I asked him whether the quality of his life was worth all the effort. “I still enjoy being alive,” he responded. “Sometimes it’s easier to breathe and then I really enjoy just quietly taking a breath. I still enjoy reading the comics in the newspaper and watching the ball games on TV. My life is good.” He said not a word about all that he had lost, all that he would never do again.
When I was about to do publicity for ‘A Grateful Heart’, I talked to my friend Dawna Markova about how to speak about the power of gratitude. She’s great at metaphors, which are wonderful ways to looks at things from a new perspective. What she said I have carried with me ever since. “Gratitude is like a flashlight. If you go out in your yard at night and turn on a flashlight, you suddenly can what’s there. It was always there, but you couldn’t see it in the dark.”
Exactly! Gratitude lights up what is already there. You don’t necessarily have anything more or different, but suddenly you can actually see what is. And because you can see, you no longer take it for granted. You’re just standing in your yard, but suddenly you realize, the first flower of spring struggling to emerge from the snow; Oh, there’s a deer emerging from the scrub brush; Oh, there’s the measuring cup you’ve been looking for that your daughter was using to make mud pies. It’s just your ordinary old back yard, but suddenly you are filled with happiness, thankfulness, and joy.
That’s what my father did. Shining the light of gratitude on his life, he saw what was there that was good.
The great thing about the flashlight of gratitude is that you can use it day or night, no matter where you are or what your circumstances. It works whether we are young or old, fat or thin, rich or poor, sick or well. All we need to do is turn it on.
What it takes to turn it on varies from person to person. There was a renowned surgeon at a week-long workshop who, when asked what surprised or inspired him that week, said. “Nothing.” He was invested in being cynical. But something disturbed him, he knew he had “flunked” the test the workshop leader presented ~~ and he was the kind of guy who always ended up at the head of the class. So he began to look around for things to report to the leader. By week’s end, he was genuinely engaged in the excitement and wonder of life again. Even the other workshop participants noticed the difference.
IT’S ALL GRATUITOUS ~~ This is what binds all people and all creation together ~~ the gratuity of the gift of being. ~~ Matthew Fox
“My only son died five years ago; he was four and a half,” writes a contributor to Slowing Down in a Speeded Up World. “One of the gifts his death brought was an excuse to stop the rush. For the first year, I allowed grief to wash over me whenever I needed to, and I let myself be open to the healing that surrounds us in this incredible world. I had time for a hug and to talk with my friends; I had vast amounts of time to cherish four and a half years of memories.
“Nowadays it isn’t unusual for me to stop in my tracks when a rainbow arches over the bay outside my office window, or a tiny feather drifts down to me from the sky, or a child’s laugh at McDonalds’s brings tears to my eyes.
“I realize how lucky I am, not to have lost my son but to have had him for as long as I did. I’m lucky to have known the importance of certain moments that catch your soul and may never come again.”
Gratefulness, or ‘great fullness’ as brother David Steindl-Rast calls it, “is the full response of the human heart to the gratuitousness of all that is.” He and Matthew Fox remind us that truly every single thing we have has been given to us, not necessarily because we deserve it, but gratuitously, for no known reason, and that the same is true for every living thing. We are connected one to another, to sky and water and tree and snake, by virtue of being here together as part of the wheel of life. Whatever source we believe is the giver ~~ some concept of God or the randomness of the Big Bang ~~ the fact of our incarnation, the fact of the lizard’s skin, the rose’s scent, the blueness of the sky, is an incredible gift. None of us ~~ bee, flower, person ~~ did anything to earn this gift, nor is anything required of us in return.
When, in a sudden moment ~~ gazing at a field of daffodils, perhaps, or moving luxuriously through warm water, or listening to the painfully beautiful voice of Billie Holiday ~~ we are struck by the truth of this amazingly free ‘no strings attached’ gift, gratitude flows naturally from us, without effort. At such times, we don’t need to work at feeling thankful; we just are.
In such transcendent moments, we take our place in the great wheel of life, recognizing our connection to one another and to all of creation. More than that, we actually become part of everything, so that we experience the truth that there is no separation between us and everything else, sound, sight and feeling.
At such times, gratitude opens our hearts fully and we take in the love, the beauty, the joy that is ours to possess in every moment, in all circumstances. Through the gift of a grateful heart, we merge with the All and remember our rightful home.
A HABIT OF THE HEART ~~ In relation to others, gratitude is good manners; in relation to ourselves, it is a habit of the heart and a spiritual discipline. ~~ Daphne Rose Kingma
As a young woman in my twenties and thirties, I learned a great deal about thankfulness from Daphne Rose Kingma. We spent a great deal of time together working on books, and again and again I would watch her make a personal connection to the people who came across her path ~~ garbage collectors, long-distance operators; or the person selling coffee on the corner. No matter what was going on in her own life, no matter how rushed or upset she was, she took the time to connect. I’d hear her on the phone with the airline reservations desk. In the course of getting a flight she’d learn the woman’s name, where she lived, and the fact that she, like Daphne, loved flashing high heels. Daphne was so genuinely appreciative of the other person’s help that the person on the other end of the phone felt washed in a warm bath of love. It was then I realized that while gratitude was a feeling, it could be cultivated. I set out to emulate her (although I still am not as good at it as she).
One of the fascinating things about feelings is that they come and go, like waves in the ocean of our consciousness. Happiness, anger, fear, love, thankfulness ~~ they arise in response to some external or internal trigger and then subside. We feel angry, and then we don’t. We are ‘in love’ and then we aren’t. We feel thankful, and then it’s over. It’s particularly easy to see the tide of feelings in a child, where they come and go so quickly and uncensoredly. One minute my daughter is screaming her head off because I have left the room; I return and pick her up ~~ a big smile.
As we grow, one of our spiritual tasks is to move beyond this purely emotional response to life and begin to cultivate positive emotions as ‘habits of the heart,’ as Daphne calls them. What this means is that we learn to love even when we don’t ‘feel’ loving, be kind when we’d rather be surly, and feel grateful when we don’t particularly feel like being thankful. In this way, we turn feelings, which come and go, into conscious attitudes that we act upon even if we don’t ‘feel’ like it.
Our attitudes are our mental stances, the positions we hold vis-a-vis life. In some ways, our attitudes determine everything, because they are the glasses through which we see the world. Is the world a wonderful place or a hellhole? All of us know that the answer to that question depends on our attitude on any given day. Has the world changed? Most likely our thinking about it has. When we consciously cultivate positive attitudes, such as love, joy, and gratitude, we begin to ‘remake’ the world. We literally live in a different place because our attitudes about it have changed.
The particular beauty of an attitude of gratitude is that it instantly connects us to everything else. In an important way, it is the recognition of the connection, the switch, between us and the rest of life. And consciously recognizing it opens the flow: the more grateful we are, the more of an abundant sense of life we will experience.
For that’s the irony about the relationship between attitudes and feelings. The more you cultivate the attitude, even if you don’t feel it, the more you experience the feeling. The more loving we are, the more love we feel. The more joy we radiate, the more comes back our way. And the more thankful we are, the more we experience the richness of spirit that grateful feelings produce.
ATTITUDE IS the ONLY DISABILITY ~~ He who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms ~~ to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. ~~ Victor Frankl
My friend Annette needs a kidney transplant. Everyone who knows her is amazed at her grateful attitude. Upon hearing the news, rather than adopting a ‘poor me’ stance, she focused on the fact that while waiting for the transplant, she qualifies for a less invasive dialysis method. In telling me about the situation she proclaimed with a radiant face, “I am so thankful. I have four people who have volunteered to be tested to see if they can be a donor. Isn’t that great! Four people are willing to give me a kidney.”
I thought of Annette as I was driving the other day and saw a bumper sticker that proclaimed, “Attitude is the Only Disability.” While I am sure it was a slogan for disabled people’s rights, I suddenly realized its larger implications ~~ what we think about our lives, our attitude ~~ has the ability to enable or disable us. As many spiritual teachers have said, we cannot necessarily change our circumstances. But we have complete control over what we think about our circumstances, the meaning we attach to them. No matter our circumstances ~~ even, as Victor Frankl points out, in a situation as horrifying as a concentration camp ~~ we can focus on the positive and make a difference by virtue of our attitude.
Because of her attitude of gratitude, Annette may be ‘sick’, but she is not dis-abled. Through gratitude, she is enhancing her ability to renew and re-created, which comes, as Joan Borysenko puts it, “when we lift ourselves out of the familiar axis and see life from a higher perspective.” She is attracting all kinds of people who want to help, everyone from kidney donors and energy healers to coworkers offering to give her their comp time and folks volunteering to cook and clean for her while she’s recuperating. We all want to be around her because she is such a teacher of gratitude and joyfulness.
Like no one else, she has proven to me that gratitude is an attitude that can be consciously chose, no matter what our circumstances. We can focus on the negative and descent into a spiral of negativity and gloom. Or we can choose to look at what’s right in any given situation, and become a beacon of love and joy.