An Attitude of Gratitude

In the years I’ve dedicated myself to self-growth and realignment of my lifestyle with my values, I have discovered that one of the simplest and at once most difficult exercises to foster in my everyday life is the full experiencing of gratitude.

To be sure, it hasn’t been difficult for me because I find myself with nothing to be grateful for. It is that among the struggles of everyday living, fostering a conscious experiencing of gratitude — and not just enumerating the many things I “should” or “ought to” be grateful for — has not been the easiest task for me in the past.

Here’s an easy list of the many things I might be grateful for: a house, a caring partner, the ability to afford food, running water, wood for a fire, and so on. Remembering these things can really lift me up when I’m feeling down or out of sorts. However, when I am caught up in the inner monologue of my worries — “How am I going to get through this huge itinerary today?” “What can I cook for dinner tonight?” “Why isn’t so-and-so emailing me?” “How am I going to afford groceries this week?” “How much longer should I wait to get my car oil changed?” — the story of what all isn’t alright for me can overwhelm and stimulate resentment in me around the idea of experiencing or expressing gratitude at a given moment.

The reason for this is that, through this inner monologue, I find myself projected into the future or into the past, and in either case I am likely not fully present to this moment. Gratitude, to state it simply in my view, is an experiencing of my aliveness in the present moment to the enough-ness I already have. Gratitude experienced this way can be seen as a kind of meditation — it brings consciousness to this moment to witness the beauty of what needs in me have been fulfilled or acknowledged.

I’ll likely dedicate much more to this subject in later posts. For now, I’d like to simply invite you to join me in a small gratitude meditation right now, the kind of meditation I have been promoting for myself in my own life.

I invite you to hear these words and simply experience what arises in you as you sit with them. There isn’t any need to try experiencing what I’m describing — its power, I believe, will come in it not being forced. Just allow for what feelings — emotions and sensations — come up and into awareness…

http://youtu.be/eq-3pYiaeZw

 

How was that for you? Can you imagine how powerful it might be to experience gratitude in this way every day?

I’m aware of a number of individuals who practice some form of gratitude exercise like this as part of their daily routine, and I confess to myself longing to live this gratitude more and more every day I’m alive. In my experience, it fosters a little more love in my world each time, and it also grows and breeds…..passion.

“Responsibility” and Resentment

You may have noticed the emphasis of gentleness and lack of force in the meditation I just shared. To me, this emphasis has been a sincerely important element.

I, as I imagine many of us may have, grew up with a relatively turbulent relationship to gratitude. At church or school, I remember hearing how I should have gratitude for the many things in my life because not everyone was as blessed or as gifted or as lucky (or you name it) as I was. Or I should feel grateful because other people I never knew — and who usually don’t know me — fought for my liberty in this country. Or even that I should feel grateful to those who raised and took care of me. In some way or other (often in very subtle forms), we all witness nearly every day what someone else expresses we or they should feel grateful for.

Oddly enough, however, what I remember most often feeling in those circumstances wasn’t really gratitude. What I felt was an anxiety and even, in growing older and learning more about my world, some resentment around the sort of “responsibility” that I came under the impression I had for feeling grateful to others.

Let me briefly say that I do authentically feel gratitude these days for many of the things mentioned above. I even suspect that I  feel gratitude in ways that few others of us may, to a degree and quality that comes without the obligation (which is often what we mean by “responsibility”) to feel it. I can look back now and understand more deeply that many of those who were asking for gratitude of me were actually expressing to me a need of theirs: for acknowledgment, or for respect, or a desire to celebrate (or mourn) the people and things that have made life more wonderful in some way for us.

Whereas before my gratitude took the form of a shallow duty to pay respects for the things and experiences in my life, it can now more often take the form of a deep and full love for those things, and the people or energies that made them possible.

All the better, I don’t even have to agree with the actions or strategies that others may have implemented to make this life possible. The greater beauty I can experience even in times of disagreement stems from witnessing the needs and nature of beliefs — or the “inner garden,” if you will — that led to those particular strategies, tragic as they may seem to me.

Moreover, when I am consciously engaged with my gratitude in the manner of the meditation above, I am experiencing gratitude as a need in me, instead of as a strategy to meet other needs (or even others’ needs), and I can all the more appreciate my world for what it is and potentially promote more and deeper gratitude in the people around me.

What also makes a deeper degree of gratitude so important to me is something I’ve already mentioned earlier:

If we are experiencing full gratitude and are dwelling with fuller presence in this moment, the anxieties and traumatic evaluations of past and future moments is diminished, if not momentarily surmounted. I can at once bring more joy and beauty into my experience in this moment and create The presence that brings peace into our lives and further diminishes, to whatever small degree, the potential for fear and anger, may have everything to do with this simple but difficult exercise in fully experiencing our gratitude.

A New Agriculture for the Soul

As this blog grows and develops, I intend to begin cycling through the many sorts of relationships that we all share as human beings, coming from a slightly different angle each time, from perspectives of both culture and nature, in several realms. I want to address them in this way to cultivate a space for diversity from the complexity of these relationships, by touching on some of their simplest aspects.

Bill Mollison (who I quoted above) is a man known as the “father of permaculture,” a new agriculture and model for existing global culture. His work has itself modeled and inspired a huge wave of conceptual designing that gets its users in touch with the most immediate elements and organisms around us, to build a sustainable ecology from the simplest of implements. This new field first inspired me years ago upon my return to the U.S., and it continues to inspire me today in the principles I cheerfully (most of the time) strive to use around our home — and as the primary designing vehicle for a model for “inner ecology.” That inspiration is being put to its first test here in this blog, and I wish to express my deep gratitude to this practice and Mollison for their influences in my life.

And deep gratitude to you as well for reading!

 

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All the photos used in this post above are under Creative Commons License. If you or anyone you know might object to their use here, please write me at kpkelsey@nomadiceclectic.org.

Peace to you!

 

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