Gratitude

As we continue to stay here, suspended in the jelly of uncertainty, unsure of when our lives can start back up again, when we’ll be able to hug our friends and family again, what things will look like when we can peek our heads outside, it’s easy for me to become overwhelmed with the enormity of it all. Things won’t look the same as they did just last month and it feels like we’re collectively faced with an impossible choice, deciding how much and what kind of human suffering we can stomach — our loved ones getting sick, overwhelming hospital systems, and eventually dying, or our loved ones going hungry, overwhelmed by mounting debt and unpaid bills, also eventually dying. There is no easy answer, but the suffering we’re feeling as a global society as we face this together, apart, is revealing some important lessons for those willing to listen.

At the same time that we’re facing this vast uncertainty and the often fearful reality of our fragile existence, we’re also seeing so many beautiful expressions of joy, compassion, and community. The very act of social distancing is one of love, supporting the health of countless nameless faces we’ll never meet. We’re finding joy in the silly little parts of the day we would have otherwise missed, like when my son asks my husband to take a break from the dishes for “a little tickle” (that’s actually happening right now as I type). :) And we’re seeing firsthand how interconnected we are as a human family. Just as a virus can spread easily among us, ignoring borders and class, so too can this renewed sense of love, compassion and joy. We can band together to offer food to those who are hungry, recognize the social inequality that is exacerbating this crisis for so many, and work hard today to prepare ourselves to create a better, more loving, more inclusive future for all of us.

And if all of that feels like too much right now, we can practice gratitude.

Gratitude has been a major source of stability for me during these seemingly endless stay at home days, and well before this crisis. As this lockdown began I wasn’t really remembering this essential tool, and it was easy to only see the negative side of things. But after the first week or so, I remembered how transformative purposefully orienting my thinking to gratitude is for me. So I reached out to a friend to see if she’d be my gratitude buddy. She agreed, and since then, I’ve been lucky enough to have a dear friend to share my gratitude with each day.

Each night before bed we text each other a couple sentences about one thing in the day we feel grateful for. Some days the gratitude flows easily and I have to choose among a handful of lovely memories from my day. Other days the exercise really does feel like exercise, as I search my memories of the day for even one thing to share. Often on those days when I’m feeling at my lowest, the very act of reviewing my day to share a moment of gratitude gives me a few minutes of respite from the negative thinking I’d not even realized was there. The added bonus of this exercise for me is that I also get to hear what my friend is grateful for, which brings a smile to my face as well. It’s a positive feedback loop that has been sustaining me for the last six weeks.

Even if you don’t have a gratitude buddy with whom to share your daily highlights, you can still make it a point to stop and recognize the various reasons for gratitude each day, either by pausing to acknowledge things you’re grateful for as they happen, soaking in the sensation of gratitude, or taking a few minutes at the end of the night to reflect and journal about the parts of your day for which you’re grateful.

Death’s shadow is always looming over our existence here on earth, and expressing  gratitude for this human life is an excellent way to honor our present vitality while also recognizing this inexorable condition of life. What is there to fear in death if we can practice living each day fully aware of the gift it is to be alive? Since this all began, and we have been continually reminded of the preciousness of each day, my husband and I have shared a moment of gratitude each morning when we wake up -- we’re here, we’re breathing. 

This isn’t to say that gratitude is a cure all, and that if we practice gratitude all of our struggles and suffering will disappear with a snap. But working to continually shift our perspective to orient toward gratitude does help us to stop being victims of our own lives and circumstances. Instead of experiencing these disastrous and scary moments of life as reason to cower in a “poor me, poor us” mindset, (which speaking from personal experience, is an easy place to go these days!), we can instead see these waves of challenge and suffering as an opportunity for our souls to grow and mature, an opportunity for us to learn how to live fully, an opportunity for us to let down our constant resistance to life and live fearlessly, fully trusting our heart’s capacity for love. 

Gratitude’s magic lies in its ability to get us to drop our resistance in exchange for an embrace. 

It seems like all of my musings here end up in a similar place -- one of allowing our awareness to aid us in giving up the constant fight against what is, to embracing it all instead. Even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard, our awareness and mindfulness practice teaches us how to be with it, loving (not necessarily liking!) each moment for the gift that it truly is -- another moment to wake up to the reality that we are surrounded by love, swimming in it really. 

I have a choice. I can spend my energy and focus fearing and dreading the suffering that is coming out of this moment in time. Or I can spend my energy and place my awareness on expanding the love and compassion coming out of this moment in time, even if it starts with just being grateful for the breath I’m breathing right now. 

Even when I spend my energy and focus on the fearful dreading side of things gratitude and awareness can still lift me up to my best self. The more I practice, the more I see and can remember that it was during all of the “worst” times in my life when I’ve experienced the most growth. Keeping this in mind makes it easier to trust in the moment and the love that holds us all. From this trust I’m better equipped to see moments to be grateful for on even my worst days.

We’ve got just this one life, these few years to walk this earth. What better way to spend this time than experiencing gratitude as witness to all of the little miracles that make up each day? One of my teachers would end each evening on retreat with the reminder to really pay attention as we tucked ourselves into bed at night. That juicy feeling of laying down, getting under the covers and coming to rest - “don’t miss it!” he would say. Echoing his sentiments, I encourage you to find the juicy moments in your day today, savor the beauty surrounding you and the love holding you. Don’t miss it!

Quiet Eyes

A few weeks ago I posted a gratitude activity that highlighted how interconnected we all are. I recently finished reading Sharon Salzberg’s book Faith and this passage stood out to me. It articulates the power of contemplations like gratitude webs:

“In order to know the truth of interconnectedness we need to look at the world with what theologian Howard Thurman calls ‘quiet eyes.’ It might be through silent meditation that we see the hidden patterns of connection that make up our inner life. It might be through pausing long enough to realize where a plate of spaghetti comes from. However we do it, softly receiving reality with quiet eyes rather than pinpointing objects and events as separate and distinct opens up our view instead of enclosing it with predetermined boundaries. We take in what is appearing before reactions and conclusions get fixed. When we relax into this mode of perception, a different perspective on reality becomes available to us.”

Image: Greg Crespo

So much more than "just a cup of coffee!"

So often we get stuck in our patterns of naming this or that as definitive objects. The example I used last week of a cup of coffee showed that the coffee is so much more than the warm liquid in my mug—it was a unique confluence of the efforts of many, natural processes and certain causes and conditions. When I look upon my cup of coffee as "just a cup of coffee," I lose out on the wonder and the larger perspective that viewing it with “quiet eyes” gives me.

And it’s not just with tangible objects. I’m prone to delineate and define my emotions or situation in life as "this or that," "good or bad." When I look at a feeling of shame or anger rising inside of me with these narrow eyes, that’s all I see, shame or anger. And sometimes, (actually, usually), these narrow eyes are accompanied by some judgmental sunglasses, declaring said emotion as worthy or unworthy, positive or negative.

Looking at anger with “quiet eyes,” I see and experience a tightening in my chest, my face growing flush, the breath quickening, and an elevated heart rate. I notice the painfulness of these sensations. I notice a layer of fear emanating from behind my judgmental sunglasses, "You will always feel this angry!" "How dare you feel that way?!" "You’re a mindfulness teacher, you’re not supposed to have these thoughts!"

But thankfully, by using my “quiet eyes,” I can see the anger as just another layer of experience resulting from a confluence of causes and conditions.

My "quiet eyes" recognize what I did or said, what someone else did or said, and what thought or occurrence brought this emotion to the surface. My “quiet eyes” turn “I am so angry” into “Right now, I feel anger.” In addition to the thoughts and sensations associated with my anger, my "quiet eyes" also see the vast open sky of awareness that stands as background to any emotions I might have.

In Faith, Sharon describes it like this: 

“The open nature of awareness can bare anything without becoming damaged. Relying on this unsullied nature, we can see whatever happens to us as part of the rising and passing of all phenomena. This understanding doesn’t make us passive, but gives us the ability to see things with a different perspective—knowing that there is always an intact place within us. Then we needn’t be paralyzed by our suffering.”

“Quiet eyes” help me remember the intact place within me. Unruffled. Accepting. Aware. 

Image: Greg Crespo

Awareness as vast as the sky.

Planetary Perspective

“…The Earth, as Buckminster Fuller used to famously say, is a spaceship, Spaceship Earth. We are in space already. It’s just that we haven’t brought that into our perspective as we live here on Earth. The Overview Effect is simply the sudden recognition that we live on a planet, and all the implications that it brings to life on Earth.”  --David Beaver, Co-Founder of the Overview Institute

Today we celebrate Mother Earth. As I contemplated how best to share my gratitude and awe of our planetary home, I remembered two websites that made the rounds a while back. Each of them offers a unique perspective from which to view our place in the universe, and hopefully each will offer even more reason to celebrate Earth today.

It’s easy for me to get stuck in the mental construct that my reality is all that exists and that I am the center of the universe. Heck, we are all at the center of our own universes, right? Scrolling through the interactive “Scale of the Universe” is an easy way to dispel this self-centered mind-state. By scrolling left and right you get pictures depicting the relative scale of everything in the universe—from the smallest to the largest.

I’ve looked at this site a couple of times, and each time it humbles me and fills me with awe. How can we be both so huge, compared to the smallest unit of scale, and yet so minute, compared to the vastness of the observable universe? It makes me feel lucky to experience life on this planet, in this form. Our Earth holds so much of our reality, but is just a tiny piece of the fabric of the universe.

Unifying the vast and minute, former Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell shares a realization he had upon seeing Earth from space, “…I had studied Astronomy, and I had studied Cosmology, and fully understood that the molecules in my body, and the molecules in my partners’ bodies and in the spacecraft had been prototyped in some ancient generation stars. In other words, it was pretty obvious from those descriptions, we’re stardust.” The largest and the smallest, we’re all made of the same stuff!

Growing up, I wanted so badly to be an astronaut. Then I realized how much math and science were involved, and I decided to look for other career options. But I think that this video about the “Overview Effect” experienced by astronauts like Mitchell explains why I wanted to go to space. If you haven’t watched it before, give yourself a 20-minute break and enjoy.

In the video, philosopher David Loy describes what some of these astronauts came away feeling. “…That experience of awe, is at least for the moment, to let go of yourself, to transcend the sense of separation. So it’s not just that they were experiencing something other than them, but that they were at some very deep level, integrating, realizing, their interconnectedness with that beautiful blue-green ball.” This description makes me smile, because while I didn’t become an astronaut, my meditation practice has offered me a similar understanding.

So happy Earth Day! I hope these sites will help you to take a moment today to revel with wonder and awe at our glorious home. 

Gratitude Webs

Gratitude is one of my favorite practices, mostly because it makes me feel good. :-) 

When I practice gratitude I feel like my life is full of abundance and that I am connected to the rest of the world. It helps me cheer myself up when I’m bummed out and it helps me to savor and enjoy things when I'm feeling great. 

Feeling grateful!

I have plenty of ways I bring gratitude in my daily life, but today I’ll share one that makes for a fun art activity.

Drumroll please... Gratitude webs!

You’ll need a blank piece of paper and a pen or pencil. If you’re feeling extra artsy, or if you have kiddos participating too, you’ll probably want some crayons or colored pencils as well.

You can each come up with something or someone that you feel grateful for—something that brings you joy to think about, and that you feel happy is in your life. Maybe it’s your computer, your pet, your spouse, your parent, the dinner you just ate. The possibilities are limitless. Today, I chose my morning cup of coffee.

Ok, write that item down in the middle of your page. You can circle it if you like. I chose to draw a picture of the item too. 

A starting point.

Now start thinking about what all came together to make that person, place or thing possible. Did it need nourishment? Did someone build it? Did you get it at a store? Did a farmer plant it?

Make a line coming out from the center item going to one of those things that made it possible. If you can think of a lot of things that made it possible, make a lot of lines!

The web is growing.

Now, take some time to think about what made those things possible. Did the farmer water the plant? Did someone drive it to the store? Did someone sew the cloth? Did your item need sunshine? Love?

Make a line coming from the outer items to all of these new parts you’ve just reflected on.

You can keep doing this until you run out of space, or out of imagination.

A lot of things had to come together for my morning cup of coffee. There is quite a bit to be grateful for!

Way to go! You’ve just created a gratitude web! The next time you feel grateful for your item, you can also feel grateful for all of that webbing you added around it. Without all of those other parts, the thing you were feeling grateful for wouldn’t be there to begin with! No matter how many times I do this activity, I'm always amazed at how connected we all are.