Practicing gratitude is another art worthy of re-membering, re-acquiring. From the view I have, it takes practice and skill to celebrate gratefulness in its many un-countable ways throughout a day. The further you progress on your path, the more grateful you naturally become for living this life, re-cognizing more of who you are and who we are.
Incorporating and practicing gratitude throughout your days, may sound like a requirement to walk around thanking the flowers and the trees, along with everyone and everything in your life for being there and the part they play in the movie called "You". There are differences between expressing gratitude and being grateful, the most obvious is gratitude as something experienced versus something expressed to another.
During trying and stressful times it can be easy to forget the lessons and teachers around you, and to neglect being grateful for them being in that moment, regardless of what form they take. Teachers such as the ones that bring you strife or cause hurdles for you to climb and grow from, as well those of friendlier attitudes. Everyone around you is in this moment now, for a reason. Not someone else's reason, no, they there because of you, for you, by you. What you take away from the experience is your own, but being grateful is essential to the complete experience, for if you are not, then you are being or feeling separate from those around you, and that is illusion.
I am grateful to all those around me, either as teachers in my life experience, or as students who are open to furthering their path. There are those in my circle that are neither, they fall generally into the people that see the light but turn away from it still, and those precious invaluable few that are both teacher and student with me, and I with them. For them all, I am grateful.
Scientists have shown that it takes up to roughly 10,000 hours of practice to master a new skill. Riding a bicycle may not appear to take as much effort as acquiring mastery over a piano, however can you remember how long it took you to learn to ride a bike with no hands while standing on the handlebars? I never did, but I know also that it would take extreme skill to do so. Whether it is 10,000 hours or not, I have never measured but it seems like a healthy number, and so perhaps this applies to other things, like being grateful.
With experience my moments of forgetting my gratitude are becoming fewer and fewer. I'm reminded of who I am and who we are, feeding my zeal for my path and the journey. At some level of awareness, you also know that we all are one. That there is no separateness. That we surround ourselves with the illusion of reality, with purpose and on purpose. That there are no victims and that we are here by our choice.
While it easy to single out aspects of being to speak about, it doesn't give us a pure view on all that we are in each moment. Being grateful is one aspect that congeals many others for us, and helps us re-member that we are on our individual journeys. That we are observers of the sea of life flowing around us and part of it also. Gratitude can be a key for you, in seeing yourself as a spiritual being having this human experience.
Thank you,
-Mikel
Exercise: Be in a quiet space, at your quiet time of day. Make a list written on paper, not in your head, with the following title, "In this moment I'm grateful for...". Focus inwardly, meditate if you wish, but at least still your mind. Allow your-self to express your being, your mind and feelings. Write only positively framed sentences, and eliminate sarcasm or negative energies from your list. Edit as little as possible and be as free as you are able in expressing what comes to you.
Once you feel complete or empty or done, read it through while being grateful for the experiences and people involved, fold up your list and keep it close to you, preferably in your pocket, for the day. Every time you see it or touch it you will be reminded of yourself and your relationship with gratitude.
The next day repeat this exercise, although set the old list aside, perhaps you wish to archive the old or dispose of it, the choice is yours. Create a new list. Repeat this exercise for 21 days faithfully to notice a heightened sense of awareness within you to your relationship with gratitude, those around you and a renewed perspective on the lessons you are learning.
Artwork used with permission. http://www.sublimatrix.com/
0 inspired comments:
Post a Comment