Count your blessings, all of them without exception, for they all are an invitation to wake up to your true nature!
Louie Schwartzberg - Gratitude - “We all go back so far. And on this present moment, on this day, all the people you meet, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world flows together and meets you here like a life-giving water if only you open your heart and drink.”
We are all familiar with affirmations of gratitude for ourselves and others. However as you might have guessed, positive psychology, however sincere it pours out from our thankful lips when life prances about, however helpful it is to heal a tortured ego when life hits rock bottom, was not the core subject of our meeting on gratitude.
We can agree that to express gratitude for all small and big things that showers “us” with beauty and love is a piece of cake. This said, Life being very generous in its own unique way, the world history and our simple life stories are not only about beautiful sunsets and sweet puppies, right? Life is by essence ever changing and unpredictable. It would be a useless exercise to make a complete list here of the unacceptable events that have torn humanity apart at one time or another of the course of time, and still do!
Will Pye: Blessed with a brain tumour - “Radical gratitude” is the expression used by Will Pye to refer to the backdrop of being that accompanies every aspect and moment of our lives whatever happens, wherever Life takes us and however it shakes us, to wake us up to the dream of being a personal entity, and if it is our destiny, in order to see through all that breaks "us" apart.
“Radical gratitude” does not mean to sit and stare and not act upon whatever we feel is unfair, if an urge to do so arises. It is a revolutionary way to envisage Life as it is, because no matter how it is, it is as it is already and always, and not as we wished it were; which brings suffering to an apparent sufferer who wishes things were different. As a matter of fact, it is a revolutionary way to envisage Life as it is, because it acknowledges there is no sufferer in the first place.
“Events happen, deeds are done, but there is no individual doer thereof.” Buddha
Every minor glitch or major catastrophe and all in between is an an occasion to examine closely the root of our happiness and to ask ourselves this question: “Is there anything personal about my personal experience?” It is the invitation to review the sense of separation with our ideas and belief systems that constitute our identity we still hold onto. It is the opportunity to relentlessly erode day after day and possibly irremediably shatter once and for all our illusory egoic sense of self:
“Imagine a life without suffering. Not because bad things have stopped happening in the world or in your personal life. But because your orientation to them has changed. Your orientation to yourself has changed.
The end of suffering comes about when you find your way to that primeval sweetness that has never left you, which is the essence of every human being. This essence has never known the swelling of pride or the grip of fear. It has never been lonely or ambitious.
When the familiar sense of who you are has softened and grown light, when it is allowed to fall away, what remains is a pool of calm delight. You no longer ask things of your life. Each moment is enough, as it is. Life lived within that awareness is heaven on earth.
It is human nature allowed to come to full flower.”Jan Frazier
American Beauty: We watched the end scene of American Beauty movie when Lester Burnham reviews his life time as he dies:
“It's hard to stay mad when there is so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I am seeing it all at once and it is too much: my heart fills up like a balloon that is about to burst.
And then I remember to relax and stop trying to hold down to it, and then it flows through me like rain. And I can't feel anything but Gratitude, for every single moment of my stupid little life.”
Mooji: And last a precious gift of Mooji, a practical and simple exercise to do daily. You will surely love it!