Precious Gratefulness
Even though gratefulness is not something you can produce, it can be something that you need to learn.
We have lost our touch with gratefulness. You may even consider it as a weakness, the attitude of a loser, one who cannot compete and ends up being grateful for everything without really experiencing it.
But what we can learn is to open up to the mystery of a life lived in precious gratefulness. We have to prepare the ground for thankfulness to find its place.
When we open up to the inner child in us, we open up the most innocent and sweetest part of ourselves.
This child is overflowing with joy for life. We, as adults, need to find a way to turn this into gratefulness, to receive. We need to teach the child in us about gratefulness without manipulating it.
The gratefulness woken up in our inner child turns spontaneously towards its parents. The child, the adult, and the parents can dance and celebrate with the happiness of making friends again.
When does gratefulness become meditation?
The highest form of gratefulness is like meditation, choiceless, no longer selective. The object of gratefulness becomes irrelevant. We learn to trust that any situation, good or bad, painful or sweet, is an opportunity to experience the hidden gifts of life. In this feeling, we can attain true and ultimate freedom.
You can try it out as a meditation:
Find a place in nature where you are undisturbed.
Relax your body, sit or lie down, and close your eyes. Bring your attention to the moment.
Start a deep and regular breathing, softly massaging your heart chakra with your breath.
Now add to this the experience of gratefulness: with each in breath, receive gratefulness, with each out breath give gratefulness.
After a while, add to it also movement. Start letting your body move and dance with the feeling of gratefulness. It can be a soft movement, it can be an ecstatic movement, it can be silent.
At the end, sit or stand silently, and experience gratefulness all around you.
Send that gratefulness to everyone and everything. Gratefulness for the good, gratefulness for the bad, gratefulness for the sweetness, gratefulness for the pain.
This will transform the way you experience life.
