Attitude of Gratitude – a whole month of Thanksgiving; Day 10

As I sit here, I feel a deep sadness and something even deeper than that… The powerful Love of ages? I am currently part of a group of people working deeply to release old hurts and wounds – to courageously train ourselves to look past all of our habits of survival and to find compassion, healing, and a new way of being. To thrive, instead of simply survive. This week, I have had some big shifts in my own work within the group. Today, I got home from a blustery day farming (feeling raw and wind-burnt on my skin, as well as raw inside) and spent a while truly being with all the emotions coming up for other members of my group. Then, I opened up Facebook and saw the news about Paris. The year I lived there was a rough time in my life, but I wouldn’t change it for a second. As much as part of me hated living there, there is (and always will be) a part of my heart still in that city – so the sadness I usually feel when such news of an episode like this (of anger/hurt/fear/a need to be heard exploding out into violence and wounds that impact many) feels intensified for me this evening. My thoughts go to friends and acquaintances still living there, hoping they’re OK. I have always read the words “we are all connected” and believed it on a rational level. More recently I have come to believe it on an experiential level. I have listened to the words of hurt from another and have felt all my hurt rise up in response. Me, my group, the victims AND perpetrators in Paris – we all need Love. We all need Compassion. We are all the same. Although most of us do not enact our inner turmoil and violence on others on a large scale, don’t we all have the seed of pain inside of us? We all have the potential – the desire to scream until someone says “I hear you, I feel you, I love you.” We may not bomb or shoot people or places, but we are not innocents and have all played out some smaller, more subtle form of violence over the years in thoughts, words, or deeds when the child within us has felt threatened and reacted to protect, or has felt denied and has acted out to get the attention we both fear and crave. The more I see and feel in this world, the more I understand that the only way out is through. The only way to not feed my own inner violence is to choose love – to be that compassionate witness for myself – “I hear you, I feel you, I love you.”

So tonight I am grateful for:

1. The tools yoga and meditation have given me for staying with the emotions. I have spent too long judging myself for being ‘too sensitive’ and trying to push emotions away because they scared me. Now, my practice is to allow myself to fully feel them – feel them but not build a house in them and move in. Feel them and let them move their way through.
2. Messages of support where I wasn’t necessarily expecting them – and moving slowly enough to give them time to actually land. There have been times in my life when I couldn’t see the support, or didn’t let myself pause and fully take in what a gift and offering that support was. It makes it all the sweeter now. Not thinking I was worth the love and support kept me from seeing and receiving. Thinking I AM worth it is not arrogance – it’s appreciation.
3. The opportunities I have had to travel. Before I even heard the news about Paris, I was driving home and watching the sunset and the colors reminded me of the Australian desert and the night I spent sleeping there under the stars. Our lives are only as rich as what we let in and through travel, I have let in a LOT.
4. That our past leads us to our present. Seeing a sunset and thinking about magical trips and faraway places, but also going to sit in the little wood cabin I used to live in and feeling the wind blow through the walls – grateful for my time in that cabin and all it taught me, AND that I have grown into my life and now have a house to go home to on a cold, windy night. Listening to music that takes me right back to some challenging times and hearing it speak to me again – but from a different place now that I have grown in experience and depth: crying tears of sadness over songs that had spoken to my pain and tears of joy when listening to a song that was an anthem to me and realizing that I have already lived my way into the dreams inspired by that song.

May we each of us know that we are worthy of Love exactly as we are and may we each experience truly being held, seen, heard, loved, and honored – in our pains and our joys, in our past stories and our dreams of the future, in the present moment: as it is.

Attitude of Gratitude – a whole month of Thanksgiving; day 9

I am used to growing the most from challenging times in my life and am always grateful for the Beings who can hold the mirror up and (kindly) show me where I am not living up to my potential. But I also have bad pattern of letting my story of ‘not enough’ sneak in and color my spiritual practice, so sometimes that mirror, when showing me where I am missing the mark, becomes ‘something to fix.’ So today I am grateful for:

1. People who hold the mirror up to show me the best parts of myself and remind me of the things I do well, the ways I’m right on course. Those who tell me again and again until I finally listen: your vulnerability is important. What you have to share should not be hidden. You are already whole, although you may not always see it yourself.

And on a lighter note, I am also grateful for:

2. Hot chocolate – because food can be comforting when consumed with the right mindset: no guilt, just joy!

3. Warm Brie cheese – see above.

Attitude of Gratitude – a whole month of Thanksgiving; day 8

Following the struggles and resistance of yesterday, today has felt like coming home to land. Although it still requires a conscious thought/effort, I have been settling more deeply into my body today – in my morning meditation, on my mat for practice, as I ate lunch, etc. Although sometimes I am frustrated by the pace of life (I want to arrive NOW), when I come to land, I can see my steady progress through my to-do list and the perfect timing of everything that is beyond my control. I can see things unfolding in their own time and the other people involved open before me like mysteries, rather than puzzles to be solved. I am grateful for:

1. The sun after all the gray
2. The sound of my wind-chimes in the breeze
3. My body and it’s sensations and triggers. What a perfectly imperfect home for this perfectly imperfect journey.

Attitude of Gratitude – a whole month of Thanksgiving; Day 7

Today I feel tight and contracted – mentally, physically, emotionally. I have a lot of fear coming up and my story of being alone and unsupported is rearing it’s head. Self-doubt is creeping and making it hard to work – especially when I am my own boss and my work is so personal to me. In the moment, I found a lot of joy connecting with yoga students today, but I am still feeling isolated, fearful, and ungrateful – I have put this post off until the end of the day because I am struggling to find gratitude! So here goes:

1. I am grateful for the support of friends. I am grateful that even though I have been offered support today and part of me has been resistant to hearing it/accepting it (my story loves to be right), I am aware of the difference between reality and my story. That awareness will allow the story to pass. It allows me to make a choice about what I listen to.
2. I am grateful for the softness brought by tears. Sometimes I can bring the softness with more intentional breathing, but some days the resistance and contraction are so strong, only a burst of tears will break the hold and bring some softness to my body and mind.
3. I am grateful for a hot shower and a good nights sleep. Most likely, this will all look better tomorrow. There is little self-doubt that can’t be helped by feeling clean, rested, and taken care of. I can give myself that.

May you, also, trust in your own worth and the support that surrounds you – even on days when it’s not apparent.

Attitude of Gratitude -a whole month of Thanksgiving; Day 6

You know those moments when you are poised on the edge of something great – tasting glimpses of eternity, glimpses of wholeness… only to fall to pieces in the next moment? Mark Nepo says:

“We are rare, not perfect. With our hands full of groceries, and our heads full of things to do, our hearts full of memories, and our dreams full of plans, we tend to think if we could only get away or finish crossing off the things on that list, if we could only undo what has been done or do what needs to be done, we might then live more completely, more perfectly. But we are human beings, flawed colorful beings that eat plans and memories for food.

This is a deep paradox at work in us. For though we aspire to self-mastery and peace of mind, we are only momentarily whole. As conscious beings living in bodies, we are worn down by the days until we flash open to everything. These are moments of enlightenment, when the clarity and compassion of centuries rise in us, and we are suddenly more than we are, only to trip on garbage the very next day or say something hurtful the very next minute to the one we love most.

I used to think of these come-downs as failures, as evidence that I wasn’t trying hard enough, and they would prick me with slivers of inadequacy. I often felt discouraged, as if there were something essential I just couldn’t learn. For a while, I felt deeply flawed.

But I have come to understand that this is only the earthiness of our human condition. It is not to be corrected or eliminated or transcended. Just accepted.

We are in moments pure and ageless as light, and with the very next breath, we drop things or bruise the treasures of a lifetime. We need to soothe ourselves, not blame ourselves. We are rare, not perfect, and seem destined to know all there is briefly, only to pound it into bread.”

So today, I am grateful for:

1. The power of words – whether fiction, helping us learn compassion for another’s story or learning to understand emotions; or non-fiction, bringing us wisdom and courage and the knowledge that deep down, we are all the same
2. Patience – when standing on the edge of any decision, no matter how big or small and not knowing where to turn, the ability to trust that the time is not yet right for action. Patience with myself for every time I have pounded something precious into bread, whether I was ready to digest it or not. The patience of friends and loved ones, who have held space for me while I stumble my way through the questions.
3. The privilege of being able to take rest when I need it.