Staying on the gratitude path
Remembering to be grateful when things are hard
Welcome to latest Mindful Gratitude post. All of them are free to read but my paid subscribers (who I am so grateful to!) can share their response to the writing prompts in these monthly Mindful Gratitude posts in a private chat thread that I will open in a few days.
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Consciousness is the source of who we are. Our thoughts, intentions, and actions are a consequence of that.
—Sadhguru
Hello friends,
So far this month I have found it hard to keep going with my gratitude practice. I flew to Canada on the 5th September to do a 2.5 month house sit and through the travelling to get here, which took 19 hours because of delays, I was awake for 24 hours. I have had jet lag and a head cold, and the amount of work we have to do here was completely misrepresented. We had agreed to mind the house, chickens and plants but on arrival discovered that we are also expected to do all kinds of things for their holiday let business. If we hadn't just spent a lot of money on flights and flown half way round the world to do this house sit, we would have left. But here we find ourselves. For several days after we arrived when we were being bombarded with information and not given any time to rest, my daily gratitude practice was forgotten.
After the homeowners left for their 2.5 month holiday, my husband and I collapsed in an exhausted heap for a few days and then, as I started to feel more normal again, I remembered how important it is to focus on the things that I am thankful for rather than letting the annoyances caused by other people’s inconsideration and sense of entitlement dominate my mind. So I got myself back on track.
I revisited a favourite book of mine, Xiu Yang: Self-cultivation for a healthier, happier and balanced life, by Mimi Kuo-Deemer, which was one of my lovely things recommendations here last month. Read more about it here.
In this book she talks about creating a sense of spaciousness and that was exactly what I needed. I had been feeling crowded by other people, by their presumptions, by their lack of consideration. Then I read this from the chapter entitled ‘Cultivating a Spacious Heart and Mind’ and everything opened back up again.
Plants — like our heart — require space for their expansion and growth. If a pot is too small for a plant’s roots, its development will be thwarted. Not only will it become hungry for more soil, but it becomes restricted, confined and unable to absorb the nutrients it needs to continue to grow. We can likewise feel uncomfortable in our own skin and suffocated if we do not have the required space to live and breathe freely.
In nature, however, plants to do not grow in pots. They often have as much soil and space as is naturally allotted to them to flourish. Until recent levels of pollution threatened habitats, wild fish and birds similarly enjoyed sufficient water and sky. The thirteenth-century Zen master Dogen wrote: ‘When a fish swims, it swims on and on, and there is no end to the water. When a bird flies, it flies on and on, and there is no end to the sky. There was never a fish that ran out of water, or a bird that flew out of the sky.’ When thinking about this idea I have found myself asking: what is it that humans have no end of? What makes us feel trapped, crowded and limited? And what can help us ensure we have the right space to live our lives fully?
What I believe we have an endless supply of is consciousness. Consciousness is vast and limitless. There is no end to our awareness, just as there is no confirmed limit to the sky and universe that expands around us in all directions. But so often we fixate not on the spaciousness of our experience, but on the objects — which are our thoughts — that arise within them. This is similar to how we may walk into a room and see the objects in the room while entirely missing the space around the objects that enables them to be there. It is the way in which our hearts and minds meet experience that traps us into believing they are crowded and limited in nature.
So I then felt thankful for how freely I live so that I could come here in the first place. The house is in a beautiful spot overlooking a lake and the bird life here is incredible. There are many deer wandering around the hills and orchards that surround us. The sun has shone almost every day, all day, since we arrived. I am thankful for the views, the birds and the deer, and for the warmth and sustenance the sun on my skin brings.
Yes, I have more jobs to do than was agreed but I still have time for all the other things I need, and want, to do. So I am grateful for that, and for the latest lesson this experience has brought me about the house sits we agree to do. I’m looking forward to using the time I have here to work on my new novel and my short stories I am editing, to run the Zoom courses that are starting over the next couple of weeks where I get to do my favourite thing — work with other writers developing our craft. As best of all, I have my limitless and spacious consciousness that has the freedom to create and invent whatever my mind would like it to.
Writing Prompt
Reframe an experience you have had in the past week that seemed like a bad one to find something to be thankful for in what happened.
Now do the same for a character in a story you are working on.
I will open up a chat thread to share them in soon and look forward to reading them.
With love,
P.S. Today is my 51st birthday, and yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the day I got together with my husband, and I am truly grateful to be here in this amazing world with him celebrating these two things! 💙
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Thanks Annie 💙
Happy Birthday and thank YOU!