What is gratitude? The word comes from the Latin roots gratia, meaning
“favor,” and gratus, meaning “pleasing.” All words that are generated from
these roots have to do with thankfulness, kindness, goodness, and the beauty
According to Robert Emmons, a scholar in the positive psychology
movement, “research has shown that grateful people experience higher
levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness, and
optimism, and that the practice of gratitude as a discipline protects a person
from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, greed and bitterness.”
In a moment of true gratitude we do not discriminate. We fully accept our
entire experience as we are one with the whole. Thankfulness occurs when
we begin to think in terms of there being a giver and receiver.
How can we cultivate this profound level of gratitude or acceptance?
Brother David Steindl-Rast suggests four steps to the “practice” of gratitude
leading to the realization of gratefulness. Please practice these
contemplations. There will be more contemplations in future e mails.
1. Wake Up: Wake up to surprise. As long as nothing surprises us, we walk
in a daze through life. During the day frequently ask yourself the question,
“Isn’t this surprising?” After all, isn’t it surprising that there is anything at
all, rather than nothing? This surprise may be enough of a jolt to wake up
and stop taking things for granted.
2. Be Aware of Opportunities: Sometimes we may encounter unpleasant
situations. At that point we can ask ourselves the question, “What is my
opportunity here?” Most of the time, in the midst of difficulties, we may
be able to find an opportunity to enjoy sounds, smells, tastes, texture, colors,
and even joy, friendliness, kindness, patience, or honesty. The more we
practice this second step, the more able we are to recognize difficult
experiences as opportunities.
3. Respond Alertly: Keep your mind open. When a sudden snow/rain shower is no
longer just an inconvenience but a surprise gift, we will spontaneously enjoy the
situation. We will enjoy it as much as we did in our kindergarten days when we
tried to catch raindrops in our open-mouth. Actively engage in being grateful for
4. Review the Day: At the end of the day, ask yourself the following questions:
Did I stop and allow myself to be surprised? Once I stopped, did I look for the
opportunity of that moment? Did I go after it and avail myself of the opportunity
GRATITUDE #5
As we discussed previously, the first step of gratitude is rediscovering
surprise – seeing our life with fresh eyes. Is our life so busy that we are
hemmed in by everyday thoughts of survival or reaching our desired
goals that we have lost the attitude of wonder?
It is easy not to notice when gratitude is absent. Living with gratitude is a
form of mindfulness – becoming aware of what is occurring in each moment
of our lives, and taking nothing for granted. It helps us to minimize and
ultimately dissolve our self-centered perspective.
Alan Jones and John O’Neil in their book, Seasons of Grace, communicate
that it’s important to take time to remember how it felt when you
experienced the magic moments of your life (e.g., when your child was born,
when you took a walk in the forest, saw the Grand Canyon, smelled the
fragrance of a rose or a newly baked apple pie, when someone told you that
you made a difference in their life, etc.) This remembrance will give you a
visceral model of what that wonder and joy feels like. Please take time to
focus on these moments and how they felt.
Here are some additional gratitude contemplations from Jones & O’Neill
that I have modified to fit our purposes:
1. Reflect on the idea, The universe is glad you are here.
2. Tell someone else that you are glad for his or her existence.
3. Find a way to make a routine activity into an opportunity to play.
4. Recognize when you see something for the first time. Allow gratitude to
arise for the new experience.
5. Know that the thinnest of edges separates robust health and debilitating
disease. Appreciate whatever health you are now experiencing.
6. Write a letter to someone, living or dead, thanking them for supporting
your life in a significant way.
GRATITUDE CONTEMPLATION #2
Returning after a long time to your childhood home, you proably
would find your bedroom pretty much unchanged, though someone
else may live there now. In contrast, the body in which you live is
constantly changing. As you know, over a space of seven years
your body replaces practically every single molecule with a new
one. But did you know that every morning, the first time you open
your eyes, the top layer of your vision-sensor receptors is simply
scorched away, and you literally see the world with new eyes? And
still more amazingly, that two million of your red blood cells die
every single second; and two million new ones take their place? In
4 months every single red blood cell is replaced with new ones. IN
3 weeks every white blood cell is replaced.
Step 2
It is one thing to see bones, muscles, nerves,
and blood vessels visualized in the mind; to
vividly connect these mental images with this
living body of yours is quite a different thing.
It takes training; you have to shift your
attention. All this million-fold dying and
renewal is actually going on within you at this
very moment. Just think of it: two million red
You have been focusing your attention inward to become
aware of the blessing of life bubbling up within you. But you
can also expand the conscious awareness of your
embodiment outwards. Where are the borders of your
bodily reality? Are you imprisoned within your skin? Is
not your very skin an organ of encounter and
exchange? Every breeze that touches your cheek connects
you with the farthest reaches of the earth’s atmosphere. A
whole ocean of air has gone through your lungs, wave by wave. Portions of some
storm raging now in the arctic may once have been inside you. The poet Rainer
Maria Rilke mused on this and called our very breathing an “invisible poem.”
Your eyes take in stars that are unimaginably far away. And what about the food
your body takes in? At every meal, what has been alive and died becomes alive
again in you by nourishing your own aliveness. Eating is an act of holy
communion with the Earth. Letting this sink in will take time, but you can
make a start at any time. As you pause for a moment before your next
meal, you can think of the cosmic connection established by eating.
Promise yourself right now to do so.
Which of the marvelous functions going on in your body amazes you most?
Your heart has been beating uninterruptedly since before you were born. What
keeps it beating? You eat an apple; a mysterious life force made a tiny seed grow
into the tree that produced this fruit. That same life force will guide your digestion,
turning this apple into energy to move and think, even the very thought you’re
thinking now. You drink a glass of water, and your kidneys know how to take care
of the rest; the same life force guides them.
Have you ever shown yourself grateful for these everyday marvels too
deep for your mind to fathom? Now is your opportunity. Write the simple
sentence: “I am grateful for my… (eyes, kidneys, spine, teeth, lungs, etc.)
… because…” To write this sentence down is a helpful exercise. It gives
your gratefulness a body.
ONE YEAR TRAINING PREPARATION ASSIGNMENT #6
Philip Mofitt, a spiritual teacher, wrote this about gratitude:
There is a shadow side to gratitude, in which reality gets distorted in yet
another way. It manifests as a hopeless or helpless attitude disguised as
gratitude, and it expresses itself in a self-defeating, passive voice — "Yes,
these things are wrong and unfair, but I should be grateful for what I have,"
or "At least we have this"… Gratitude is not an excuse for being passive in
the face of personal or societal need or injustice… it is a call to action to be
a caring human being while acknowledging the folly of basing your
happiness on the outcome of your actions.
The words "gratitude" and "grace" share a common origin: the Latin word
gratus, meaning "pleasing" or "thankful." When you are in a deep state of
gratitude, you will often spontaneously feel the presence of grace… Reflect
on this: You have been chosen for this opportunity to consciously taste life,
to know it for what it is, and to make of it what you are able… However you
find life to be — cruel or kind, sorrowful or joyous, bland or stimulating,
indifferent or filled with love — you get the privilege of knowing it firsthand.
What is your relationship to your emotional pain and the
difficulties in your life?
We need to avoid judging our emotional pain as being regrettable
or unfortunate. Our emotional pain and reactivity is the arrow that
points to where psychological and spiritual work needs to be done.
In fact, the more pervasive the pain and constriction, the more
reactive we are, the greater the opportunity for growth.
This is not some platitude and a way to make us feel better about
having emotional difficulties – we eventually learn to be grateful
for emotional reactivity. Without our problems, and the difficult
people in our lives, how would we learn to where we were still
identified, and how would we learn to develop patience, compassion,
In alchemy, there was a search for the touchstone that would turn base
metals into gold. In spiritual work, the touchstone that turns mundane
experiences into opportunities to realize freedom is our ability to work
with our afflictive emotions and our reactivity to those emotions. When
this opportunity is realized, great gratitude naturally arises for the
difficulties that we encounter.
