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I've never much appreciated the facile rhyme of "Have an attitude of gratitude" because it seems too glib. This is not to say that I don't appreciate the importance of feeling and expressing thanks.
Well, pardon me, I hear you ask, but to whom is one expressing those thanks? Actually, the person I hear asking this is some discarded version of my self, the one who proudly believed in nothing. That one.
Don't leave us there, you go on. Tell us how you changed. Tell us who it is that you are thanking. Don't leave us in the dark.
In the dark is where I lived. No. That isn't right. Isn't completely right. Is right but leads nowhere. I'll take the second half of your question. Who is it I am thanking, now that I've accepted the importance of being grateful? I'm thanking the Universe. Or, to make it smaller than the Universe, I'm thanking the connectors, connections, the Indira's Net that snares us all and keeps us separate and together. Together in our individuality. Separate in our oneness. If you insist that I justify it, I'm sending thankful words and thoughts to the energy of our lives.
I can particularize these energies if that suits you. I can thank all the strands of the net and all the nodes where the strands are knotted. The trees—from the enormous old oak in Carol's park to the tall urban-tolerant maple in my yard to the many-branched symmetrical maple in High Park that I call my favourite. And, to be less grandiose, my thanks go also to the little scrub oaks in wooded areas or straggly beach oaks that grow in salty sand near the ocean.
You get the picture of the trees: I thank them all. I could be specific and in more detail thank them for the oxygen, or for the coloured leaves in fall, for big-leaf shade in summer, for black tracings against the winter sky. But usually, it's just a simple gratitude for all their gifts.
The energy I prize comes just as well from what we humans (who love to categorize) call "inanimate objects." Rocks and stones and mountains. Rivers, oceans, lakes. I remember a friend's story of lying still on a sun-baked rocky ledge—so still that finally she was able to feel the rock breathe. The rushing brook races to join the equally eager stream, all forms of these waters bursting finally into rivers then lakes or oceans.
It's been extremely difficult for me to extend thanks to ancestors. What do I know of them? Nothing, in most cases-- and the little I do know is mostly about the mismanagement of their own lives (in my humble opinion, of course). It's been a struggle to learn what to thank them for. A teacher recently talked about how, once they have passed to the other world, our ancestors lose (and forget) the traits that twisted them during this earthly life, and they then become beings who want only to help us—even to help us overcome their own legacies. So I'm working on this project now: to open myself to being helped by these (often unknown) ancestors and to thank them in advance and collectively for their willingness to assist.
The heart is the place to live, I keep being told. After a lifetime of prizing the head, the brain, the mind, it isn't easy to switch to the heart as the source. Whatever happens, go to the heart first and listen. You'll find what is needed in the heart.
How do you get there? You breathe. You breathe into the heart. You feel the flame of the heart and you feed it with love.
Simple. But a moment-by-moment challenge for living.
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
