Transience

“You can’t step in the same river twice.” ~ Heraclitus

         This just in from the Department of the Painfully Obvious: everything changes.

         The transient nature of life puts us in a precarious position.  Lulled into complacency by the apparent solidity of the world, again and again we are shocked, shocked I say, by life’s sudden transitions – the terrible phone call, the cancer diagnosis, the death of a friend.  Like Charlie Brown we fervently believe that this time Lucy will hold the football in place.  But every time we go to kick it, it isn’t there.

         Intellectually we know that everything born dies, every day turns to night and every song fades into silence.  But like a sharp pain this awareness is dulled by the narcosis of forgetfulness.  Like nodding drunkards we fall over and over into the unconscious illusion that all of this will last, that we have more time, that there is always tomorrow.  Actually, there isn’t.

         There is only now.

         And when you reach out to grab it, even it is gone, replaced by another now moment.  That’s why grasping is so futile.  There is nothing to grasp.

         In Buddhism this fundamental fact is known as anitya or impermanence.  But don’t take Buddha’s word for it.  Life itself provides us with an ever-growing mound of incontrovertible evidence.

         If one follows this reasonable premise to its logical conclusion, we arrive at another core Buddhist teaching, shunyata.  Shunyata is usually translated as “emptiness” or “the void,” but those approximations distort as much as they reveal.

         What shunyata actually conveys is the fundamentally indefinable nature of reality.  Whatever all of this is, it is beyond all concepts and cannot be turned into a thought, let alone a word.  Shunyata is the field of pure potentiality out of which all forms arise and to which all forms return.  Yet shunyata itself remains ever formless.  So in that sense it is empty of fixed forms.  But it is most definitely not nothing.

         Shunyata is like a clear sky and things are like clouds.  Clouds arise and take form, last a while, then disperse, sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly.  This is the nature of all things.  As he lay down to die, the Buddha left his students with one last thought.  It was something he had said many times before, but given the situation, he thought they ought to hear it one last time.  “Remember this,” he said, “all forms arise and all forms fade.” 

         Knowing this enables us to navigate the strange and beautiful arcs of our lives with a modicum of dignity and joy, knowing that we don’t own any of it, it is all borrowed, and we must give it all back, sometimes suddenly and without warning.  Even in the face of the transience of all things it would be wrong to conclude that nothing matters – quite the contrary.  Everything matters, and more than you ever thought possible.

         Every fleeting moment has a magical quality, a sacred ordinariness that we mostly miss, caught as we often are in dreams of yesterday and tomorrow.  Only when we come back to this now moment do we tap into the real. 

         There is no such thing as the past.  What we call the past is just a thought, a memory of a previous event, captured and pinned like a dead butterfly on a cork board.  Time spent wallowing in the past is time stolen from the now. 

         The future is even less real than the past because it hasn’t even happened yet.  It’s just speculation and fantasy.  Dwelling in the future, whether in pleasant fantasy or torturous worry, is also time stolen from the now.

         We cannot change the past.  It is forever out of reach.  The future is equally elusive and beyond our grasp.  What we call the past or the future is only a thought and thoughts by their very nature exist only in the now.  We are only and forever rooted in the now.  Now is the only place we will ever be.  This is where we think, act, feel, love, share, and have our being.  And yet most of us spend very little time here, caught forever in thoughts of the past or the future.

         Buddhist practice seeks to draw us out of our thought-world and back into an immediate awareness of our authentic nature.  But what is it going to take to get us out of our head and back into our heart?

         Meditation, devotion, prayer, service, loving-kindness, empathy, compassion – these are the core practices of all spiritual traditions.  As the Tibetan saying goes, “Want to go to hell?  Think of yourself.  Want to go to heaven?  Think of others.” 

         Before this kind of advanced practice can really take root – it takes great courage, stamina and habituation to truly be compassionate – a good way to jump-start your road to spiritual recovery is to get out in nature.  It’s difficult to stay stuck in your head when you’re walking across fallow grassland in a cold winter wind under a deep blue sky with a murder of crows swirling around you in Van Gogh spirals, the smell of rain on distant mountains awakening ancient bonds nearly forgotten in the discordant isolation of city life.  For one blessed moment you are pulled out of your precious thought-stream and suddenly find yourself standing still with both feet on the ground at the center of the universe and everything is turning in one endless web of interconnected being.  There is no path, there are no crows, there is no you – there is only the achingly beautiful totality, all of it shimmering with infinite significance, all of it radiant with loving-kindness.

         Another good way to begin awakening is through music.  Of all the art forms music most plainly reminds us of the fundamental emptiness of reality.  It’s invisible and ungraspable.  It exists only in this now moment.  We do not control it.  We experience it fully only to the extent that we are able to come out of our thoughts and enter the present, allowing its myriad waves to wash over us and rock us gently into sweet surrender.  Music, all music, is about seduction.  It pursues us until we relent.  And when we do, we are rewarded with reverence and communion – reverence for the sacred nature of all that is and communion with our own unity with the sacred.  In the depths of music the secret of our infinite value is revealed, not as a thought, but as a direct, immediate experience that transcends thought.  This is why we listen to our favorite music over and over again.  We long for that union, that affirmation of our deep and abiding significance, our ultimate oneness with the source.  The harmonies and rhythms of music wordlessly replicate the intricacies and nuances of reality itself, and in this reproduction we behold a mirror in which we can better see ourselves.

             When things change, and they will – when those we love are taken from us, sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly and without warning, when we find ourselves all alone in a field with nothing but the wind to hold onto, we are drawn into a powerful and liberating awareness.  We see through our tears that no matter what there is an unbroken light, an unchanging love that binds it all together, despite the apparent transience.

Drunk on Teachings

A version of this article first appeared in the A to Zen column in the March/April 2013 issue of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise.   Instead, seek what they sought.”

                                                                                    – Matsuo Basho

In a famous scene in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus challenges his disciples with a pop quiz. “Compare me to something and tell me what I am like,” he said.

Simon Peter said to him, “You are like a just messenger.”

Matthew said to him, “You are like a wise philosopher.”

Thomas said to him, “Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like.”

“I am not your teacher,” said Jesus.  “Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring I have tended.”

Then Jesus pulled Thomas aside and whispered three sayings to him in secret.  When Thomas returned to the other disciples they asked him, “What did Jesus say to you?”

“If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and consume you.”

Not a pretty picture.  But an important one.

With one simple question, Zen Master Jesus was able to discern something vitally important about his students.  Simon Peter and Matthew were all too willing to label Jesus and reduce him to a definition.  Only Thomas’s agnosticism articulated the deeper truth of Jesus’ ineffability. 

We will never know the three sayings that Jesus spoke to his star pupil.  But that’s not the point.  The point is Thomas’s readiness to receive them.  In fact, our hunger to know those three sayings plainly demonstrates our attachment to crude definitions and pat answers.  We say we don’t like dogma, but we really do – when it’s our dogma.

To go one step further, is Jesus suggesting that our slavish attachment to concepts and doctrines, no matter how sacred, is a barrier to our experience of God?  Although we risk the wrath of those who hold more traditional Christian notions of the unique divinity of Christ, our willingness to engage with this question is ultimately a sign of hope.  Jesus himself, in no uncertain terms, openly ridicules his disciple’s devotional attachment to Jesus the person.  Simon Peter and Matthew (and many among us) are suspended at the level of personality-worship and fail to see through the façade.  As Joseph Campbell points out, every image of God is a mask.  The masks of God serve a dual purpose.  Initially they draw our attention toward God, but in the end they hide God from us.  The final barrier between us and God is the mask that we have created.  If you want to know God, you must forget everything you know about God.  Our cherished idea of God is the last mask that must be ripped away.

By his own words, Jesus is not the source of the “bubbling spring”, he is simply tending it.  We drink a little truth and like drunks we get loud and proud and want to tell everyone we know all of our beautiful theories.  As usual, Jesus hits on just the right metaphor.

In psychotherapy this phenomenon is known as transference.  As we experience increasing well-being under the expert guidance of a skilled therapist, we mistakenly transfer those good feelings onto the person helping us.  Every therapist, guru, minister, mentor and teacher has had to thwart the loving but misguided devotions of grateful disciples.  We fall in love with the messenger and miss the message.  This mistake blinds us to the reality that the joy and freedom we feel is welling up from within us.  The teacher is merely “tending the spring” of which each of us is a channel.  In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s image, we are each a fountain in a beautiful garden, unaware that we are all drawing from the same well.  In the cold, sober light of morning, in this beautiful garden, let us realize our oneness with the divine beyond the limitations of all teachings.

Lance Armstrong's Gift

When Lance Armstrong sat down with Oprah Winfrey last month to confess his sins he gave us all a gift.  It was a portrait held fast by yellow Live Strong wrist bands and wrapped in the tattered flags of fame – a portrait of what avarice, greed, and self-obsession can do to a magnificent life.   A powerful cautionary tale, Armstrong’s precipitous fall from grace holds a mirror to our own lives.  We may not like what we see.

         2012 was a bad year for Lance Armstrong.  Stripped of all his hard won cycling victories, including his unprecedented seven Tour de France titles and banned from professional cycling for life, Armstrong seemed to have come to the end of his road as the sport’s most prolific master.  In the face of all evidence and testimony Armstrong fought tenaciously for his innocence.  But the old fighter finally ran out of fight. 

           Over two nights in January Armstrong admitted to Oprah on worldwide television that he had indeed used a wide variety of performance enhancing drugs during his entire career as a professional cyclist.  Every one of his Tour de France victories was earned under the influence.

         If he were just a substance abuser, or a cheater, that would be one thing.  But the worst part is the way he went after everyone who crossed him.  In his maniacal campaign to hide the truth he sued and bullied anyone who even remotely threatened his clapboard empire – former coaches, trainers, team members and friends.  Careers were destroyed, relationships severed, families bankrupted and reputations ruined – all to keep the lie intact.

         Armstrong has his fans.  His accomplishments are truly impressive in spite of his flaws.  Considering the high probability that nearly all of his competitors were also doping, Armstrong’s dominance of the sport is truly historic – one for the ages were it not for the fact that his name has been expunged from all cycling records as if he had never existed.  But he is real, and won’t easily be forgotten, especially when you consider his philanthropic work.

         In 1996 Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer.  It spread to his lungs and brain.  After a vigorous round of chemotherapy and testicular surgery he was declared cancer free in 1997, becoming a powerful role model for cancer survivors everywhere.  The Lance Armstrong Foundation, later known as Live Strong, attracted millions of dollars in charitable donations and served the needs of cancer survivors and their families around the world.  It’s hard not to cheer for people who overcome great obstacles, fight their way to victory and use their platform to promote the good of others.

         That’s what makes Armstrong’s fall from grace so painful. 

         When public meltdowns like this come along – this isn’t the first and it won’t be the last – we’re offered an important opportunity for self-examination where the most vexing paradoxes of the human psyche are laid bare.  How can someone so powerful be so weak?  How can someone so disciplined be so impulsive?  How can someone so calculating be so capricious?  And most importantly, what can we learn from Armstrong’s mistakes?

         There is nothing wrong with wanting to be more.  There is nothing wrong with going big, playing hard, and wanting to win.  Ambition, in and of itself, is not evil.  But without careful introspection into one’s motives, the path to mastery is fraught with danger.

         The urge to grow and expand is built into the very fabric of life itself.  To be alive is to continually emerge.  It is in our nature to swim through the circumstances and challenges of our lives seeking something better and becoming stronger in the process. 

         Sports make a game out of this primal impulse.  It is deeply satisfying to test one’s mettle against others in seemingly arbitrary contests of wit and strength.  Put a ball through a hoop.  Run around a lawn touching all four bases.  Race bicycles through the hills of France.  It isn’t the particulars that matter, it’s the universals.  We live vicariously through our athlete-heroes because they play out for us in grand fashion this deep and defining primal drama.

         We bring this same set of impulses to any human endeavor – the arts, music, business, even love.  The hunger for more drives us like a lash.  The hunger itself is neither good nor bad.  It’s the consciousness we bring to the game that determines its morality.

         In a revealing moment of honesty, Armstrong told Oprah that he “needed to control every outcome.”  It wasn’t enough to compete and test his skill against other cycling masters.  He only wanted to play if winning was guaranteed.  And he was willing to do anything to win, even sacrifice his own joy. 

         At one point Oprah asked him, “Did you enjoy winning?”

         He didn’t answer.  Instead he said, “I enjoyed the process.”  Learning to discern the difference between the joys of the process and the pathology of outcome-obsession is a journey Armstrong is only now beginning to take.

         No matter how far you make it in any field, there is always someone farther along, deeper inside or higher up.  The restlessness and dissatisfaction that fueled you as a starving actor still haunts you as you accept your first Oscar because so and so has two, or three, or a lifetime achievement award.  A San Diego Music Award is not a Grammy, and a Grammy is not the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  It never ends.  For Armstrong, winning an unprecedented seven Tour de France titles was a hollow experience.  A million wouldn’t be enough.

         Like Darth Vader, Gollum and Midas, Armstrong was eaten from the inside by his own malice. He became a monster.  His hubris eclipsed his humanity.  Yet when the moon is eclipsed by the earth’s shadow it doesn’t stop being the moon.  Shadows move.  There is always hope for redemption. 

         In the race for Armstrong’s soul, his steepest climbs lay ahead of him.

         In our own lives, do we want to be the best to fill some perceived deficiency? Or do we simply want to honor what is growing and emerging through us, and experience our gift as an opportunity to serve in a joyful spirit of generosity and celebration?  Is it more fun to win at all costs, or playfully compete with integrity, honor and mutual respect?

         Lance Armstrong tried to run the entire universe.  His fear and craving told him that the only way to survive this wild and wonderful life was by turning everything into a battle, everyone into an enemy and every joy into a conflict.  His discipline, power and mastery, even his compassion and willingness to serve, were all subverted by self-obsession and pathological craving. 

            In our own lives, we have to find a way to balance ambition with service, ego with selflessness, excellence with humility and effort with effortlessness.  It is not wrong to want to be more.  Honor that which is emerging through you by cultivating the courage to express your own greatness in a way that honors your authentic nature without diminishing the greatness of others.  Know that the light within you does not belong to you – it belongs to all of us.  It is a sacred treasure, not private property.  It is a gift that only shines in the giving.   Although a gifted athlete and generous philanthropist, the lessons of this tragedy are perhaps Lance Armstrong’s greatest gift.   

A New Leaf

In January the year is new and full of promise. All our mistakes are behind us. We have been forgiven by those we have trespassed against, just as we have forgiven our trespassers. We are free of the regret that plagued us in the past. As Elbert Hubbard said, we are not punished for our sins, but by them. Let the punishment end. January calls us to strike out anew, unburdened, into the grand adventure of our life.

       The holiday season was a busy time of shopping, cooking, traveling, planning, baking, giving, receiving, singing, dancing, reveling and collapsing in deep-tissue exhaustion. Many of us emerge from the holidays needing, well, a holiday. Getting snared into what passes for Christmas in our fast-paced commercialized culture, we often lose sight of our core convictions and values. The dazzle gets the best of us. Now that it’s all behind us, let’s stop, take a breath and dig down deep into what we know is true. Instead of New Year’s resolutions which rarely hold up, let’s refresh our core values and draw on their wisdom in the months ahead. Let’s go back to what we know.

       Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This golden rule is embraced in every wisdom tradition. It is a simple idea. Cultivate the imagination and the empathy to feel, really feel how your actions impact others. Stand in their shoes. See through their eyes. Watch yourself approach. Hear your words through their ears. Feel your thoughtless actions shatter their peace of mind. Recognize your oneness and root firmly in this awareness.

       Practice restraint of tongue and pen. It is difficult to sow peace and understanding when you speak carelessly or in haste. If your words are necessary, say them with kindness, in a way that artfully anticipates conflict and prevents it. If your words are not necessary, keep them to yourself. Your email has a draft box. Use it. Facebook has an edit feature. Use that too.

       What we do is who we are. Our actions become our habits and our habits construct our character. This unimpeachable law is both imprisoning and liberating. As we ponder our circumstances, we realize that our thoughts, choices and actions have largely created them. But we are never stuck. We can always set into motion new karmic chains of cause and effect by choosing new thoughts, changing our actions and constructing new habits. People do it all the time.

       Opinions are not facts. Ever since the moment we were born, we struggled to understand the bewildering world around us. We formed impressions and reached conclusions, some of them reasonable and some of them ludicrous. Absolute certainty has, however, eluded us. Everything we know is a belief, an opinion, and as such is subject to revision as new and more compelling evidence arises. Some ideas are truer than others, that much is clear. But certainty itself remains just out of reach. Wise people practice humility and playfulness in their interactions with those who hold different beliefs, knowing that so much of anyone’s worldview is inexorably shaped by circumstance and environment – an experiential field unique to each individual. Good natured humility, gentle humor and a soft voice are the hallmarks of true wisdom.
       Don’t judge. This pearl from the mouth of Jesus demonstrates the depth and subtlety of his insight. None of us ever really understands the emotions, experiences and motives of another, so there is no way to accurately categorize or evaluate their actions. This is not to say that we are wrong to discern between good and bad, helpful and harmful, or defend ourselves against the destructive actions of others. But judging is dangerous because it is almost always a mere projection of one’s own self-serving categorizations. The real harm of judging is that it chokes off the channels through which love, understanding and forgiveness flow. When we judge we sever the binds of our own humanity. Is there anything more heartbreaking, more hopeless than the smug dismissal of judgment? Both the judged and the judger whither in their isolation.

       There is only this present moment. The past is a memory and the future a fantasy. There is always and only this present moment. Be mindful of how much presence you squander in dreams of the past or the future. Remorse, regret and shame are the bitter fruits of past-obsession, while anxiety, worry and fear are the bitter fruits of future-obsession. The cure for both of these maladies is to come back to the now. This is easily accomplished – simply get out of your head and back into your body. Feel the aliveness in your hands, in your skin, in your breath. Go outside. Do something for others. Take action. Love something more than yourself. Notice how sadness and worry dissipate in the bright light of the now.

       Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Stop seeking happiness. It cannot be found. It finds you. But only when you let go of craving and grasping. Happiness is what happens to you when you do good work, serve others, find a way to be useful and become a part of something larger than yourself. Happiness happens when you live the life you were born to live. Joy arises all on its own when you allow the boundless creativity of the universe to manifest itself in you, through you, and as you. But as soon as you try to grasp it, it vanishes. Happiness is not attained, it’s allowed.

       There is no such thing as failure. Every mistake, no matter how horrific, no matter how destructive, creates new opportunities that didn’t exist before. This is not about justifying the damage or calling it “good,” it is about acknowledging our imperfection and humbly moving forward into the new terrain laid bare by our blunder. Wise people realize that without risking the possibility of failure, nothing new is possible, and from the wreckage of the past new forms emerge – this time guided by eyes that see further, with hands more skillful, and a heart made softer by the wear.

       Fear is the only enemy. Very occasionally, fear is a helpful tool that forestalls disaster. But most of the time fear is a destructive form of self-obsession that hinders our actualization far more than any outside force. Like a barometer, our fear-level accurately indicates the extent to which we are stuck in delusion. Putting fear in its rightful place is the daily work of all who would be wise.

       Love is the only answer. Love means acceptance, humility, compassion, connection, warmth, understanding, patience, forgiveness, kindness and freedom. There is nothing on earth that can long withstand this unstoppable force. And love yourself too – don’t offer yourself up for sacrifice on the altar of someone else’s ego. Love is simply the awareness that you are part of something beautiful and true, and the willingness to say yes to your own infinite value. Love asks us to rise into the realization of our own magnificence. The world reveals itself in myriad forms. But through the eyes of love, every face you see is your own. Let this New Year be a daily parade of opportunities to be of service, to feel alive, to be in love with the whole crazy mess. When we walk in love, the whole world bends in our direction like a beautiful tree shading our path, pointing the way and offering, every day, a new leaf.

The Sacrament of Food

          Maybe the most sacred space in your home is not the yoga room, or the altar with the candle, or the chair by the window where you meditate and pray. Maybe the most sacred room in your house is the kitchen.

          Food is a daily ritual, one that we mostly overlook. Caught in the grip of a modern world moving way too fast, many of us eat on the run, thoughtlessly shoving food into our mouths from fast food bags and microwave trays. The nutritional and environmental costs of these short cuts are well documented. But have we tallied up the spiritual cost?

          Some of us are making changes, trading in the Fast Food Nation for the Slow Food Movement, and voting with our forks for a world that better honors the earth and ourselves. We’ve learned that there are scores of local farms growing organic produce, employing sustainable agricultural practices, and treating animals humanely. And by eating locally produced food, we drastically cut down on the fossil fuel wasted to transport food over great distances.

          What exactly is food anyway, and how can we use it more mindfully?

          Food is energy embodied. Through photosynthesis, a plant turns the light of a nearby star into the cells of its own body. When we eat plants and animals, we are eating stored starlight. Then we use this energy to build the material of our own bodies. We are made of light.

          Food is a sacrament because all food comes from sacrifice. No matter where you are on the vegan to omnivore spectrum, all food is made of formerly living things. Each of us must decide for ourselves where to draw the line, mindful of the fact that all eating kills.

          Many of us are awakening to the moral impact of our food choices. We are no longer just shopping for the cheapest eggs. We want to know about the living conditions of the hens and how much fuel it takes to bring the eggs to market. We are willing to pay a little more for local, free range eggs, knowing that our consumer choices are the most powerful and direct way of affecting the food industry, and thereby, ourselves.

          But no matter what the source of our groceries, now comes the transformation of these raw materials into a ritual meal. When we feed ourselves, our families, our friends and neighbors, we share with each other a mystical communion that connects us to the very energies that animate the cosmos. Ancient people understood this. Even the Eucharist ritual in traditional Christianity echoes this archetypal truth. The energy of the universe is sacred. And when we partake of that energy consciously, mindfully and reverently, we become sacred too.

          One way to honor this process is to get organized. Before you begin cooking, clean your work space, gather your tools and pre-measure your ingredients. The French phrase for this is mise en place, or “putting in place.” If your process is chaotic, your results will be chaotic. All of the functions of our lives, including our spiritual practice, would improve if we took on this simple responsibility.

          Focus on one thing at a time. When you’re mincing shallots, mince shallots. When you’re filleting a salmon, filet a salmon. A divided mind is the enemy of awareness. That’s when you burn the butter, drop a glass or cut your finger. Be fully present in every task. Only then do pathways and solutions appear.

          Keep it simple and let the ingredients speak for themselves. Avoid needless flash and pointless ornamentation. When possible, eat in season, eat fresh, eat local, and let the natural flavors, aromas, textures and colors of your ingredients guide your hand. As in life, enhance what is given instead of imposing arbitrary plans. You don’t have to use every ingredient in your pantry. Less really is more. When in doubt, leave it out.

          Don’t put all your stock in the end result. Make every step of the journey a destination in itself. The process is the outcome. “Sometimes it’s better to travel than to arrive,” wrote Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Sometimes the meal you slaved over all day doesn’t turn out right. But you have most certainly not wasted your time. By fixating only on end results, we miss out on the joy of becoming. Let the path itself be your reward.

          Before you begin, take your emotional temperature. Don’t cook in the consciousness of resentment. Cultivate gratitude. Honor the plants and animals that gave their lives for your table. Respect the fishermen, ranchers and farmers whose tenacity and passion brought you the fruits of the earth from every corner and continent. A sacramental offering is placed before you upon the altar of your kitchen counter. Don’t poison it with self-pity. Preparing food is not a burden – it is a sacred ritual.

          Food is communion that erases all boundaries. When we gather around tables like spokes around a wheel, we draw each other into a sacred hoop that affirms us all in our humanity and deepens our awareness of the sacred nature of every breath, every word and every gesture. A chef is a shaman, a priest and an alchemist who uses fire to transform the base elements into the Elixir of Life. Cooking and eating binds us to ourselves, to each other, and to the sacred source from which all things come.

          Are we eating mindlessly or mindfully, randomly or deliberately, cruelly or compassionately? There is no line that separates our food habits from the rest of our lives. The way we eat is the way we live. How we eat is who we are. Let us affirm that which is best in us and in each other through the sacrament of food.

[An earlier version of this article called "Eat, Drink and Be Mindful" first appeared in the January/February 2013 edition of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.  Both of these articles were based on my earlier piece called "Ten Truths From the Kitchen."]

A Year of Living Gratefully

It began as an experiment and ended as a conviction. I wanted to know if a simple daily ritual could create real and lasting transformation. I wanted to know if willfully choosing and shaping my thoughts could change my attitude. I wanted to know if emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being was simply a matter of pointing my attention in the right direction. The answers? Yes, yes, and yes.

             Last January I began keeping a gratitude journal. 

            The idea is not new. In ancient times wise people understood the unbreakable link between thought and action. It’s obvious that every action begins as a thought, but what is less clear is how actions shape consciousness. Buddha taught that we become what we think about. The Bhagavad Gita says that we become what we love. Aristotle taught that repeated actions become habits and habits construct character. We become what we do.

            I wanted to test these ancient claims in as simple a fashion as possible. I wanted to know if a simple daily ritual could really make a difference. I wanted to know if gratitude was the key that would unlock the door to a happier, more joyful, more positive, more compassionate, and more creative life. All I needed was willingness, a pencil, a blank book, and a little discipline. 

            At first I was skeptical. Like most people, my default, baseline state of mind was restless anxiety, worry, craving, and dissatisfaction. No matter how hard I slaved on my to-do lists, they were never completed. There was always something broken that needed fixing, a problem unsolved or a need unmet. Like a constant, steady background hum, dissatisfaction was a continual presence, punctuated briefly by fleeting moments of joy and well-being.

            This was no way to live. I was ready to try something different, even if it sounded a little weird.

            Last January 1^st I began. I wrote two sentences in my blank book that began with the words, “I’m grateful for…” The pattern was set. Every morning this year without fail, I dutifully performed my ritual. 

            It wasn’t always easy. In fact, there were many mornings when I struggled to come up with something new. Did I always feel grateful? No. But that didn’t matter. I was determined to earnestly complete my daily task. Often I would write the words, “I’m grateful for…”, then sit back and wait for something to occur to me, casting the searchlight of awareness across the furthest reaches of my life. But it was usually something right in front of me that caught my mind’s eye and made it to the page – the soft breathing of my thirteen year old dog Boone asleep at my feet, or the half moon descending through the pines in the pale morning sky. 

            Already in my second month I began to notice a shift. Having to come up with new gratitude material every morning changed the way I looked at my day. Knowing that every dawn brought a writing assignment, I paid more attention to the bounty of my life. I began to awaken to the abundance – the generosity of my colleagues, the warmth of my marriage, the joy of my work, the love of my family, the acceptance of my friends, the fleeting beauty of the world.

            I should have known this would happen. The same thing happens when I keep a travel journal – I begin to look at the journey through the eyes of a writer, selecting, storing and framing the events of the day and getting them ready for the next morning’s writing session. And when I travel with a camera around my neck, I’m constantly checking the angle of the light and scanning for the next shot. A gratitude journal is no different.

            Then the second shift happened. What you think about expands. By simply looking for gratitude, I found it. And the more I found, the more I felt – the consciousness of gratitude began to be a state of mind, a starting point that had little to do with what was going on around me. Gratitude became the lens through which I saw the world.

            This was a surprise. I had always thought gratitude was an end-point, a sense of well-being experienced at the end of a process of acquisition. What if the consciousness of gratitude is a starting point, a freely chosen state of mind unhinged from the ego’s incessant demands and default dissatisfaction?

            More research was required. I kept journaling.

            As the months rolled on I began to look forward to my morning ritual. It was getting easier. I began to notice that instead of skittering across the surface of my mind the daily ritual of gratitude had worn a groove, a groove I found myself falling into more often than not. Being grateful began to feel normal. I was constructing a new default baseline one journal entry at a time. Aristotle was right. We become what we do.

            The more time I spent in gratitude, the more I realized how little I understood about gratitude. There was still more to discover. But I was willing to learn.

            It turns out that gratitude is not just one thing, it’s many things. It’s a doorway to a whole new a way of being in the world. Maybe the simplest way to say it is this: gratitude is freedom. When you train yourself into the consciousness of gratitude, you are set free from the relentless craving and fear of the ego mind. Most unexamined consciousness, what Buddha called conditioned thinking, is simply the endless repetition of two fundamental energies, craving and aversion. There’s one list of all the things we want, and another list of all the things we don’t want. Life as it is normally lived is little more than the laborious maintenance of these two lists. But when we shift into gratitude, we realize that we have everything we need and there is nothing to fear.

            Then comes an even deeper shift. 

            By reducing our anxiety about what we have not yet received or achieved, we tap into a richer and more vibrant creativity, a state of being that anxiety and fear cuts out. When you experientially know that you live in an infinitely abundant universe, and that you receive everything you need, you soften, you open, you see, you hear, and you feel more. And because your hands are no longer clenched in a death-grip on the things you mistakenly call “yours,” you are open and available to receive the next gifts the universe is trying to give you. Your intentions will more readily become your creations as you move out of the consciousness of scarcity and into the consciousness of gratitude and allowance. You will struggle less and co-create more.

            Who knew that just a few minutes of writing in the morning could have such a profound impact? And if I fall out of the groove of gratitude, I have in my hand a whole book, a year’s worth of tangible evidence that I really am awash in abundance. But the real proof is within me.

            As the New Year begins, we have an opportunity. It isn’t hard to change. All it takes is willingness, a pencil, a blank book, and a little discipline. What will you be doing in the early morning hours of January 1^st?  Will 2013 be a year of craving and fear or a year of living gratefully?