Imagine opening your eyes each morning with the same fresh eyes and untouched mind as you did when you were a tiny new baby.
Imagine looking out at the world and marveling at the colour of the furniture and of the shapes in the garden. Captivated by the voices of the people interacting with you. Tracking and watching their facial expressions with curiosity. Being spun out like a little baby is when you notice that you have hands and you can move them somehow? The curiosity. The joy. The newness.
Imagine having that blank canvas of a mind to start to paint on again as you start to understand the world and what it means to be in it.
Today we are talking about: Capturing Gratitude
Our culture reveres busy-ness and scolds rest as “laziness.” We pride ourselves that we are doing purposeful things but complain to ourselves about it too. As a culture we seem to completely miss the whole point.
Why are we here?
Are we really here for this lifetime to just get a whole lot of work done and then burn out, done? Was that…IT? Is that what this whole “life” thing is cracked up to be?In a previous email I talked about the difference between humans ‘doing’ rather than humans being. I think the whole gratitude thing goes out the window when we are humans “doing.” Feeling grateful gets very swiftly replaced with feeling grumpy when we are burning the candles at every end.The other day I saw this image below and it struck me like a zen stick.
Cultivating gratitude is simple. It’s coming back to the childlike awe that enables us to remember and realise that we are really HERE. We have a body and a mind and moments of time (no matter how few or plentiful) to live and breathe and create and experience many things.
When I look at this evocative, beautifully captured image, I can feel the adrenalin rush come through my body again like a bolt of lightning. It jolts me into remembering that I am alive. The childlike awe of realizing we are here in this day.
Even if today is shitty or whether it may be great or somewhere in between. We are already winning because we woke up. Our heart still pumps and our lungs are still breathing this body. That in itself is something to acknowledge.
Meditation really is about being awake and alive. Capturing gratitude occurs through noticing that we are really here. In deeply appreciating that each moment is soberingly precious, and time is moving.
I hope this image stirs you as it stirred me. Let me know by commenting below.
Warmly, Mel
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