Being In Gratitude

This week I was challenged by anxiety. For me, the things on my plate were finishing up school, preparing for a road trip, picking all the cherries off my parents’ tree, and finding time for a budding relationship. It was a lot to cram into a week, and I found myself getting off balance. When the anxiety crept in, I noticed it and named it. Each time it arose, I sat on my cushion and tried to be present with it. It was uncomfortable. What I found to remedy my worried heart was to cultivate gratitude; shifting my mind from grasping to already having.

In this meditation, I guide us to focus on an anchor (or home base) for our meditation. From there, we ground and experience the body. We invite gratitude into our heart and those elements of our lives that are working, that bring us joy, that allow us to trust into the goodness of life itself. Enjoy!

Transcript

Hello everyone.

Welcome to our weekly meditation.

Please go ahead and find your meditative spot.

Hopefully you're starting to feel that sensation of relaxation as soon as you get on the cushion or go to the place that you do your meditation.

Just like any habit,

It starts to feel natural.

Start with our three deep breaths.

Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.

Just invite you to come deeply into your body.

I like to say hello to my head.

Hello to my heart.

Hello to my gut.

I like to acknowledge where my body is touching the ground or touching the cushion,

Where there's actual contact between my body and the cushion or the ground.

Let's just allow Mother Earth to do her beautiful thing called gravity.

The innate nature of planet Earth is to hold and support our creations,

Us.

So with each out breath,

Just invite you to feel that familiar tug of gravity,

To let Mother Earth work her magic,

To sit grounded on the Earth.

With each out breath,

Allow gravity to release anything that's not serving you today.

Allow mental formations,

Judgments,

Worries,

Anything that wants to come pouring out of your head or your heart.

Just let it gently,

Effortlessly flow into the Earth.

You can imagine that toxicity or those aches and pains just gently being absorbed into the Earth.

Just joins the milieu of dirt and soil,

Microbial life.

I want you to pick an anchor for today,

The focus of your meditation.

So perhaps it's your breath.

Perhaps it's the sounds around you.

Perhaps it's a prayer or a mantra.

Just take a minute to come into that anchor,

Knowing that it will serve you throughout the meditation.

Just allow your focus to come into sharp precision around that anchor.

Often ever studying Buddhism or on a spiritual path towards liberation of suffering,

We often place enlightenment as a distant goal.

It might not even be placed as a distant goal,

But we create it as a goal.

Something that we're striving for.

Can I invite us now to imagine and to know,

To trust that enlightenment,

Which really is experiencing the flow of the world,

Being part of the river of chi,

Without wanting things to be different or wanting the rate of change to be different.

So that sense of flow,

I want us to shift from having that be a goal that's out there,

That's in the future,

To something that can be experienced right here,

In this present moment,

In this meditation,

In your daily interactions.

Maybe just to imagine or sense into that feeling of complete faith and trust,

Equanimity for this moment,

Knowing of your goodness,

Knowing that you belong,

Knowing that at this moment you're not striving or searching or wanting things to be different.

You're simply experiencing what's happening now.

I invite you to become aware of the palms of your hands.

I invite you to feel the breath somewhere in your body.

I invite you to become aware of your posture in space.

I invite you to touch in to your tender heart.

Acknowledge it,

Express gratitude for its goodness,

Its capacity for love and compassion for self and others.

I invite you to see and name ten blessings in your life,

People,

Experiences,

Gifts,

Ten beautiful things in your life.

They may be as simple as the fact that your dishwasher is functioning and cleans your dishes,

Or it may be as vast and expansive as a sense of forgiveness for someone who has wronged you.

Just call to mind ten things that are working,

That are positive,

Ten things you can easily have gratitude for.

And just imagine them surrounding you like little treasures.

You're sitting,

And as you turn 360 degrees,

You see these people,

These blessings,

These experiences,

These feelings,

Completely encircling you.

And when you feel them all around you,

Perhaps if you haven't already done this,

Perhaps bow to each one,

Or say thank you,

Or just let that gratitude overflow from your heart to those people or to that experience or to that thing.

And as you do that for each one,

Just allow that person or that image or whatever it is to come into your heart.

So you're pouring out gratitude,

And it's just like you're placing the little treasure into your heart pocket.

I found that gratitude is the antidote to grasping,

To anxiety,

To wanting,

Because instead the energy is of having and receiving and giving.

Thank you for practicing with me.

BELL RINGS