Okay,
Welcome back to the Spiritual Recalibration Series.
Thank you for embarking on this series and opening yourself to a new way of being.
My name is David,
And this is Session 29,
Gratitude,
Contentment,
And Joy.
Find a comfortable seat in a space where you can allow yourself 20 minutes or so,
Undistracted,
To focus just on you.
A quick reminder,
To get the most out of this series,
Please be sure you've listened to the Welcome Session,
Session Zero.
Here we go.
So I was thinking,
How to begin on this one?
I want to make sure we have time for a brief affirmation practice on this.
But the thing about gratitude is I was thinking about,
Let's start with a sunset,
Right?
So think of the last time you just appreciated a sunset,
Right?
You're standing there,
And I think I mentioned to you a few weeks ago,
Yeah,
I was on,
I took a vacation.
There were many,
Many sunsets.
But you can imagine standing there and thinking,
Gosh,
This is pretty.
I'm so blessed to be here.
I'm so grateful to be here.
And there's kind of one level of appreciation for that sunset.
And there may be,
Like with a gratitude practice,
There's this thing where you feel like you should be grateful,
Right?
Gosh,
I have,
There's so many things,
I'm complaining about this,
I'm complaining about that.
There's so much I should be grateful for.
And there's that word should.
And when I do a gratitude practice,
What I've been playing with lately,
Specifically is specifically tuning in to what I'm actually,
Truly,
Authentically grateful for.
Because sometimes stuff in your life isn't awesome,
And it's hard to find those things.
But it's an evolution,
It's a practice.
Once you kind of take it in intellectually,
That gratitude can change everything.
Okay,
I get that.
Gratitude can change everything.
And it's kind of like,
I believe it when I see it,
Sort of thing.
But I trust it,
So I'm going to start practicing.
And so you do,
You start maybe a gratitude journal at night,
Just to list.
This was one of the things when I was,
Years ago,
When I was having lots of trouble sleeping,
The thing and I,
There are various,
There are many wonderful,
We could talk about sleep,
You know,
That could be a whole other thing.
But one of the things,
And I think the thing that really shifted it for me was that gratitude practice.
Gratitude is selfishly,
What,
It's a shift move.
Like they say in the conscious leadership group,
A shift move,
Gratitude,
It can shift you.
So,
It's kind of like a selfish move,
I want to shift,
Let's use gratitude.
And then it kind of starts working,
It's magic,
Forgive the cliche.
But when you sit down and start writing down things that you're truly grateful for,
In one way to do it,
Like,
You can say,
I'm grateful for my kids,
Right?
I can say,
I'm particularly grateful for my,
For my youngest daughter,
I'm particularly grateful for my oldest daughter.
And I say,
I'm grateful for her.
Or I can say,
And,
Or I can say,
I'm grateful for the way she made me laugh out loud at lunchtime today.
That's a really specific thing,
Or I'm grateful for the way she expresses herself with art.
When you get kind of granular with the gratitude,
It becomes something else,
Just as a practice.
So there's a thing,
Being specific is helpful.
In time,
What,
Moving out of that,
I should be grateful for this,
Or I should be grateful for that.
And moving into what I'm actually feel grateful for.
It starts to shift things at a more foundational level.
So that it kind of becomes,
It just,
There's a,
There's a shift there.
And similar to a shift,
I was speaking to a friend yesterday who,
He was one of the first two or three people that I taught to meditate when I first learned,
When I first started teaching.
And I know that he came to it from a felt need,
As I did,
A felt need.
So it's a little bit more than a curiosity,
It was a need.
And it was interesting speaking to him.
We actually started talking about,
He started talking to me about a sunset that he had,
He was laying in the grass and was looking at a sunset.
And he sent me a picture of it.
And it's so interesting where you can come to meditation practice.
We've spoken about this a little bit,
You come to it out of curiosity or from a place of need,
Or you want the scientifically proven benefits of meditation,
Right?
You want to be able to focus better and have better memory and better health.
And all of the wonderful practical,
Just peace of mind,
Quiet,
Stillness of meditation.
But then you can't quite put your finger on it,
But at some point,
It kind of shifts into something else.
Beyond just those benefits,
There's a,
The word that comes up for me to say right now is joy.
And that brings me back to gratitude for just a moment where with the shift into gratitude often enough,
You start to get this sense of contentment.
Not always in every single moment,
But there's an underlying sense of contentment.
And it seems to me that that's the foundation for,
It's like the difference between happiness and joy,
Or the difference between,
I wrote,
I was reading about this a few weeks ago that the difference between simply relief from suffering,
Which feels pretty good,
You know,
If you're suffering,
Just,
Just relief from the,
Just like think of the last time you maybe had a headache and then it went away,
It's like,
Oh,
Like that is wonderful.
But there's more.
So it seems the difference between happiness and joy,
Happiness,
Which is circumstantial based on things being the way we'd like them to be,
And joy is gratitude.
Gratitude as the pathway to joy,
That joy that is,
Um,
Irregardless of circumstances.
Yeah.
Okay,
So let's do that for a few minutes.
That practice I mentioned earlier,
We'll wrap up with that.
So if you're sitting in a chair,
Place your feet flat on the floor.
Let's close down the eyes gently,
If that's comfortable for you.
Head soft,
Eyes soft behind the eyelids,
Relax the eyes,
Relax the jaw,
Allow your tongue to fall away from the roof of your mouth,
Draw the shoulder blades together gently so that you're sitting with a nice upright spine.
Place the hands,
Palms down or palms up your choice on your thighs at the juncture of thighs and abdomen,
A little bit further forward if that's more comfortable for you.
This affirmation,
I'll give you the words and then I'll begin saying it and once you start to memorize it,
Feel free to join me either out loud or just in your mind.
I rest in beautiful contentment,
Deeply grateful for all of the blessings in my life.
I know that all that I need is already here.
I rest in beautiful contentment,
Deeply grateful for all of the blessings in my life.
I know that all that I need is already here.
Allowing yourself to tune in to the feeling behind the words,
I rest in beautiful contentment,
Deeply grateful for all of the blessings in my life.
I know that all that I need is already here.
I rest in beautiful contentment,
Deeply grateful for all of the blessings in my life.
I know that all that I need is already here.
I rest in beautiful contentment,
Deeply grateful for all of the blessings in my life.
I know that all that I need is already here.
If you're saying it out loud,
Just in a whisper now,
I rest in beautiful contentment,
Deeply grateful for all of the blessings in my life.
I know that all that I need is already here.
And if you're saying out loud,
Just in your mind now,
I rest in beautiful contentment,
Deeply grateful for all of the blessings in my life.
I know that all that I need is already here.
I rest in beautiful contentment,
Deeply grateful for all of the blessings in my life.
I know that all that I need is already here.
Allowing those words to stay for just a few moments,
Letting the words go,
Tuning into the feeling behind the words,
The feeling that's left here of contentment,
Of gratitude.
Of grace.
Of allowing yourself to receive all of the blessings of your life.
To receive the gifts.
To rest in gratitude.
Good.
For just a minute or two.
Tune into your breath.
See if you can find the spot in your nostrils where the air is passing.
Allow yourself to be just as you are.
Focusing on the breath.
Feeling it in the nostrils.
Noticing the mind wander off.
Noticing.
Gently but firmly coming back to the breath.
Allowing everything to be slow.
Good.
Take an intentional inhale through the nose and a gentle exhale through the mouth.
Let the breath stay out for as long as it wants.
When it wants to return,
Allow it to do so.
You don't have to watch it anymore.
Just allow yourself to stay here.
For just another moment or two.
Remembering the feeling behind the affirmation of contentment and gratitude.
Just another few moments.
Good.
Take an intentional inhale through the nose and then exhale through the mouth.
Prepare to come back to the space where you are.
When you're ready,
You can flutter open your eyes or stay like this for as long as you like.
