Monthly Archives: November 2013

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Gratitude

This has been bugging me, I have to admit. The fact that I am grateful for stuff, but also manage not to be most of the time. We all know that it’s a good thing, but how often, how much are we really grateful?

Speaking for myself, my ratio could be far better. Too many days I am not grateful, really. I may have a moment or two, there are certain ‘things’ I am pretty much grateful for all the time, such as having my wife in my life, my baby girl, but that is about it. I have been thinking about this and wondering how this can be. Here I am, having written this book, writing this blog about a whole other way to live life, a way that is more aware, more conscious, more by our own choice, and yet gratitude seems to be limited. What is up with that? Shouldn’t I be grateful pretty much all the time? Shouldn’t I know how to choose gratitude? Shouldn’t gratitude be part of living this kind of life? Apparently not.

It’s as though I have to remind myself to be grateful for things. I’ll go about my day, everything is fine, I am meeting people, having interesting experiences, feeling pretty happy and content with life, and yet gratitude eludes me, and I will quite literally have to stop and consciously wonder what I am grateful for. Which means that it’s not there otherwise. This had me stumped for a while. I wanted to feel grateful, I wanted to be appreciative of what I have, and thus be a grateful, humble kind of person. The kind of person who doesn’t expect things, the kind who counts their blessings. That does sound good after all. And especially during the holidays this becomes prominent for most of us. Let’s pause and be grateful for what we have. For the people and the circumstances in our lives. Let’s stop and say thanks. When I do gratitude, it is within a world of comparison. When I had to remind myself to be grateful, I was always grateful about something in my life, such as the people, health, job. It was a gratitude attached to the opposite of all those things. If I didn’t have the people, health and job, then my life would not be as nice and I wouldn’t feel as grateful. I was looking at comparisons, and by saying that things were as good as they were, I should be grateful, because they could be worse, and in fact are worse for others. Some people do this every day, they have that moment of pause to be grateful. After thinking about this for a while something hit me.

Gratitude is not something to do, it is something to be. It is a tude after all not an ing. That’s why I had to consciously stop and make myself be grateful. I was busy doing a bunch of important thinking and had to stop it to find my gratitude. Once I paused, I felt it pretty quickly. But if I stopped the maelstrom of my thinking for longer, it turned into more than gratitude, into a sense of wonder and awe with what was going on at the moment. Almost the way I was as a kid when most of the time the world was a cool and wondrous place. Always something new to discover and do. New experiences to have, newness all around. Something happens when we are in this state, we experience a kind of gratitude for being here, for having experiences. Rather than gratitude, it is a state of grace. Being in that state goes beyond gratitude. It is not about anything anymore, it is simply a state of being. A state where I can see and experience the world differently, again and again. The only way to do this is to know that my repetitive ego identified thinking is giving me the same experiences over and over again, and that once aware of this, I can choose to not engage in it. The second I do that, a space opens up in my mind that is not filled with a particular thought, and bingo, whatever situation I am in looks pretty new and interesting. Seriously, it works.

Whenever I get pissed about someone or something and happen to notice it, I step back, tell that particular thought that I am not interested, and the release and shift in my mind changes the circumstance instantly. It lets me see the moment free of my labels and ideas about it, e.g. how unreasonable/crazy/stupid/mean/awful a person or situation is, and instead move into a state of observation, no judgment about it, and the pompous and urgent action required disappear. The situation has shifted. I am in a state of grace, a state beyond gratitude, a state where it’s not about anything anymore, but about being here and enjoying the crap out of it. Beats gratitude by lengths. Gratitude is good, don’t get me wrong, but it is limited to the world of opposites, whereas a state of grace or being is unlimited. It never ends.

Here’s to gratitude. The next time you remind yourself to have gratitude, take a look at the list of things you are creating. Ask yourself if that is a limitation on your ability to have gratitude.  If you answer yes, step back from the list, and take a look around right here, right now, and take in the world in all its wonder and awe. You may just find yourself graceful.

Cheers,

Ralf

 

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Reactive reactionary

That’s a beautiful combination right there. Those two are the gatekeepers of the ego identification castle. When we are a reactive reactionary, we are fully engaged in the ego identification. In other words, we are either reacting to something or want to keep things just the way they are.

Reacting is what we do all day. We get up and react to the weather, the news, our spouse or partner, the kids, our own mood, the way we look, etc. We are reacting to the world and what it presents to us. So when I get into my car and drive to work, and someone cuts me off, I react. And boy, do I. In the interest of my G-Rating for the blog, I may not repeat the things that come out of my mouth in reaction to the … other person. Driving is one of my weak spots, well, that and watching my favorite soccer team suck. I easily slip into my ego skin and find myself reacting. When I am my ego, I am constantly and perpetually repeating the same thoughts over and over again. I do this to create permanence and predictability and therefore feel in control of my existence. A lot of repetition goes on there. So when someone cuts me off in traffic, guess what, been there, done that before, so I know how to react. Open and shut case. Depending on my state of awareness, I may entertain these thoughts for a couple of minutes or a couple of seconds. But I will fall for them most of the time. As mentioned, definite weak spot of mine.

What is fascinating to me about all this is the fact that I am doing the same damn thing every time. I re-act. I act the same way again and again. First in my thinking and then in my actions. So I am literally acting the same way I did before in light of the same ‘situation,’ which is to say in light of the same thoughts. That is a very limiting way to live to say the least. It denies us choice, to be able to see another way of being with a situation, or to act in a way that we may never have before. Instead we go with our well established and comfortable routine and even call that a good thing. I know my brother, sister, best friend, spouse, this is what they’re like, reliable like an old dog, you can count on them to react the same way every time, and it’s also hard to teach an old dog new tricks. By saying this, we simply solidify the idea of that person, and solidify the illusion that they are a permanent fixture in their ways. And what we end up with is the comfort of predictability and repetition. The ego enslaves us to the fake comfort of fake permanence.

The ego is also the ultimate reactionary. It wants to keep the status quo. It does not like change and has to keep things as they have always been, so that it may keep up the illusion of control over its own existence. It holds on to patterns and rituals and declares them essential. The perfect reactionary holds traditions as holy and sacred. They may not be challenged or questioned, and most certainly not changed. That is tantamount to sacrilege. They may not be messed with. If you dare to, you will be met with fierce resistance. This can go as far as physical violence. The ego will stop at almost nothing to defend its status quo and that can include its own demise. It never questions the origins of its dearly held traditions it is willing to die for. It will not entertain the possibility that it was simply made up by someone at some point. Everything the reactionary is so attached to was indeed made up at some point. But the idea that it could be changed or unmade is unthinkable.

There is another level to all this repetition, which is habit. Habits are what the ego is really good at. As the keeper of memory, it is actually the best at it. When I do something a couple of times, the ego stores this experience and makes sure to automatically pull that information when needed. So I will remember not to touch a hot stove. I will know not to grab a knife by its blade. This is incredibly practical and helpful. This does not limit my life experience, it makes it safer. It does not make me fear or hate stoves or knives. I simply use the information to make sure I won’t get hurt. I will remember how to speak my language, how to do math, drive a car, get dressed, eat, walk, etc. All of this is automatic and enhances my experience as a human. It’s a beautiful design. And then we start turning these habits into us, and bingo, we are a reactive reactionary.

All because we forget that we are temporary, that the ego is nothing but the story keeper of our human existence. Because we fall so deeply asleep to forget our own impermanence and that our life is but a mere moment in the vastness of all life. Billions of people have come and gone, billions of stars have come and gone, and billions upon billions will continue to do so. To the ego this is the most frightening fact of all, because when we dare to think like that, our life loses its importance to us, it becomes something we get to enjoy and do, and is no longer who we are. Our mind gets cleared up and quiets down. We begin to get back to our original state of human beingness, not human has been or human will be. The ego goes back to doing what it is designed to do, to give us a safe trip through human land.

Next time you see yourself re-acting, stop the show and realize that you are in the (insert your name here) show and get to call the shots about how this particular episode is going. You are the writer, director, producer and star of this show called your life. And who wants nothing but re-runs all the time?

Cheers,

Ralf

P.S.: I can now talk about the nomination for my book, check out The Book page on the site if you’d like to know more.