PlanetLightworker - June 2006

RADICAL SAGES
Gratitude
B Y R O B E R T R A B B I N

AFTER AN ALMOST one-year hiatus from writing - during which time I moved from San Francisco, California to Melbourne, Australia - I am happy and honored to be invited back to PlanetLightworker by editor Sandie Sedgbeer. My second stint as a monthly columnist will be under my brand, Radical Sages.

I am very grateful to Sandie for her warm welcome of my work and her invitation to participate in her marvelous publication. PlanetLightworker is a global force for positive transformation, a platform for exciting, beautiful, and inspirational articles by an A-list of visionary cultural shape-shifters, social transformers, healers, artists, and teachers.

I wonder if we have taken sufficient notice of Sandie's great effort and commitment to produce this e-zine, month in and month out? I wonder if we appreciate the amount of work and dedication she and her small staff put forth to produce this extraordinary creation.

During a recent workshop in Sydney, a participant asked me to speak about strategies for remaining aware of our inner essence and of our loving connection to others and Life itself. I spoke of several things, including gratitude, which has an immense power to alter our consciousness and reshape our world instantly.

In their book, Seasons of Grace, Alan Jones and John O'Neil write:

Gratitude - as conviction, practice, and discipline - is an essential nutrient, a kind of spiritual amino acid for human growth, joy, and creativity. Take away the daily experience and expression of gratitude, and life is quickly diminished. Like a weakened immune system, the spirit is left vulnerable to the diseases of cynicism, anger, low-grade depression, or at least an edgy sense of dissatisfaction. Gratitude-deprived, we suffer a relentless loss of vitality and delight. Every occasion for gratefulness is in some way a recognition that we belong to the world and to our fellow beings, that we exist in the community. Practicing gratitude can restore us to our rightful place in the world.

In order to sincerely express gratitude, we have to stop everything we are thinking and doing and come fully into presence; we have to make deep contact with our own heart and connection with another. From this still place of open-heartedness and connection, authentic gratitude flows into the world as healing light. In order to express gratitude, we have to notice things with an intent to see deeply, below surface appearances. We have to suspend our tendency to be self-absorbed in the drama of our life and, instead, attend with curiosity and wonderment to the magic that is all around us.

I am grateful for the 100 billion neurons which work together in ways I can't understand, but which allow me to perceive and function. I am grateful for the way infants look into my eyes with a challenge to remember what I may have forgotten. I am grateful for Dana Priest's courage in writing her recent Washington Post expose of the CIA's network of secret prisons in Europe. I am grateful to be alive and to enjoy - if only for a few fleeting seconds - the miracle of creation.

There once was a monastery that was very strict. Following a vow of silence, no one was allowed to speak at all. But there was one exception to this rule. Every ten years, the monks were permitted to speak just two words. After spending his first ten years at the monastery, one monk went to the head monk. "It has been ten years," said the head monk. "What are the two words you would like to speak?"

"Bed... hard..." said the monk.

"I see," replied the head monk.

Ten years later, the monk returned to the head monk's office. "It has been ten more years," said the head monk. "What are the two words you would like to speak?"

"Food... stinks..." said the monk.

"I see," replied the head monk.

Yet another ten years passed and the monk once again met with the head monk who asked, "What are your two words now, after these ten years?"

"I... quit!" said the monk.

"Well, I can see why," replied the head monk. "All you ever do is complain."

Gratitude is an attitude of mind, suffused with heart-stuff. Gratitude is a choice to look at life, to look at the things of life - the people, the circumstances, the surroundings - and look to see the beauty, the light, the point at which you and it are one. Then the looking itself dissolves into gratitude, which becomes wonderment and amazement at how incredibly precious and gorgeous life is.

Of course, this is the experience, the feeling, of gratitude; but there is also the expression of it. This is where we tend to falter just a bit, in the expression of our deep feeling for the sanctity of life. Without expression, without action, our insight fades and we lose the connection with life that gratitude creates. So, we must act. whenever our heart swells, whenever our eyes close in joy almost too deep, whenever our breath pushes beyond our own body into the body of all that is - that is when we must act. We must learn to make gratitude an action.

If we begin doing this, together, on a daily basis, if we begin to act out our gratitude for the blessings we enjoy, and we all have numerous blessings, we will be amazed at what happens in the world.

Let's try this: I would like for each person who reads this article to send an email of appreciation to Sandie for her contribution to our world. Then, keep going: every day, find ways to act out your gratitude.

As brother Rumi said, "Take on a big project, like Noah." Let's take on the project of transforming our world by acting out our gratitude.

Thank you. It is good to be back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Rabbin is a mesmerizing public speaker and groundbreaking author, leadership advisor, and self-awareness teacher. He is the creator of RealTime Speaking and a sought-after message master and communication strategist. For more information about Robert and his many powerful programs of personal and professional mastery, visit www.robertrabbin.com.