Gratitude

From Michael Beckwith's book Spiritual Liberation (paraphrased): enlightened people are grateful for things most people take for granted.

I've always had difficulty with the "gratitude lists" -- and other suggestions -- although I've no problem with the idea of gratitude. But it often seems contrived. Do I really need to make a written list of things I'm grateful for?

Sometimes.

Sometimes life just kicks you in the ass, and while you're busy running from the pain, it's easy to focus on the 'oh crap' part of it all. Hard, hard, HARD to think of things to be grateful for if you've lost your job, a loved one, a court fight, or your mind from stress. Hard enough under lesser stressors -- looking back over the past 18 months, I've experienced a half dozen or so events that are considered major stressors, although at the time (and even now) I felt like it wasn't any one event so much as it was that I felt like a cosmic punching bag--I'd get up, and here comes the next blow. Hard, hard, hard to focus away from the crap and onto the bigger story. Plus, I'm very good at focusing to the point of obsession.

Enter gratitude. Silly or not, the act of consciously listing things I'm grateful for is one of the tools I use to pull myself out of any given funk. It's not the list, it's the consciousness. And I find that when I focus on what I'm grateful for, I'm aware of more in general. It's kind of like a walking, talking, conscious meditation.