Unconditional Gratitude
by Charley Cropley, N.D.
At 58, I am not one inch closer to satisfying my desires or avoiding my fears than at age 8. They have only changed form. It¹s a losers¹ game. Fear of pain and poverty and insatiable desire for pleasure and security haunt me.
I have never had enough to quiet this. I awaken and go to sleep driven by thoughts of what I might do to earn more, to spend less, to further my career, my health, relationships. Desire for pleasure seduces: luscious sex, beauty, health, status, influence, power, wealth, clothes, homes, cars, food, leisure, travel. My thoughts are infected with the disease of want, insufficiency and never enough. Never!
Anxiety and fear are the inescapable background of my life. I am helplessly vulnerable, indefensible. A splash in the eyes of a chemical, a moment¹s unawareness on the freeway, an unexpected medical test and pain becomes my life. My children and family, reputation, marriage and career are all equally at risk. My mind is driven mad with fear. And, yes, I appear normal.
As a mortal, my happiness is hardwired to events, with my mood being dependent on outcome. But I am sick and tired of being unhappy. I want to be happy, and I want it with a passion. So I have chosen to go directly for what I want most. I refuse to allow my most valued treasures‹my peace of mind and happiness‹to be destroyed by the spinning wheel of Fortune. Rather than letting external events dictate my happiness, I can learn to see the blessing and opportunity in every moment and circumstance, even illness and struggle.
I am learning to misuse my mind less. Just as I respect my body¹s needs for warmth, rest, food and water, I respect my mind¹s need to feel love and appreciation. It is made to blossom in the light of gratefulness. When I express appreciation, I¹m happy.
No gratitude, no joy. Period.
The term "heliotropic" describes the way plants naturally orient themselves to face toward sunlight. We humans are spiritual heliotropes. Our inner world of thoughts and emotions naturally turn towards the light of love and gratitude. It is our nature, our destiny to do this. Gratefulness is the spiritual light in which my mind becomes happy, intelligent and bright. Deprived of appreciation I cannot understand how life works. I cannot feel the fundamental goodness of life. I become unhappy, sad, disappointed, angry, apathetic, afraid, tired, sick. My soul becomes infected and oozes tension into my body. My countenance, posture, breath, movements, circulation, appetites, sleep and moods‹every aspect of me becomes distorted and eventually sick. In the atmosphere of sweet gratefulness, my humor returns. I relax and smile, become creative, practical, intelligent, alert, full of energy and immune to everything.
My challenges are quickly consolidating into one "What will I allow to capture my attention?" Will I allow myself to be seduced by desire and want or frightened by pain and loss? Or shall my attention be given to the service of appreciation?
My aspiration is that in every moment I would ask myself only “How much can I find to appreciate, and how sincerely, how deeply?” I want to learn to search every situation until I find something, anything I CAN appreciate and indulge myself shamelessly. I aspire to drink wantonly of gratitude until I become drunk and lose all perception of my former reality.
A teacher told me “All happiness for a reason is, in fact, misery. (Because the reason will change.) I’m discovering that the source of my feeling good is not in money, sunsets, my children or anything outside myself. Gratitude is not dependent upon any circumstance. It is the core longing of my soul. It is me, my true nature. I love loving. Gratefulness illumines its own likeness in myself and everything that comes into my awareness. Just as sunlight is essential for the color inherent in a flower to manifest, so the beauty, goodness and intelligence inherent in everything requires my gratefulness for me to see it.
Previously I unconsciously restricted my expression of gratitude to conform with my default programming which reads: "These are the conditions under which you are allowed to feel deep gratitude: Winning the lottery, sex with a movie star, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize" Gratitude was scarce. Now my heart grows richer with appreciation because I want it to, not because some outer influence told me to!
As I grow more skillful at appreciation I find myself sometimes relishing challenges. My greatest happiness occurs in those precious times when I cannot find any obvious external reason to justify being grateful; such as in the face of loss, trauma, insult, or especially my own selfishness, laziness, cowardice and stupidity. Many times the best I can muster is the feeblest prayer for gratitude. The prayer for gratitude is actually the first emergence into my consciousness of gratitude.
Abe Lincoln said “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Likewise I find the foundation of my gratitude (happiness) is my determination to be so. I am grateful because I have the freedom to be so. Without this essential freedom I would be a slave of Life’s ever changing circumstances. My happiness would be entirely in the fickle hands of fortune. And no man can control fortune. Therefore happiness dependent upon circumstances is no happiness at all. But God designed me such that the one thing that I love and need above all else, happiness, is fully under my own control.
My body, possessions, reputation are all subject to circumstances. My spirit is not. Appreciation is the definitive proof that I am free, evidence of my immortality. I am happy precisely and solely because I choose to be so. Joy does not get any more real.