#10 Thankfulness versus falseness

Dear friends. Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the season of declining light and an ever increasing cycle of frantic activity. Over the next few weeks we will  focus our practice of presence on this precious time of year. Can we pierce through all the demands, expectations, misplaced hopes, the stress of dead traditions into the living essence at the heart of these times?

On Monday we focused on thankfulness. How are we supposed to be thankful? The superego has many ideas about what we should be thankful for and how we should be thankful. This left many of us with a bad taste, even anger, at being coerced into being thankful for things and people that we are not thankful for. We looked at what blocks our thankfulness. How can we be thankful when we are cut off from ourselves? Having a self in some religious teaching is considered selfish. So thankfulness becomes hollow, empty of truth, empty of life. A soul with no inner life, no heart at its center becomes an empty, resentful shell, becoming ever more false as it tries to live up to the demands of the superego. Being thankful for some meant going along, even participating in the lie of presence, of gratitude in the midst of abuse. Thankfulness becomes obligation, duty and a show.

So how does our practice of presence bring to life thankfulness. We considered that thankfulness is a state of being, a quality of presence an out flowing of the heart, a response to truth and the abundance of living presence, in ourselves, in others, in the world around us. It cannot be faked. It is a far cry from the obligatory Hallmark card. It arises quite naturally when we allow ourselves to be where we are. If we are angry or disheartened that is the truth. And perhaps simply allowing and holding our distress is an expression of thankfulness. Thank God that we are free to feel, to be where we are without the coercion of the superego bullying us to be thankful when we are not. Or perhaps we discover by coming into the moment that thankfulness arises in unexpected ways.

Gratitude or thankfulness is an expression of an open heart, a full heart, a fleshy living heart. A numb heart, a stony heart, an angry heart does not need the added burden of the pretense of thankfulness. It needs the kindness, patience and generosity of our presence and our practice.