The Bliss Experiment: 28 Days to Personal Transformation by Meshorer Sean

Author:Meshorer, Sean [Meshorer, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2012-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

What Is Gratitude?

Put simply, gratitude is the conscious remembrance of something positive that we either experienced in the past or are experiencing now. That’s pretty much it. We reflect on our lives and make an effort to remember what’s going right or has gone right. It can be something good that’s happened, a positive quality of ours or someone we know, an enjoyable experience we’ve had, or something interesting, beautiful, helpful, or positive happening in this now-moment.

Gratitude transforms our negative passivity into positive activity; it awakens and uplifts our consciousness. Too often we drift through our lives as if in a reverie. Things happen all around us, but we barely notice. We become so acclimated to our jobs, material objects, relationships, and situations that we cease to focus on or enjoy them. We take our lives—and everything and everyone in them—for granted.

Gratitude, then, is about bolstering our awareness, sensitivity, and attention. Earlier, in our discussion of awareness and being fully present in the moment, we explored how awareness, when understood and approached properly, leads to a positive fullness, as opposed to a dispiriting emptiness. When we are positively centered in the moment, gratitude is often the dominant feeling. We are noticing and filling our conscious awareness with appreciation. This kind of active, positive attentiveness generates a greatly heightened awareness.

There is nothing artificial or false about this. Gratitude is the practice of observing or remembering the truth. It isn’t a denial or fantasy. If your boyfriend is short, gratitude isn’t pretending he’s tall. Nor does it require you to deny that his height is a negative (if it is for you, that is). Instead it’s remembering to balance this “negative” with his positive qualities. He may be short, but he’s handsome, or kind, or smart. Whatever it may be. Practicing gratitude also assists us in contextualizing and diluting negative thoughts—even accurate ones—by drowning them in a sea of positive ones. Gratitude vigorously asserts the fullness of reality by filling our awareness with positive truth.

Gratitude does not require denying unpleasant things. Elie Wiesel doesn’t practice gratitude by denying the Holocaust. But he makes sure that in his daily life, the grief and horror are contextualized; he never forgets to also remember and even savor all of the good he’s experienced. If Wiesel can find reasons to be grateful, then we all can.

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