No matter who you are, where you are from or what your life is like at this moment in time, “being here” and “being you” is a journey. Sometimes it’s a trek, a slog through challenging people and circumstances. Other times it’s a soaring, a freedom, a flight.
What follows is a special meditation that will open your mind and find places in the heart that need a little balm. It is a gratitude meditation, one that makes this time of year especially vibrant.
To begin, think of each person who has crossed your path – those who were loving and kind, those you found difficult or harmful; those you cherish, those you abandoned; think of relatives, neighbors, teachers, preachers, friends, colleagues. Include everyone from birth until now.
This takes time. As you recall people from long ago, you tend to remember others that you had completely forgotten about. Some of the forgotten were important to you – as a child, as a teenager. It feels good to remember them. So, as you enter into this meditation, take time to remember all of the people whose lives have intersected with yours, however briefly.
The next step asks more of us. Starting at the beginning, bring each individual to mind and hold them there. While you are holding them, express your gratitude for their presence in your own, unique life story. The good, the bad and the ugly, the bullies and the mentors – they all deserve your attention. No matter how awful your relationship with someone was, stay with them in mind until you can express gratitude for something about them – some skill or attribute they had, some comment that made you think – something positive they represent.
This is, as you can imagine, an exercise best done over several days. In order to do justice to your reflections on each individual, in order to feel the powerful opening up and healing the meditation fosters, give it all the time it needs, whether you take three days to fully explore the range of your gratitude for an important soul, or three minutes to find a way to be grateful for a casual encounter.
Doing this reflection helps us to see one another as kinfolk – sisters and brothers, aunties and uncles, members of the same human family with all its faults and foibles.
The gratitude you are working on is also a form of forgiveness. As you pull your gaze away from the negative in order to search for a positive, you are moving your broken heart away from the harm and in the direction of healing. You are detaching the strings that had been holding onto pain or anger – the toxicity of the relationship. Forgiveness of self and other requires this change in perception.
Of course, the personal bubbles we live in are also connected to larger spheres of activity that have an enormous influence on our lives. Science, medicine, historic figures and their philosophies/morality, environmentalists, religious figures. Many other arenas of human activity that take place before and during our lifetimes influence the lives we lead.
For the third step of this meditation, select a few specific things that have made your life more meaningful, healthy, informed or manageable. Give thanks there, as well.
This year, I’ve been thinking about a book called Saving Sight, by Dr. Andrew Lam, who happens to be my retina specialist. So many optical devices and procedures used by vision specialists today were invented and refined by tinkerers who were driven to solve the problem of how to look inside the eye. I’m so grateful to them all for allowing me to keep the gift of sight.
This past year, too, I have been increasingly aware of the debt we owe our Native American brothers and sisters. The protests they have endured under the harshest of weather and police response have raised our consciousness nation-wide about the hazards of continued oil pipeline construction. They have worked so hard to teach us the vital importance of keeping our waters clean. Native Americans have raised their voices and their visibility in society, against all the odds white people have thrown at them, showing us the absolute necessity of making our government representative of all people.
I wanted to mention how much Albert Schweitzer’s book, A Reverence for Life, influenced me as a young adult. But the turkey is starting to smell lovely and the clock says its time to fix the green beans.
I wish you all a very happy and thankful Thanksgiving.
