Gratitude is the wine of the soul. Go ahead and get drunk. Giving thanks for abundance is greater than the abundance itself. Rumi
Summary: Humility and gratitude are fundamental. They are like blocking and tackling in football and throwing and catching in baseball– the basics. All psychological growth, loving relationships and spiritually tuning in depend on these two foundations: and they feed each other. They deserve our attention. Humility and gratitude sound like virtues in the wisdom tradition sense, and they are. This practice, like the others, is a wisdom fostering, spiritually friendly effort. The Ten Practices are about facilitating the emergence of a bigger version of you. Without humility and gratitude, the expansive and interconnected you, the one lying underneath your various roles and personas, can’t emerge.
Primordial Humility
As we continue to build this alternative mindset and way of being, we become increasingly aware that different, out of the ordinary rules emerge and take precedence. One example sits in the phrase “less is more”, with its paradoxical so sensible truth effusing out of linguistic non-sense. It is a bit different, not ordinary, but we all get the guidance those two words contain. Similarly, but perhaps with less face value, we get closer to our target of a more expansive mindset with humility than acquiring all the facts from all the myriad sources of information we can muster. Less is more. Humble is greater. Lots of information without heart can be arrogant and perhaps dangerous: less information but the key facts laced with the comprehending heart, leads to wisdom. Big information with big humility, big wisdom.
The more it occurs to us that a million conditions–biological, chemical, social, planetary–in the universe came together to foster the growth of our mind and body; and the more out of our personal control these conditions are, the more humility is called for. All these conditions bring us energy to be active in life–to encounter and ponder thoughts, turn on our laptops, call or text the kids, and to love and be loved. The more we study our countless energy dynamics—somatic, emotional, mental—that, when combined, we call life, the more closely they emerge as hyper-complex mysteries, none of which we formed or created. Yet we depend upon them, little things like breath, free will, becoming parents, and we participate in them. This calls for humility and gratitude—this on-going gift of being human.
Determination to See the Essentials
Going grateful and humble is a way to see ourselves and the to see the world we inhabit. All the practices work on this ability to see everything differently than before. David Brooks, the well-read columnist, writes about his “conversion” to this different way of seeing: “I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything penetrates more deeply into me and does not stop at the place where until now it always used to finish. I have an inner self of which I was ignorant. Everything goes thither now. What happens there I do not know.” Second Mountain, p 198, David Brooks
Seeing deeply is at the root of humility and gratitude. We allow ourselves to see the fundamental essences, not stopping at the peripheral details. This habit of deep looking and seeing leads us to the bigger version of our mental/emotional self. This is a type of seeing we can find, foster, maintain. (More on this in the last practice.)
Weaken the Taking Credit Impulse
We all have the habit of taking some credit for doing things well and, if we are mature, of taking the responsibility for not doing things so well. The combination of taking credit and responsibility is one of the significant dimensions of building character and a personality–from the humble among us who know that a huge factor in doing things well is all the help we received along the way, to the arrogant among us who take no responsibility for errors while claiming authorship for anything that went well.
This practice is about ensuring that we develop
1} a deep fount of gratitude for gifts we have and receive, taking precedence far above any credit we may want to take for expression of those gifts, as unique as they may be to us.
And it is about owning fully
2} ample humility as our natural impulse.
Substantial parts of us wants to control, predict, take credit, look competent, be right. James Hollis puts it this way: “Your ego prefers certainty to uncertainty, predictability over surprise, clarity over ambiguity…(it) always wants to shroud over the barely audible murmurings of the heart.”
What Matters Most, p. 95. James Hollis
Gratitude and humility are murmurings of the heart we must learn to not shroud over. The “ego wants” Hollis mentions are the payoffs and rewards we give ourselves for being smart, on top of it, ahead of the game, large and in charge. The impulse to be in control and to look influential over our life and environment, even if only to ourselves, is strong. These same drives can so easily go too far, not taking on the humility to acknowledge all the dynamics around us we depend upon and all the actions that we did not have to take, and things worked out anyway.
These lesser ego-tainted motivations within us override gratitude, weakening the habit of listening to those important “barely audible” heart murmurs. They keep us from being genuinely thankful for all the things that come together hourly, outside of our will—heart muscles that keep contracting, oxygen in the air that flows into our lungs, or jobs that pop up in the economy, creating the opportunity for successes to display on our Linked In profiles, to name just a few.
In our culture the more facts, the more clever theories and models, the more thought generation in thinking mind, the better. In allowing a more expansive version of us to emerge, the more humility, more openness, more compassion and gratitude in mindful mind, the better. Both have their place. Here we emphasize the latter.
Practice for Going Humble and Grateful
If you already engage in a gratitude practice, surely keep it up. Consider intensifying it and further building your humble and grateful muscles with the following and your own improvements on them, customizing for you.
For Humility
—Make a daily list of some of the things out of your control, all the little and big miraculous things, that allow us to live, to do the work we do—almost anything can be listed here; from baking pies—how is it that the 350 degree temperature cooked those apples just right? –to programming software—how did those digits get on the screen again?—to insects that take their place in this too-complex-to-map food chain.
—Alter your language to humble positioning versus ownership/authorship. Switch from “I did” or what “I think”, to what “we did”, what “I got to help with”, what “I heard said that I can pass on.” [note: much has been written and proved that in gender speak terms at work: men do a lot of natural claiming for themselves, and women less so. Calibrate accordingly to your setting especially if you have gotten feedback that you are too self-effacing]. This practice is not about your social or career brand, but about the practice of getting your mental habits out of the way of humility and gratitude. We are taking another run at too much self-referencing here.
Expect less than the best treatment. Activist, author, Sister Joan Chitister writes that one of the tenets of Benedictine humility is being okay with expecting less than great treatment. Be humble enough to accept good enough. Let’s not get our dander up at less than stellar service and outcomes. We want to do well what we attend to, and receive the same, but we are humble enough to accept less when it happens.
For Gratitude
—Start your day with gratitude. Say to your partner, if you have one, as you get of bed in the morning: “What are three things you are grateful for this morning?”
–If you have no partner right now, say it to yourself and consider finding a gratitude buddy so you can exchange regularly (texting is great for this of course) the little and big things you are grateful for. It is all about forming a habit, the essence of practice.
–Look beyond the appearances of things that our shallow mind can take for granted. Look with a soft gaze of wonder, not the detailed gaze of analysis. This is the David Brooks sense of “going thither” in the quote above. Look for essences and the deeper side of all things—then we can see the miraculous in the everyday. This is a kind of seeing that comprehends. It connects to the core, not stopping at the features on the surface we also appreciate.
This ends practice 5 and section one on getting it started. We are halfway. Next we look at how to keep this kind of awareness going with five more practices.
And here is the introduction to the 10 Practices if you missed it earlier. http://www.evocateurblog.com/2023/09/14/ten-practices-helpful-habits-of-mind-and-heart/
Finally, humility and gratitude are on target practices to lower our worry load. Listen to how Artie Isaac humorously, memorably, poetically, takes on the worry practices that crowd out the better stances we can take. And Juan Alvarez artfully describes how gratitude starts day 1 of our lives. We start with Juan.
Gratitude
excerpted from a guided meditation from Juan Alvarez
The day I came to the world,
the very second I arrived into the world,
I started receiving from someone.
Someone was there,
cleaning me,
making me warm,
making sure that I was okay.
I didn’t have to do anything.
Just because I existed,
just because I was here,
that was enough
for them to give to me,
to start receiving from other people.
I was vulnerable
and unable to sustain life by myself.
Many people took care of me.
They gave me food.
They gave me warmth.
They gave me company.
They gave me comfort.
And I have never, ever stopped
receiving since then.
I can feel the gratitude
for those gifts.
I can feel the sentiment
of gratitude inside of me,
growing, growing.
Scheduling Worry ~ Artie Isaac
I am unusually
unoccupied,
unemployed,
unencumbered
by the usual appointments.
My schedule has become
an endless open house for Worry.
And, because
emotion abhors a vacuum,
Worry rushes in,
fills my awareness,
consumes my heart.
Worry lives rent free,
an ill-behaved squatter
sneezing into the air
touching the doorknobs
without scrubbing hands
before and afterwards.
Eviction notice:
Worry, you are out!
You may visit, Worry,
but you may not live here.
I must practice
social isolation from you.
We must keep our distance,
six feet, please,
and only by appointment.
Don’t worry, Worry.
I will make time for you!
Let’s pencil you in, say,
at two o’clock today,
when I will worry
about the future
about others’ actions
about others’ inactions
about others’ decisions
about others’ self-interest
(and even my own)
about
about
about
until our time for today ends.
Because, at half-past two, Worry,
I will need to move to other work.
You see, after we meet,
I’ve booked the rest of the day
with Appreciation and Gratitude.
I am scheduled to smile
that I have breath
that the sun is shining
that the dog’s tail is wagging.
I know, I know, we won’t be finished
with our worry, Worry.
So, we will schedule more time,
tomorrow.
For now, however, let’s
get you on today’s schedule.
How is two o’clock for you, Worry?
Does two work for you?
(P.S. A friend read this and thought “two o’clock” might mean 2 a.m., rather than 2 p.m. “Worry already has,” says my friend, “a standing 2 a.m. appointment.”)