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Freedom from fear comes when we are able to live in the moment. The moment is easy to embrace when we re alone in Nature, enjoying body work, or sharing with someone we love. Most of the time, however, being here now involves keeping our focus in a world full of pressure and confusion. We need to stay open to Life while trying to make a living, get the kids off to school, keep the house clean, and fight the traffic.
It’s important that we remember that our physical, human selves are not the opposite of Spirit, but are Spirit’s expression in the world. Too often, we set our spiritual lives apart from our daily routine. We may meditate, go to meetings and seminars, and read spiritual books, but there is a tendency to overlook many basic things in our daily lives that limit our health, joy, and abundance.
Work performed with the right attitude is worship in action.
Yogi Amrit Desai
In Step Six, we look at the details of our everyday routine so that we can acknowledge whatever may be interfering with our ability to manifest Love. We make the changes necessary to bring our lives into balance and harmony.
The way to show Love to the people around us is relatively clear. We touch them, listen to them, acknowledge their goodness, and respect their needs. But, when it comes to ourselves, the way to best show Love might not be so clear. We often get caught up in immediate gratification without considering the long run, or we seek nurturance in ways that actually harm us. When guests come, we clean the house, create a pleasing atmosphere, prepare a balanced, healthy meal to serve, and do what we can to make them feel honored. But, too often, it’s a different story when dealing with ourselves. We profess self-love, but live in a way that sends an altogether different message. We convince ourselves that the details of daily living aren’t so important. Yet when we ignore them, we deny ourselves something significant. In Step Six, we focus on gratitude. We pay attention to our daily lives, and the result is the experience of gratefulness.
Joy is that extraordinary happiness that is independent of what happens to us. The root of joy is gratefulness.
Brother David Stendl-Rast
Whether in bodywork or in daily life, paying attention to the details, energies, and nuances of what is going on makes all the difference. The wrong music, lighting, or temperature can make it more difficult to fully appreciate the most expertly given massage. In the same way, when things are out of balance in our day-to-day living, it’s hard to realize health, joy, and abundance-even if the doctor has just pronounced us fit, and our lives are filled with blessings.
It’s important to appreciate who we are and that we are. The Earth has supported life for millions of years, during which time countless billions of creatures have come and gone. We cannot begin to calculate the odds that brought together all of the elements that have made us who we are; yet, how often do we take the time to get in touch with the miraculousness of our existence?
Modern life can be very busy, very lonely, or both. There are distractions everywhere, and technology has yielded instant everything, alienating us from the cycles of Nature that grow our food, from the rhythms of the seasons, and from the sense of what goes into making the goods we take for granted. Our minds, conditioned by media images of how we should be and what we should want, are always restless. Too often, the things we do to sustain life-preparing food, bathing, cleaning, and the like are experienced as intrusions that must be handled so we can get on with the important business on our agendas.
If you are fighting on the battlefield, or fighting in the office, or fighting in your home, or fighting in your mind, there is no such thing as being with the Tao.
Deng Ming-Dao
We have lost touch with how out of touch we are. As we frantically search for ourselves in our careers, social lives, and involvements, we lose sight of the soft harmony of simplicity. So intent upon where we are going, we fail to appreciate where we are. We find ourselves gulping down Life as if it were fast food, never stopping to savor, hardly bothering to chew. Like the child who gets a bike when he wanted a pony, we often fail to recognize the abundance that surrounds us.
Life isn’t made meaningful by the momentous occasions that we carry forward in our memories. The simple fact that we exist is a cause for celebration; and if we want to change our actions, the best way to start is by bringing a sense of celebration to our attitude. There is little joy in doing things because we should, or because we fear the consequence if we don’t. We’ve all experienced moments of resolution with little result. That is because attempts to force change bring us into the experience of deprivation and our minds rebel. But, when action arises out of an expanded sense of balance and harmony, rather than an attachment to some distant goal, the grateful Heart opens to embrace what is.
Life is too precious for anything less than Love. When we open our eyes, we see that we are surrounded with miracles. You’ve been down, anxious, not paying attention? It’s okay. No matter how unconscious and unappreciative we have been in the past, we can awaken in an instant. At any moment we can stop, take a deep breath, and become present with the totality that surrounds us. At any moment, we can let go of our striving to get someplace else and be fully where we are-in the midst of an array of sound, color, and sensation.
There is a great difference between striving for what we deem pleasurable and opening our Hearts to the pleasure inherent in every moment. It is the discovery of this deep and inalienable pleasure that transforms anxiety and dissatisfaction into unconditional gratitude-the sort that enables us to change our lives.
Happiness is not what makes us grateful; it is gratefulness that makes us happy.
David Steindl-Rast
Like fear, gratitude is a self-perpetuating cycle. Being grateful deepens our awareness, and as we become increasingly aware, we become more grateful. Instead of being merely a response to something that pleases us, gratitude is a state of consciousness that transforms everything into Wholeness and Love. It makes us mindful of blessings, and when we learn to savor what we have, what we have fills us. The ability to take delight in whatever Life makes available releases us from the persistent grasp of ego’s cravings and aversions. You will be amazed to discover how much energy it takes to sustain all the little demands and bits of resistance that your mind puts out every day. But when gratefulness frees the mind from its relentless requirements and stops placing conditions on our happiness, we discover that the state of health, joy, and abundance is our natural state and is a state of empowerment.
Cultivating an attitude of gratitude is the basis of our Sixth-Step work. Regardless of the specific actions needed to bring our lives into greater balance and harmony, the focus is on doing what we do with an open Heart. If this involves facing some difficult truths, great!
Those insights and what led up to them are the keys to our jail cells. If it involves abandoning French fries and malted milks and making friends with broccoli and alfalfa sprouts, super! What a wonderful opportunity to practice letting go of judgment and opening to the beauty of the moment. If we want to experience more health, joy, and abundance in our lives, certain actions will likely be called for, and gratefulness most definitely makes that easier. However, no matter what we do or don’t do, without gratitude, our lives remain unchanged.
When a friend gives you a special gift, what do you do? You appreciate it. You touch it with tenderness, and you resolve to take very good care of it, because whatever else it might be, it’s a symbol of Love and worth being valued. Life provides us with many such gifts, and we need to appreciate them in the same way. In order to actively manifest health, joy, and abundance, we must live in a state of balance and harmony that honors all the aspects of who we are.
We start with the most basic expression of ourselves- the bodies in which we live. The ideal relationship between body and mind is a partnership. The problem is that mental and emotional conditioning tends to keep us running on automatic pilot. If our minds enjoy smoking, eating junk food, exercising compulsively, or watching lots of television, our bodies are forced to go along for the ride. Decisions as to when we are done eating, when we may sleep, and how we shall relax are often made independently of our physical state.
Stability developed through nourishing daily habits is fertile ground for deepening our spiritual roots.
James Redfield & Carol Adrienne
The Celestine Prophesy, An Experiential Guide
Just as criticism and control put a damper on a child’s ability to express his or her feelings, our bodies respond to the mind’s arrogant demands by shutting down. We lose contact with the inherent wisdom that springs forth when mind and body are in a balanced and harmonious relationship. Our body is a patient friend, but eventually, like any other friend whose gifts are constantly ignored and denigrated, it reacts-with stress, illness, or the refusal to comply with ordinary demands.
In Step Six, we seek to forge a more honest and appreciative Relationship with ourselves. It can take time to soften the conditioning of a lifetime, but we make a commitment to exchange our denial-supporting habits for those that express Love. We stop taking our bodies for granted and start opening our Hearts to the gratitude and respect that such a miraculous gift warrants.
One of the necessary ingredients for making this Twelve-Step process work for us is rigorous self-honesty. The Love that can heal us is not blind, but acutely aware. In order to allow the fear in our lives to be transformed, we must be willing to come out of denial. As we grow spiritually, we come to a point where we can no longer ignore the consequences of our disorganization, poor eating habits, frantic schedule, or whatever it is that creates imbalance. We begin to see these things for what they are-fearful reactions that take us out of the moment and into unconsciousness.
To live leisurely means to take things one by one, to single them out for celebration.
Brother David Steindl-Rast
The mind may, at first, be hesitant to feel the results of its choices, but the willingness to face the truth about our lives is crucial to becoming free. Acute awareness of what unconscious living has done to our lives gives us a strong motivation for change. If we can muster the courage to fully experience the imbalance, we will have an immediate and intense experience of what happens when we take steps to re-establish harmony.
As we intentionally deepen the Relationship between mind and body and consciously cultivate an attitude of gratitude, we notice that all aspects of our lives are interdependent, that what we eat affects our meditation, what we watch on television affects our sleep, whether we get up early or late affects the tone of our day. As we begin to pay grateful attention to the subtleties of the moment, intuition awakens. As we begin to live fully and not just be moved around by our habits and desires, we shift from denial to an awareness of gratefulness.
Take some time now or when you finish reading this chapter to get in touch with your body. Appreciate it and listen to it. Get in the habit of every now and then closing your eyes and fully feeling what is going on within your physical self. Learn to separate the body’s needs from the mind’s desires. Does your body need something different than it’s getting-more fruit, more exercise, more relaxation, more bodywork? In the beginning this process is like checking in-like an occasional phone call to see how a friend is doing. After a while, you will notice that you and your body are in constant communication, and you are far more awake than you were before.
One of the primary ways we abuse our bodies is with what we eat. When it comes to food, it is particularly clear that we cannot trust our minds. There are deeply conditioned likes and dislikes to contend with before we can make conscious, loving choices about the food we consume. We often eat out of a sense of emotional emptiness, rather than physical hunger; we often choose the temporary pleasure of good tasting but unhealthy food over the genuine sense of well-being that comes from a balanced diet. Sometimes a craving for pleasure leads us to over-indulge; sometimes a busy schedule becomes an excuse for ignoring the body’s nutritional needs.
All of us can benefit from eating with increased gratitude and awareness. When we undertake dietary changes with the focus on experiencing a difference in our physical and emotional well-being, we honor ourselves. We learn that what our bodies want is often not what our minds crave and what our minds crave often makes our bodies miserable. By putting diet in the context of exploration and Self-Love rather than deprivation and willpower, we open the door to real and lasting change.
There are many schools of thought regarding diet, and only you can determine what is best for you. The local health food store contains a wealth of information about vegetarianism, macrobiotics, vitamins, minerals, and herbs. Combine a sense of adventure with gentle discipline and experiment! Meanwhile, here are some things to consider:
Be willing to take a long, hard look at the way you have been eating and fully feel the effects of what you do in your body. Decide what changes might be warranted, make them, and, again, pay close attention to the differences this makes.
If mealtime at your house is a rushed affair, slow down and savor the experience. Much over-eating comes from eating so fast that the body does not have time to realize that we are full until we are over-full. Allow yourself to acknowledge your relationship with the food as you prepare it, and honor the Life-force within the food through gratefulness. Light candles, say grace, eat with the intention of nurturing yourself. Let solitary eating be as much a celebration of Love as a special dinner party. After a week or so of healthy eating, notice the changes in your energy level, weight, and sense of physical well-being. After a week or so of conscious eating, notice how loving yourself in this manner affects your ability to stay centered and express Love in other areas of your life.
Every day, we hear more and more about the role that stress plays in our lives, yet as time goes by, Life seems to get more stressful instead of less. While we may not be able to control our boss’s criticalness, our children’s demands, or the uncertainty of our futures, in order to manifest health, joy, and abundance, we must learn to release stress.
Whenever anxiety arises within you, you become an atheist.
Swami Ramakrishna
The first step is to see stress for what it is: a form of fear that is so common a fair number of us are actually addicted to it. Even as we acknowledge its deadliness, many of us wear stress as a badge of honor, demonstrating how industrious and indispensable we are or dramatizing how difficult and heroic our lives are. But, there is no glamour here. Stress is a compulsive contraction against Life’s uncontrollability, coupled with an intense, though often unconscious, need to live up to an image of who we think we should be.
Stress maximizes the negative. In a state of stress, the smallest problem is magnified, until a stubbed toe, a broken dish, or a minor misunderstanding becomes a statement of our worth. We react by preparing for fight or flight, and when neither is possible, our tension level rises. Stress puts us in a state where we sacrifice our ability to make choices. The more out of control we feel, the more stressful Life becomes.
When our lives are full of stress, stress becomes our focus. Everything we do takes on an aura of compulsiveness. There never seems to be enough time. We over-commit, over-spend, and over-react; we are forgetful and misplace things; we lose our tempers, saying and doing things that create more stressful consequences. Stress robs us of the ability to experience the moment in all its splendor, creating a sense of lack, regardless of what we have. Stress makes even our pleasures joyless. Ultimately, stress erodes the body’s ability to stave off disease, leading to physical degeneration and mental illness.
You cannot experience the faintest mood without your heart cells sharing it, and at the same time your lungs, kidneys, stomach and intestines participate in your mental life as fully as your brain does.
Deepak Chopra
Whenever we stuff a feeling, fail to listen to our bodies, say yes when we mean no, project the slightest untruth, ignore our Heart’s intuitive wisdom, or try to avoid the consequences of our thoughts and actions, we generate stress. The only real remedy is to slow down and take responsibility for our lives. Ego operates under the delusion that our thoughts and feelings are merely responses to external conditions, when, in fact, external reality mirrors our deepest beliefs. Stress only seems to be a quality of life. In truth, it is a consequence of our forgetting the Love that is our Reality. Everyone glimpses Love now and again. The objective is to extend our consciousness of Love until we live twenty-four hours a day in a state of maximum health, joy, and abundance.
Letting go of the stress in our lives is a simple matter of treating ourselves with kindness. Listening to our bodies, eating with consciousness, and getting enough sleep and exercise are a beginning. But we need to go further. We need to make a concerted effort to unloose the habitual tightness that is encoded into our bodies, and we need to learn to respond to Life rather than react. This means making time for things like bodywork, meditation, and leisurely baths. It means looking at any addictive patterns we have been using to hide our feelings. We must be willing to hear what is going on with ourselves in the same way we would be willing to listen to a beloved friend.
There is a very interesting mechanism that the universe has to help you make spontaneously correct choices. The mechanism has to do with sensations in your body. Your body experiences two kinds of sensations: one is a sensation of comfort, the other is a sensation of discomfort. At the moment you consciously make a choice, pay attention to your body and ask your body, “If I make this choice, what happens? “If your body sends a message of comfort, that’s the right choice. If your body sends a message of discomfort, then it’s not the appropriate choice.
Deepak Chopra
When we use cigarettes, alcohol, video games, television, work, shopping, or anything else to distract us from our emotional reality, we create stress. Even though we tell ourselves we do these things to relieve stress, that is not the result. The way to Freedom lies in gratitude and awareness, not in compulsiveness. We need to look at any addictive patterns we have developed and do what is necessary to step clear of them.
The same kind of rigorous self-honesty that allows us to easily and joyfully change our eating habits will provide the impetus to let go of our addictions. First we feel it, then we heal it. A lot of the stress in our culture comes from the notion that we should be able to go it alone, that vulnerability and needfullness are aspects of ourselves that should be hidden behind masks of confidence and control. This can lead to huge backlogs of unexamined and unprocessed stuff that we have been pushing down year after year. Dealing with it may require help. If you find yourself in this position, be grateful! That we need one another is an expression of our collective Wholeness. It’s part of being human.
In the natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.
Hippocrates
Benestrophe meetings, Twelve-Step programs, therapists, spiritual teachers, professional body workers, and good friends all provide the kind of atmosphere where we can use honest communication to get in touch with our deeper issues and spring forth into daylight. Letting others into our lives in meaningful ways is a great act of kindness-both to ourselves and to them. When we allow our humanness to blossom, instead of trying to be super- people, we become more, not less.
Look at your addictions, feel fully the numbness, hangovers, or extra 30 pounds you’ve been trying to hide, and commit to take action. But, be gentle with yourself, remembering that the goal here is Self-Love. There are many healthy, wonderful ways in which to be kind to ourselves and any sort of genuine Self-kindness reduces stress. You can start a journal, take a yoga class, allot a certain amount of time each week to reading or walking in Nature. Mostly, you can pay a little more attention to your breathing and just slow down enough to enjoy the moment and treat yourself as you would any other friend.
When a trusting Heart is able to shine its light into a receptive mind, the result is optimism. An optimistic attitude eliminates one of the primary causes of stress: self- condemnation. When we do not allow the memory of past pain to define present situations, we can bounce back from difficulty with a gift of wisdom, rather than a burden of depression.
Optimism adds years to our lives, both by promoting physical health and by returning to us all the moments that would have been lost to worry, resentment, or anxiety. An optimistic approach allows us to see whatever Life brings in the most positive and purposeful light. When every challenge brings the gift of growth, we have less fear, more enthusiasm, and greater energy to create the sort of lives we desire.
One who is always seeking material benefits rarely has his desires satisfied; but to one who does not seek them, they come easily and abundantly. How strange seems the Law!
Swami Paramananda
By learning to live optimistically, we enhance our aliveness. We are able to know Life’s profoundness with out the heaviness. We become more creative and more adventuresome. An optimistic attitude supports us in being honest and gives us the ability to laugh at ourselves. Optimism brings humor to situations that would once have been frustrating or depressing. When we interpret reality from an optimistic point of view, we open the way for Life to reveal the answers we need. Optimism is an expression of Trust in Life-an attitude that gets us out of our heads and into the moment.
The essence of Step Six is learning to use everything as a means to increase gratitude and awareness. As we become more conscious, we become more empowered. When we use the senses as a means of denial and escape, they lock us into the bondage of distraction and addiction. When, instead, we utilize the senses to drink in the moment, they help us to awaken. By learning to live consciously, we transform sensory experience into spiritual experience.
If you hear the singing within yourself, you are hearing God’s voice.
Swami Muktananda
The secret of the abundance we have been chasing our entire lives lies in the simple act of paying attention. Whenever we take something for granted or approach a task mechanically, we deprive ourselves of the gift it holds for us. When we give Life the full measure of our attention, we start to experience the Wholeness for which we yearn.
We can choose fear or Love. As we haul the trash to the curb, we can pay attention the quality of the light, the warmth of the sun or coolness of the breeze, the chirping of birds, or any number of sensations that give rise to gratitude-or, we can focus upon our anger that someone else didn’t do this job, our anxiety that we will be late, or some other expression of resistance. One choice provides an experience of abundance, the other an experience of lack.
Such moment to moment decisions about where we place our focus may seem trivial, but are, in fact, major life choices. More than how we choose to make a living, who we decide to marry, or where we spend our vacation, the way we relate to the moment determines the degree of abundance we experience. When we derive pleasure from whatever circumstance we find ourselves in, we no longer feel the need to control Life in order to be fulfilled.
By going through life as consciously as possible, looking always for reasons to be grateful rather than excuses to judge, we become increasingly centered. As we learn to use our senses to reveal the pleasure inherent in all undertakings, resistance no longer stands between us and what we wish to accomplish. Bodywork and improved eating habits are recommended as starting points, but once we discover that every moment is a gift, there is no limit to what we can do.
When you walk, walk; when you run, run. Above all, don’t wobble.
Zen master
An honest appraisal will get you on your way. How much of your identity is tied up in being needed or successful in someone else’s terms? Do you secretly cherish your stress as a symbol of how important and productive you are? How often do you get a sustained half hour of aerobic exercise? Would you encourage a beloved child to copy your eating habits? Do you keep promising yourself to do things you never seem to get around to? Are messy closets, piles of un-ironed clothes, or overdue thank-you notes nagging at the back of your mind? Do you often say yes, then wish you’d said, no?
How much time do you spend doing the things you truly love? Do you make enough time for friendship? Are you spending too much time at the computer or watching television? Do you consistently buy things you don’t need? How often, in the course of the day, do you stop, breathe deeply, and drink in the sights, sounds, smells, and texture of your experience? How much mental energy do you give to complaining and procrastinating, instead of doing what needs to be done? The answers to these questions will guide you in realigning your life.
In less than an hour, you can make an assessment of your current reality, noting the things about your daily life which could benefit from loving attention. Some of us find we would be happier with a tighter routine, more regular meals, and a commitment to meditate, exercise, or read on a consistent basis. Others recognize that our lives have become overly structured, that we need to clear the decks and allow more time for playing with our kids, connecting with friends, or simply doing nothing.
We glibly talk of nature’s laws But do things have a natural cause? Blackearth becoming yellow crocus Is undiluted hocus-pocus.
Piet Hem
As we focus on the gift of this moment, we affirm that which we would like to bring into our lives. Positive affirmations, consciously constructed, frequently repeated, and invested with the full power of our imaginations are potent tools for reprogramming negative attitudes. When creating an affirmation, it is important to be precise, positive, realistic, and emotionally committed to realizing the reality that is affirmed. Affirmations that reflect an action rather than an ability are easier to visualize, and, therefore, more powerful, especially when we work with them just prior to sleep. I approach each task consciously, joyously, and lovingly, is an example of an affirmation that exemplifies our Sixth-Step work. We can also tailor affirmations to specific situations: I have ample time to complete what I begin, Daily exercise is a joyful expression of Self-Love. or It is easy for me to ask for what I need at all times, are some examples. As we frequently speak, write, and mentally repeat our affirmations, while using our imaginations to enter into their realities as fully as possible, we feel them beginning to work in our lives.
There are no boundaries to our potential. We can create for ourselves whatever sort of life-experience we choose. Whatever qualities reflect our highest ideal, we can become those qualities. Each of the Steps works on us in two ways-by encouraging us to open our Hearts and to train our minds. Our minds are like little children always wanting to run all over the place. We’re used to either indulging them or clamping down and trying to control them. What the Twelve Steps of Benestrophe teach us is that a truly open Heart is like a wise parent who can channel the mind’s wild energy into something useful and productive. When we give our mind the task of paying attention and searching for deeper and deeper truths, it becomes attuned, content, and optimistic.
Feeling out of control has nothing to do with the fact that Life is uncontrollable and everything to do with the state of our most intimate, personal lives. In Step Six, we discover that the sense of control we’ve been clamoring for is ours when we simply shift our focus from striving for what we think we want to being grateful for what we already have.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Helen Keller
Life, itself, is a precious gift. When we wake up to the joy inherent in simply living, gratitude floods our Hearts. Each day becomes a new adventure, each action an expression of Wholeness and Love. When we live consciously, taking each moment as it comes, there is no limit to what we can accomplish. When we have the right attitude, health, joy, and abundance manifest effortlessly in our lives.
Share about a time when you felt grateful for something.
What art forms contribute most to your well-being and health?
Come up with something you could do to simplify your life.
Give an example of something you have done that required discipline.
What type of adventures would you like to have?
What are some ways in which you can manifest health, joy, and abundance in your daily life?
Name something you feel grateful about.
Describe an experience that made you feel grateful for the gift of Life.
Share about a gift you have received that came from the Heart.
What practices or teachings have had an impact on your life?
Share about a trip you’ve taken that has contributed to your spiritual growth.
Share something that happened recently that stimulated your sense of gratitude.
Share an experience where maintaining an optimistic attitude has had a noticeable effect.
Are you as healthy as you know how to be? What could you do in your life to be healthier?
What aspect of your life needs change?
Coming from your own experience, how would you define gratefulness.
Share about how taking the Sixth Step has changed your life.
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