Nathalie:
Today we're going to talk about gratitude, one of my favorite subjects actually. Gratitude opens the heart every time we feel it. What is gratitude? You can be grateful for small things but most of the times we feel gratitude of the things that happen in our lives, that overcome us. But the gratitude I want to talk about is something that is inside us. Something that unfolds day by day. Gratitude is the one we feel when we go outside and the first flower we see after the dark winter.
Then we feel the sense of gratitude. It feels like we are alive again. I believe this is what gratitude gives us. That we feel that we are alive. Gratitude for being. For being here. For being alive. So when we, sometimes it's interesting to think for yourself. What I'm grateful, what are you grateful for in your life?
And then first most people, about the things they do, the jobs they have, but in the end when they start thinking more and more about it, it comes closer to home. When they say, when they have a partner, my partner, or my children, or , the pets I have of the place where I live, or the experience I had with this person. Gratitude most of the times has something to do with an experience.
It has less to do with material stuff, of course we can be grateful that we have been born in a certain country, but most people are born in the same country and they're not grateful at all, and they have the same possibilities. But being truly grateful is this feeling that is connected to nothing.
You just feel very grateful, you feel very alive, whereas nothing that you can, attach you to. Then you would come to the core of being grateful. Being grateful to be alive. Being grateful to just see every day again. And these feeling stages are like waves in the body. And when you have a feeling of gratefulness, the heart opens and in a way you start to shine and people are responding on you when you have this grateful within you.
They want to be with you, because they know it and they want to feel it too. So when we start to feel grateful, we don't need other things, we just need to be. So actually we would say being grateful is very easy, but most people find it very hard. Because they have expectations. I need to be a certain person.
I need to have this, I need to have that. Then I will be so grateful, this is what they say. And they start searching for it, every day. And they become upset more and more, because they will not find their feeling of gratitude in, in the things they collect.
Jose:
And is that happening more, you think, in current society?
Nathalie:
There was a time that it was less than it is now, because when we had this crazy thing like a couple of years ago, that we were not allowed to go outside and stuff like that. The interesting thing was that people were more grateful. Not because they were not allowed to go outside, but they had to find true connection with other people.
They needed to find another way. So they found that This was actually the most important thing, if they could not have all those other things they would normally do. So then they found out that the connection with other people, that made them feel grateful for what they have.
Jose:
So in that sense the pandemic was a good thing to happen, according to you?
Nathalie:
Only in that sense. Because it shows what we truly need. What we are made of. We are a community. We live this very individualistic lives, but in the end we always seek for connections. We can be grateful just being by ourselves. But after a while we love being with others. They just keep on saying to me, gratitude is the one that opens the heart, and when the heart opens new things happen.
So gratitude is the door. To a new sense of being. And we feel gratitude when we feel connection with others, and especially with ourselves. When we know where we are coming from and we open up to where we are going. Moving beyond who we think we could be. And then we look back grateful to the ancestors.
To the events in our lives. Because they all brought gifts. And when we start unpacking those gifts, we understand what gratitude really is. Because everything that happened, gave us the possibility to come closer to who we are. And to walk the path of the human you were when you came into this world.
Without ideas. Without patterns. Just who you were you just they love this phrase. They keep on saying gratitude opens the door of the heart And it does So every time when we think of something that what we're grateful for what happened in our lives we start smiling And then the heart unfolds how would it be that you would go out into the world?
With this feeling All the time, with this feeling of gratitude, no matter what happens, you know who you are. You don't know where you're going because the road is open, but you know who you are. You know who you're going to bring to the table, the one that's going to walk the path. And you're just opening up more and more of yourself.
Gratitude opens one door, and behind that there are many doors that can open. One way to get closer to gratitude is to ask yourself, what do I truly need? What is important for me? What makes me smile?
Jose:
What does make you smile?
Nathalie:
Birds. Or when I see my plants in my practice. Or when I'm just sitting outside and observing the world. People being busy and I see them in their thoughts and they're just walking around and others happy and smiling and singing I like to see that. Just observing everyone, the world, what they do. Gratitude can be very small, but sometimes you feel gratitude without anything from the outside world.
When that happens, the heart is open, so to say it happens over night, when you have conquered the demons. That is true, because when you conquer the demons of the night, you stood up to the dark side of yourself actually. And then both sides come together, realizing that not the dark and the light was ever true. And then the heart opens, unfolds, and you feel gratitude for this, I don't never talk about lessons, but for this growth that was made available for you.
By, in a way being brave. And to see. What is. And when you see what is, it stops to exist at all. And then this feeling of relief comes. And happiness follows. In the end it becomes gratitude. I always say happiness , is a feeling of the value in a way because happiness is most of the times connected to the outside world.
In our language, we also have,
Jose: Joy.
Nathalie:
Joy, is a much wider feeling, a much broader feeling actually. And happiness is small in a way. And can leave you in a second. But joy is something that you become totally. So gratitude is something we all long for.
Because gratitude gives hope in our lives. It gives meaning. It gives sense and sensibility, they say. But gratitude is not something you can develop. It's something that will unfold. It is something that will develop. As a consequence of being present. Because we cannot be grateful when we are not here, because then you are just an object of everything that is moving around you.
When you are present, you will start to see how beautiful the plants are growing, for example. How much I enjoy doing these talks with you. But it needs, awareness. This is what it needs. So if you want to be more grateful in your life, you need to be present. You need to be here. And see. And when you start seeing, you will start to enjoy the world much more.
Even if you also see as we say the dark things or the bad things, but you also see the good things and everything in between. It all exists. But we become a puppet when we say, oh this is bad, and this is good, and oh this is normal . Doesn't mean you want to do one of those things, but just see them.
And how much ease you give to yourself when you stop judging what you see. Just observe, just being present, without thinking about it. It makes life so much more calm. And it gives you, the possibility to move around the way you want to be. And the thing of being present is that you hear when something is right or wrong.
Because you're close to yourself, and when you're close to yourself, you just know. And sometimes you cannot say or pinpoint this is not right, but you just sense it, you have this inner knowledge. Gratitude gives you all these gifts. And awareness is the one that brings you closer to it.
Just reminisce for some time, what I am grateful about. And first you will see it is the things in the outside world you're grateful about. But sometimes you just wake up in the morning, and you feel so much joy, you don't know why, but you do. And you feel so grateful to be alive, to be here, they say, and then something happens and you lose it.
I say, most of the times we do. But every time we think about it, we feel it again. So that's why I don't believe in time. When something that made us feel grow, that exploded our heart, and we think of it again, we feel it. You feel it again. It's like you have the same experience. So it is not somewhere behind you, it's all around you in a way.
At moments when you feel bad, not to fix it, but just to know that it's out there. Just to remember what made you smile, makes you smile. Because for the beings who we are. We don't have to see it in front of us. When we think of it, we feel it.
Next time, Jose and I will talk about presence. When we become present, we become aware. And when we become aware, the true gift of life becomes us.