NL 4: GRATITUDE

 I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION 

About 4 years ago, I almost lost my life to cancer. Fighting this disease taught me many valuable lessons, changed my values and worldview, built my character, and inspired me to live life to the fullest every single day. Putting into practice all that I have learned has been a great struggle, particularly in regards to experiencing a lasting sense of peace, satiation and contentment. 

These  past months I have juggled my engineering master’s studies, an intense physical training regime, commitments to my spiritual community, various other responsibilities and many work/leisure travels. Even if life was full, exciting, and meaningful, I couldn't feel a deep inner joy and gratitude. Of course, I would feel the emotional high in the moment, but it would rapidly dissipate by itself or by life’s events that weren’t of  great significance. Sometimes I would not even be able to experience fulfillment and joy, as a lurking state of dissatisfaction and frustration dwelled in my heart, crawling up all the walls I had put in place to bury them. Being in the present became a greater challenge as my thoughts would continuously assault me to detach from reality. Past disappointments would ruin the opportunity of the present. Expectations resulted in me taking for granted so many blessings,  and when they went unmet, in irrational frustration. Desire for what I did not have  deprived me from smiling/being grateful for at all that I had. Clinging to the lie that living a romantic story or having more success would satisfy me, only brought me further dissatisfaction. I was so overstimulated by my phone and entertainment that combined with the hurry of my busy life, of the next thing to do,  I prevented myself from paying attention, absorbing and thus truly feeling the intensity and variety of my fervent life. I was living in a misalignment between my actions and values, of  who I wanted to be versus who I was. I was so focused on trying to live the story that my ego had set up  for my life that I was actually missing out on living what had been given to me.  All of this ultimately  left me unable to be truly grateful.

I believe we can all relate to lacking a permeating sense of satisfaction even if we possess a good life. You choose your poison, want for more, thirst for a deep unfulfilled desire, past hurts that haunt us, our bodies become numb... . Whatever it may be, it's important to ask ourselves ‘Why can’t I get no satisfaction?’. Often, lack of contentment or the feeling of general dissatisfaction produces an emotional turbulence that is the root cause of our deconstruction. I have found myself in this situation at times in the past when the love from my spiritual community wasn’t hitting that sweet spot anymore. Hurts and unmet expectations made me frustrated and resentful, pushing me toward diving back into deconstructing my faith.  Therefore, it’s important that before we start the journey of reanalyzing our belief system, we  ensure that our hearts are at peace, full of contentment, ready to tame the emotional storm that will come as we wrestle with hard questions and doubts, which otherwise would only wreak havoc.  

Whether you are preparing yourself to deconstruct in a wise way or generally want to truly appreciate your life, the next pages share one foundation to achieve a state of greater permeating contentment. 

THE FIGHT FOR GRATITUDE

Many factors play against our capacity to experience a sense of peaceful satiating contentment: Physiological + Psychological + Spiritual + Circumstantial + Conductual. In other words, the health of our mind and body, how we perceive the world, the health and strife of our spirit, the events that life throws at us and our lifestyle and moral conduct.  The combination of these with their many facets manifest in various ways but all have one commonality: focus.  Many sages have expressed this concept  with great eloquence and elegance. Our whole experience, being and life, is defined by what we focus on. Indeed, we often focus on the wrong thing too much and for too long, and this stops us from focusing on what we should. To exemplify: we pay attention to hurts and injustices from the past, allowing them to take away more of your life, we overvalue romance and the lack of it induces a sense of lesser meaning or happiness, we are never bored but always on our devices making it impossible for our brains to retain what is occurring in life. For the engineer-types (aka like me),  I modeled these agents against gratitude in the following manner: 

Desire, Expectations and Disappointments. Dwelling on what could have been, should be or what is wished it is. (Stoics + Buddha) 

Overstimulation, Hurry and Comfort: Having an endless to-do list and erratic schedule, being never bored and alone in silence not stimulated by technology, people or events, and numbing yourself with comfort. (Neuroscience + Spiritual Formation + Stoics )

Self centeredness, Selfishness and Self absorption.  Focusing only on our own lives,  engaging with others only for our personal benefit and being entrapped in our minds and emotions that never give way to peace. (Psychology + Christianity)

Akrasia, Counterfeit gods, Spiritual drought. Living in contrast to our values or wrongly organizing our hierarchy of values leaves a vacuum in our existential being that is impossible to quench.  (Christianity + Spiritual Formation) 
[this is more of a bonus, it still has to do with focus, but in a different way]

These are all hard battles to fight. Letting go of our desires, expectations, and disappointments that manifest with deep emotions. Learning to say no to hurry, to the endless to do list and the next thing, and to the overstimulating, numbing comforts of technology and society. Living with integrity, a life to bless others, exiting the ego-narrative, are very difficult challenges. These will always follow us, but winning over them is so rewarding. Don’t expect to always feel that emotional satiation, since sometimes life is very difficult, but on average it really makes a difference.

WINNING THE FIGHT

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love.” - Marcus Aurelius

Practically speaking, it means  a  radical moderation of the usage of technology and entertainment, which are neuro-biologically designed to capture our focus. Prioritizing a slower paced life, with good quality sleep and periodic true rest, moments of silence and solitude, in order to cultivate a deep inner spiritual life, and absorb the beauty of our chaotic life. Practicing disciplines like journaling, prayerful meditation and generous thanksgiving (even for small things, especially for  those close to you; do this often, and mean it, say why and how it made you feel ), give yourself space to fill you with what you already have and help others (receiving thanks is very beneficial to the feeling of gratitude). Find satisfaction in how you react to external things, not in them as you have no power over them. Deconstruct and abandon the narrative that your mind puts forth, that manifests in your desires, expectations and disappointments, which only bring frustration, hurt and take life away.

This is part of what I do, and it has been, as already said, life changing. However, this  list might not mean much to you. So I encourage you to take a look at my next 2 newsletters, which will delve into greater detail and to do your own research and thinking.

I plead with you, as I do with me, to slow down, rest, quiet your thoughts, and pay attention to the abundance of goodness in your life.  Life is too short, precious, fragile but also full of suffering to not be filled with goodness in all its forms, a ray of sunlight, or the love of a friend. Just to be alive, and especially in this peak moment of humanity, is an incredible blessing. Don’t be entrapped in the machine of hurries, distraction, overstimulation and desires of this world, don’t entrench yourself in the walls of your mind, but… ‘Pay attention to what matters and leave the rest’ (Somebody’s shirt in the metro). 

UPDATES

Recently life has been hectic. I’ve done a bad job at keeping myself on track on being less in a hurry as I committed to too many things. I preached and taught in my local congregation and in Zagreb, cooked at a New Year’s retreat for 150 people, went to Paris,  and all of this while I attended class and prepared for my university exams session. Writing this newsletter has not been trivial due to the complexity of the topic and the amount of ground to be covered. So I decided to split it in 3. 

I’ve also realized that I need to lower my standard a little bit as nobody is expecting anything life changing or mind blowing, at least not in this season. I will still try to improve and will. 

Nevertheless, soon enough I will strictly focus on tackling the topic of deconstruction in the following areas:

• Moral integrity and apostasy 

• The problem of perception  

• Nothing new under the sun

In the meantime I wish you all a late happy New Year and 

Love Laugh Live to the Max