My Thanksgiving is Spiritual Prozac (now and in the future)

It always has been, but for over a decade Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday for an additional reason, the spiritual Prozac of gratitude.  

The connection between gratitude and happiness has been talked about and studied for years.  Researchers at Harvard University fairly recently proved once again that a daily gratitude practice enhances people's perception of happiness.  They specifically found that the gratitude practice yielded much more happiness if the person either wrote down what they were grateful or told someone else what they were grateful for.  Just thinking about it in their heads was much less impactful.

About 13 years ago, I entered a new level of willingness to change my thinking and change my life.   A mentor at that time suggested that I write down 20 things every day that I am grateful for.  That seemed a tall order.  20?  Couldn't it be five or ten? She said 20 so I did 20.  It got worse.  She said it needed to be 20 things that happened THAT day and were specific to that day.  Like not every day "I'm grateful for my health, my husband my kids," oh no that was too easy.  It was supposed to be like "I'm grateful for the surge of energy I felt as I lifted in my arms in the warrior pose in my yoga class, how my husband took the compost out today, that my son texted me something that acknowledged that he existed"--like that.

They say it takes 30-40 consecutive days of doing anything to establish a habit.  Sure enough, within 2 months of writing 20 things a day that I am grateful for, I was hooked.  Gratitude practice is now at the level of teeth-brushing in my life.  I just do it.  No thought goes into planning where or when or how.  I do it every night right before I switch over to reading 3 pages of the book on my nightstand and falling asleep.

Over time, I've noticed some key things about this practice:
1)  In order to rattle off 20 things in short order (it takes me about 2 minutes max), I have to pay attention all day to what is going right, rather than what is going wrong.  This is probably the single biggest gift of this practice and the 20 unique things part.  All day long I'm looking for that beautiful tree, the kindness of strangers, the tiny miracles of life.  I have a MUCH better day as a result.

2) This practice helps me get a good night's sleep.

3) Even if I felt like I had a sucky day and couldn't find much to be grateful for, this practice works.  When there's something "bad" that is preoccupying me, I sit there and mine it for gratitude.  If I'm sick, what can I be grateful for about being sick (I have health insurance, I don't have to go work, I have a warm house)?  If I have a flat tire, I can be grateful that I had a car, that I had AAA, that I had a cell phone, that I'm safe.  If I had a conflict with a family member, what do I love about them? (sometimes I have to fake like 15 things I'm grateful for about a family member before I feel a shift but suddenly at #16 I actually feel grateful).

The linchpin of the type of affirmative prayer we do at the Centers for Spiritual Living is gratitude.  Dr. Joe Dispenza says that "emotional signature of gratitude means the event has already occurred."  This means that when we shift our body's vibration to gratitude it is an attractive force that brings to us what we want.

Revs. Melissa Phillippe and Z Egloff created a nightly practice they call "the Magic Five" where in addition to being grateful for what has already manifested, they are grateful for five things that they want to bring into their life in the future.  They say those gratitudes as if the thing they want is already here.

Here are five the things I'm grateful for today:

• That I'm physically able today to cook a thanksgiving feast for my family (the past 2 years I wasn't)
• That it rained in Sacramento yesterday and washed away the smoke
• That our meditation garden was finally planted yesterday, JUST before the rains came
• That our daughter Emily is home for the holiday for the first time in 5 years (she has been on the east coast at college and now lives in California)
• That my mother is safe, alive and reasonably happy

And here are five things that I don't see yet, but I am grateful for their occurrence in the future:

• That we have a president of the United States who is competent and respects all people
• That I can go all the way back in the camel and fix-firm postures in Bikram Yoga
• That I am handsomely paid for spiritual work
• That I have written a book I am proud of
• That I see all people as whole, perfect and complete and heroes on their own journey

Happy Thanksgiving, Y'all--what are you grateful for (now and in the future)?

Top Ten Reasons that I Meditate (or Why the Hell is Everyone Always Talking about Meditation?)

If you live in my part of the world, Northern California, you can't spit without hitting a meditation cushion.  Everywhere around us is yoga, meditation retreats, ashrams, you name it.  So before we really get in depth into any of the meditations I mentioned yesterday in my post on my favorite meditation practices, it might make sense to take a step back and I can share with you the top 10 reasons that I meditate:

1. On the days I meditate, I feel happier than on the days I don't
2. On the days I meditate, I experience more energy than on the days I don't
3. On the days I meditate, I am less likely to get frustrated than on the days I don't
4. On the days I meditate, I eat better than on the days I don't
5. On the days I meditate, I feel like I have more time than on the days I don't
6. On the days I meditate, I am kinder to others than on the days I don't
7. On the days I meditate, I don't believe my negative thoughts as much as I do on the days I don't
8. On the days I meditate, I pay more attention to the present moment than on the days I don't
9. On the days I meditate, I feel more grateful for my life than on the days I don't
10. On the days I meditate, I worry less about the state of the world than on the days I don't

Shout out to the 5 types of people reading this post (I say "types" but frankly there are only about 5 people period, a girl can dream):

• People who already meditate and are open to new suggestions about techniques or practices they haven't tried
• People who already meditate and are not open to new suggestions
• People who have been meaning to meditate for about 20 years and just haven't gotten around to it yet and maybe this will help
• People who aren't the slightest bit interested in meditation but do for some reason sometimes read what I write
• And, finally, my target audience today: people who have always kinda wondered what all the fuss is about with meditation and are willing to read what I have to say.

My Favorite Meditation Practices That I've Done Over the Years

Hi--I started meditating for real about thirteen years ago.  Over these years, I have periodically switched practices.  Each meditation practice has brought something beautiful and rich to my life and I often am very sad, like when I've reached the end of a great novel, when I am shown to move to the next one.  Today I'm just going to list the meditation practices that I can remember I've tried over the years.  Then I'll cycle back and write a bit about each one, what I liked, what didn't like, what I learned, why I stopped doing it.  As I write, I'll come back and link to the posts on those practices.  I would LOVE to hear from you: what are your favorites that are or are not listed here?

• Chanting Om Namah Shivaya with a beautiful recording 15 minutes a day
• Zazen--sitting silently for 20-40 minutes a day doing Zen Breathing--perfectly still
• Tonglen Buddhist breath and meditation practice--breathing in pain, darkness, breathing out light
• Running Energy--Berkeley Psychic Institute grounding and running energy process
• 40 Day Prosperity Plan-- from John Randolph Price Abundance Book
• Meditation series from Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence by Deepak Chopra
• Tuning Into New Potentials -- Dr. Joe Dispenza recording
• Morning and Evening Meditations -- Dr. Joe Dispenza recording
• Advanced Sunday Meditation on Pineal Gland--Dr. Joe Dispenza Meditation
• Almost every one of Oprah and Deepak's 21 Day Series including: Energy of Attraction, Desire & Destiny, Shedding the Weight, Making Every  Moment Matter, Hope in Uncertain Times, Creating Peace from the Inside Out, Become What You Believe, Manifesting Grace Through Gratitude, Getting Unstuck, Manifesting True Success, Finding Your Flow, Expanding Your Happiness, Perfect Health, Miraculous Relationships, Energize Your Life
• Chanting Asatoma Sad Gamaya 106 times a day with guidance from Dr. Edward Viljoen
• Chanting There's Only One Life, That Life is God's Life, That Life is Perfect, That Life is My Life Now 100 times a day

I'm sure there must be more practices that I've done -- these are the ones that I'm recalling right now.  I'll add to this list as I go along.  Again, I'd love to hear from you! 

Here's a Concept: Don't Interfere with Investigations of Your Administration

"The most underrated president in American history," Ulysses S Grant* had multiple scandals and investigations into aspects of his administration during his 8 years (1869-1877) in office.  The thing is, he let them be.  Without benefit of any legal guidance, special prosecutor statutes or really precedence, Grant insisted that respected, independent judges and legal teams root out corruption in several huge scandals involving the oversight of Indian trading posts, the postmasters' offices around the country EVEN when the investigations began to close in on his closest aids, his brother and his own son.  Private correspondence shows that he was emotionally devastated by the charges and the possibility of having been betrayed by the people closest to him.  He was fiercely loyal and clung to the possibility that all the charges were wrong but because he believed so fiercely in their innocence (and because he was not complicit--made abundant clear in his and his closest aids' private correspondence), he believed no harm could come of an investigation.  He had nothing to hide, so believed that an investigation could only bring truth and that truth was what was needed.  Unfortunately for Grant and his legacy, the truth was that his brother, his son and some of his closest aids betrayed him and were running a huge pay to play corruption scheme out of the White House and THEY sought to undermine the investigation by leaking to targets when federal inspectors were coming so that they could destroy evidence.  

Yet Grant's administration presided over the only period in American history prior to the 1970s when black men in the south were allowed to vote, win elected office as Governors, state legislators and congressmen, live how they pleased, and be federal judges.  He eradicated the first generation of the KKK for years.  He kept peace, no wars, for all eight years of his presidency.

*If there were more than six readers of my blog, certainly someone would be complaining right now about the multiplicity of posts about Ulysses S Grant (shout out to my man Mark in San Diego who is the only person on earth that I'm certain reads every post--watch him miss this one).  But hey, I'm mining this bio for all its worth.  (For more on my inadvertent series based on Ron Chernow's Grant see: We've never been more divided, really? part 3,  We've Never Been More Divided, really? Part 2, We've never been more divided, really? Part 1)

"We've never been more divided," really? part 3

As we closely watch the states of Florida, Georgia and Arizona to see if every vote is fairly counted, I am still mining Ron Chernow’s 1000 page biography of Ulysses S Grant for insight into our time.  I’ve written a couple of times about how we’ve never been more divided—here's another example of that, a time when both political parties claimed to have won the states of Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina and how the president crafted a compromise to settle the dispute.

In 1876 the election to choose Grant’s successor was the first election post Civil War where the US Army wasn’t guaranteeing the safety of recently freed men to vote in the south.  The southern governors, who were still by and large Republicans elected with strong black participation, begged for military help in the elections but by then there was a law that required the governors to prove that there was no other option first.  By the time some of the governors were able to prove it, much violence and intimidation of black voters had taken place.   Intimidation, threats and outright mob killings and dismemberment (leaving black men’s bodies rotting the public square was a common campaign “tactic”).  

At the end of the election, both the Democratic and the Republican parties claimed to have won control of the legislatures of Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida.  These “dual” legislatures each cast their electoral votes (remember that the allocation of electoral votes were decided by the legislatures not the voters directly in those days) for their respective candidates:  Democrats chose their nominee Samuel J. Tilden, Republicans chose their nominee Rutherford B. Hayes. The election was so close that the electoral votes of these three states would be enough to swing the presidential election one way or the other.  It was left to President Grant in the waning days of his presidency to create a solution to this problem that appeared fair enough to not spark another civil war. 

To solve it, Grant asked the Congress to send him a bill creating a bipartisan commission composed of seven august well-respected members, albeit four Republican and three Democratic, to decide the outcome of the presidential election.  In what became known as "the compromise of 1877," the commission chose Hayes with a trade-off that effectively spelled the end of Reconstruction and set the terms to allow disenfranchisement of black voters in the south for roughly another 100 years.  

At the end of his life, Grant counted this moment as his biggest failure as president.  He considered that the short-term retention of the presidency for Republicans in no way off-set what he saw as a restoration of a shadow version of slavery: permanent legalized segregation and disenfranchisement.   For him, this meant that the millions of soldiers he personally put in harms way as the commander of the Union Army, had died in vain.

All of this history of course simply underscores the importance of free and fair elections in our time.  As the New York Times  reported yesterday about Andrew Gillum, the Democratic candidate for Governor in Florida whose race is currently under recount, “'Voter disenfranchisement doesn’t just show up when you put dogs on people or water hoses, or block entrances, that’s not the only form of voter disenfranchise-ment,'” Mr. Gillum said at St. John [Missionary Baptist Church], citing reports that some voters were turned away from polling sites because of discrepancies with their signatures on identification cards."  The same article went on to say:

Mr. Gillum has raised his own claims of voting disparities. He cited a report that a handful of voters in Bay County, a predominantly white Gulf Coast area ravaged by Hurricane Michael last month, were allowed to cast votes by email or fax while voters in more diverse counties on Florida’s densely populated East coast were screened more rigorously.
“In Bay County they were accepting votes by email,” he told his audience in Boynton Beach — 12 miles south of the president’s golf resort and Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago. “That was a deeply red county, a county I competed for even though I knew it was a deeply Republican area. But they want to question a man or a woman around here who stood 30 or 45 minutes or an hour in line?”

Let us pray and know that we learn from and improve on our past history and let the election results accurately reflect every vote cast. 

Gladness and Sadness in my Heart today at the Election Results

I awaken this morning with joy at the huge voter turnout across the country.  No matter the result, large participation in our democracy is important and reflects an increased consciousness of our connection and values each individual's ability to make a difference.  I am also gratified that so many people report that they cast their votes for dignity, respect, and civility yesterday.  It is reflected in the results in the House of Representatives where many candidates who supported hateful actions or tolerated hateful discourse were defeated at the polls.

Additionally, female candidates won hugely yesterday.  For the first time in history over 100 women (about 30 of them newly elected, and many of them young) will be sworn in as members of Congress next January.  It is wonderful to see such energy and enthusiasm and the great number of new faces and voices in the election.

Yet, I am also deeply sad today that candidates for governor in Georgia, Florida and elsewhere who advocated hate, tolerated or encouraged blatantly racist advertising and messaging against their African-American opponents and actively worked to suppress voting appear to have won in those states.  

Although at the time of this writing, strong candidate Stacey Abrams (D) has yet to concede.  Her opponent Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R) has garnered some 60,000 votes more than her.  I can only pray that every single vote is fairly counted and accounted in that state.   

Most indications are that Kemp, on the ballot for governor of Georgia, used his position as Secretary of State to make it harder for groups who historically vote for Democrats to cast their ballots Tuesday.  We must do a much better job of ensuring that Secretaries of State across the country are committed to fair elections and pass laws that make such naked conflicts of interest less likely in the future.  

However, it must be noted that Laura Kelly (D), a long time state legislator, is projected to have defeated Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) for governor of Kansas.  Kobach also used hateful speech and tactics to suppress voting and it doesn't seem to have worked.

Again, I ask the universe to show us:  How does it get much much better than this?  What else is possible?