This exercise must show you the power of authentic praxis is and how difficult it is to translate it to another person through a semantic system (in this case, the English language). If you do this right, you will be shocked that it took so many words to describe – no, to program you to do! – something very, very simple and very rewarding. (Don’t believe anything, but this is not Deepak Chopra BS, so drop the imbecilic comment you are making to yourself. Verify – repeatedly, and to your intuitive satisfaction.) Visualize a person whom you are grateful to or for. One person. Begin with only one and do it right. To get the learning from this, not just the pleasant experience, it is important to pick someone to whom you can be very grateful without much effort. That way the authenticity of your gratitude is not a technical obstacle and does not interfere with the practice itself. Write the selected person a note (the easiest medium to start). Use pen and paper to create it, even if you ultimately send by other means. In that note, do not “say thanks” or “express gratitude”. Instead, make gratitude become manifest. Remember that you are the grateful one, so the gratitude is not what the other person is supposed to feel – it is you. No grammar error there. You are the gratitude. As you write, reach deeply into yourself and find the greatest sense of gratitude that you can feel for that person. Now put that into words. Do not forget that the gratitude is becoming manifest in you, not in the fucking words! This sounds like nonsense, and there is a good reason for that: the dukkha/misfit between the semantic system and the action-decision, the “authenticity” of it. The … Continue reading How to Manifest Authentic Gratitude