Imperfectly Grateful
Gratitude and the 9 of Cups
artwork by James Garet, age 7
“I am not perfect, but I am grateful.”
My daughter spoke these words not long ago, and they tucked themselves into my heart.
She surprises me with her tiny seeds of wisdom. At that moment, I sense she's speaking a language of stars, tuned into another frequency. She recognizes that this world has notions of perfection she doesn't fit, and for that, she's grateful.
She’s not the only one with those seeds; we all have them, but we forget the words.
We forget how to speak our mother tongue, the language of constellations and luminous energy.
I had a client say to me last week, “I have the luxury of being me; I may not have a lot of material things, but I do have this, and that is everything.”
Another seed, another blossoming tree, another star reflection.
When I hear soul-speak, it feels like this: Like I just witnessed a bud blooming in my heart.
When I catch those moments, I write them down immediately or take a snapshot so I don’t forget them.
These messages have one big thing in common, the expression of thankfulness, being full of thanks. Gratitude has this effect on our bodies. It takes our shut down, constricted, disguised as empty feeling body and fills it with sensation. Have you ever noticed this? The sensations of appreciation. It has a landscape of texture, tingles, colors, vibrations, images, and sounds.
An Invitation
Take a moment right now, if you have it, to feel the inner sensations that arise when you call in gratitude. Begin to just sense from the inside what happens to your body when you feel grateful for a person, pet, place, object, experience, or event. You can even start smaller if finding something external feels hard.
Start with your body first. Locate one part of you that you have some affection for, like an internal part of you, a functioning, almost ignored part of you.
We all have different bodies and circumstances, so that I won’t dare offer a one-size-fits-all choice here. You pick, but whatever it is, whether it’s feeling grateful for a beating heart, a pretty flower, the warmth of the sun, a falling leaf, a puppy, or a loved one, close your eyes and pay attention to what happens in your body when you say thank you, I appreciate you, I love you, I am grateful for you in my life.
Go ahead, try it for a moment, and then come back so we can continue this journey.
Gratitude Helps us Remember
When I go into a moment of gratitude, I feel my heart warm, I feel a tingling of sensation running through my arms and legs, there is a fullness in my belly, and my jaw softens. My eyes and lips smile from the inside, and my back deepens its connection to the chair. I watch as this energy expresses itself through tears if I stay even longer here with all this full feeling-ness. Every time I let myself drop into gratitude, the window opens so wide that I feel all the air rush in. I feel the sense-sa-tional in the infinite great-full-ness. I want to clarify that feeling grateful is not an uncomplicated blissful journey into ease and happiness; being grateful evokes all the feelings, and it can often activate ache. The action of gratitude welcomes our body to feel, and sometimes that means feeling the sensations of absence, loss, regret, sorrow, and longing. Gratitude can be a more accessible door to walk through, which gradually allows us to feel the expansive emotional condition of being human. Through presencing what we are thankful for, we can momentarily be with what we have lost or what we still long for. Expanding into these sensations can remind us that the web of connection, the heart of life, is ever pulsing in and all around us. This neural changing action truly does rewire our internal condition; it resets the pathways that have been interrupted, the ones that would have us believe we are alone and without.
Gratitude reminds us to stretch beyond the prison of selfhood. When we stop to say thank you, we are stepping outside of ourselves, outside of the trappings of separateness. If we take a closer look at gratitude, being grateful is having appreciation. When we break down appreciation, we see that it means “to understand and recognize the full value and worth of something.” Once again, this action becomes an invitation to curiously investigate what we recognize as valuable and worthy of our attention and love.
Becoming aware, conscious, and connected to the matter of life, living, expression, and potentiality will shift us into gratitude. If we truly take the time to be in relationship with the miraculous nature of creation, we are compelled toward awe and grace. When awe enters our soul, we are reminded that each breath we take is a breath of possibility. When we drop into gratitude, we change the construct of our story, our eyes can see further, and our hands hold softly in their awareness the preciousness of the smallest of beings. We treat each moment as sacred, for it is. We treat each interaction with another as an invitation for nourishment. We treat each awareness as valuable because it reminds us of our interconnectedness. We no longer quickly oscillate to scarcity and longing and rest there; when we embody gratitude daily, our body chooses each time to return here, for here, there is proper rest and an invitation to surrender our conditioned yearnings.
The Nine of Cups
A Tarot Reading from my Soul
In my beautiful GOLD LYRE Tarot deck, the 9 of cups depicts a goddess in human form. She is looking over her shoulder; she remembers; she knows what she has been through and what is behind her, and she is breaking free from the way her body still wears some of this experience under the skin. Around her are nine golden cups; the number 9 symbolizes an entire cycle, the wisdom one attains from completing a journey, and the potential for integration and gratitude for what was and what now is. The cups symbolize feeling, stepping into the waters of sensation and emotion to draw from the intuitive oceans of our existence. From the centeredness of her current position, she is poised to look around and arrive at her present state with curiosity, acceptance, and grace.
There are new possibilities for how her wisdom can shift her existence. Spirit reminds her that she is right where she needs to be, and the waters of creation surround her. She is aware of her privilege to have the space to get quiet enough to invite her soul to speak its dreams. She trusts the moon’s power, for it shines a light on her that awakens her intuitive knowing. She has peace now, something that felt unavailable for so long; she does not take this for granted. She smiles and says, what more is possible now that I can dream, and what actions can I take daily to embody gratitude for all that is?”
May this card and the above reflections remind you that a simple action towards great-full-ness can begin you on a system-changing journey. Be daring as you show up today and look inwards. Dare to speak with grace out loud. To name with appreciation the matter that exists all around you and reminds you that you are a representation of love and you are deeply loved.
I love you and love me…eternally.
