 Hello. Welcome to Living Mosaic, a program of the Spark of Humanity Network. My name is Martha Holden. I'm a member of the Spark of Humanity Network. Living Mosaic, the Spark of Humanity Network, is based on the premise that there is a spark of humanity in each one of us. And as we learn to connect with our spark wherever it is, and through that spark, become acquainted with it, and through that spark, affirm and connect with the spark and others, that changes things. We have a whole website about this. So the Living Mosaic program is an offshoot of that, or a different facet of that, which is a discussion, a conversation around the concept that there is a solution to the world problems, to the horror, to the heartbreak that we all can feel if we're choosing to let ourselves feel it. If we're not choosing to go into denial or despair or anything else we're choosing to go into. And that there is a solution and that it can be viewed as a Living Mosaic in which we are each, each, each a unique and essential component. And we're not the choreographer of the Mosaic. It's the Living Mosaic. We aren't designing it. We are just components. We are unique. Each one distinct, inevitably unique and absolutely essential. It only happens as we participate, as we become our unique selves, and are drawn in to find our place within the living, evolving pattern of the Mosaic. That's what the basic premise of the show is. Today we are talking about, or I'm talking, you can talk, you can call in, you can zoom in. And if you're watching this not at between 2 and 2.30 Eastern time on a Thursday afternoon, you can email our website LivingMosaic2024 at gmail.com with any questions or comments and they'll be responded to in the next show or so. So the topic today is gratitude. Gratitude, I have friends from whom gratitude is a spiritual practice. Every morning before they start their day, they come up with, I don't know the number, there are three or, I don't know how many of them are doing this, three, five, whether they're all in the same group, but they text or communicate with other members of the group three or five or ten things for which they are uniquely grateful today. They can't use the same things they used yesterday. They need to be thinking about gratitude and allowing themselves to feel it and experience it. And they find this very helpful. It's a, you know, life is, I'm going to be profound here, life is so much about our attitude. And at least that's my experience and the experience of these people, that as we change our attitude, our experience changes. So as we approach life with the day, never mind all of life, too big, as we approach the day with a sense of gratitude and wrap up the day with a sense of gratitude. It changes the texture of the day. And we can begin, if we're paying attention, we can begin to notice it and live into that with more gratitude. Oh, this gratitude stuff works. I'm grateful that gratitude works. So where to go from here? One of the things that logically, I think, belongs at the end of the show, but I want to make sure I get it in here, is, so in case I get carried away and forget to mention it, is that it's been found by folks that to approach, there can be a curiosity. What is there in this situation that I have to be grateful for? So being creative in looking for someplace that one can feel maybe genuinely or at least a little grateful, is folks of curiosity and engagement with a part of ourselves that is not what we may be stuck in, which is, isn't this terrible? This always happens to me. Why is this happening now? Why are they doing this? Why can't they do that? How can I, she needs to, and he needs to, and I can't, you know, to get stuck into all those places where we get stuck, the stories that we tell ourselves. To see what is there in this situation that I might find to be grateful for? Some people get very concrete and practical. Well, I slept in a bed under a dry roof last night. I had something to eat this morning. I have clothes to put on. And that's, I think, good to start, I mean, to start wherever we can. What I've found for myself is that looking at the pain of the world, or not just looking at it, allowing myself to feel it and get in touch with, that can with practice, intention may be more than practice, that can flip me into seeking this part of the solution that I am uniquely set to be. How do I become part of the mosaic here? It can fuel my desire. It can fuel my willingness to be changed on the inside and the outside in order to become part of the solution. So that in itself is a gift to get out of the squirrel exercise wheel, or a gerbil, or whatever is exercising itself. Okay, so what's my willingness here? You know, might I do that? How can I see things differently? And that in itself is something to be grateful for that I'm not powerless in the face of this torrent of negative, horror, sad, tragic, ugly. Look what they're doing to those, ah, to get rescued out of that so that I can have a chance, so I'm available to become part of the solution. And that's very helpful to get out of the negative spiral despair thing, to just realizing that it's possible. Another thing is that as the little squib in the email that went out, talked about written by the wonderful Danielle, that we can always, we always have the chance, the opportunity, we have the resources, we have the ability to get in touch with our spark and spend as much time as we need to allowing our awareness and our spark to sort of re-familiarize themselves and rest together in peace. I think of them curling up like a yin and yang or puppies or kittens. And then through that, through that place within us, reaching out to the spark of humanity and people in the situation. And we, to the victims, victims, to the perpetrators, whoever we feel like it, you know, this is a, doing this exercise is, I find it, like any, like a physical exercise, it benefits by using it in practice and it becomes easier. The more we do it, we become more fluent in it so that we can, okay, I'm in distress about this situation. I'm deeply sad. I'm not, I'm not going to allow myself to go into judgment. I'm not going to allow myself to go into analysis to figure out who's wrong, who's to blame here, whose fault is this. Avoid that which is very attractive and like many of us, I'm, you know, I'm as good at it as anybody to go from there to claiming, claiming my agency, claiming my spark, which is agency, it's still actually in a sense it's the only agency I have, claiming my spark by connecting with my spark and through it affirming and connecting with the spark in the situation. And just that I have that resource always available to me is a cause for great gratitude on my part. Because if I could just remember, but you know, God bless neuroplasticity, I'm a great believer in it. The more we think along a line, the more we get sort of grooved, excuse me, nice lights in here, that the mind tends to go there. It's like if there's water on a field of mud, which my mind does often in a field of mud, you know, the channels that are deeper, the water will go where the channels are deeper. So it has to be intentional, at least it did with me at the beginning, to say, oh, yeah, no, I don't want my thoughts to be going there. I don't want to be going to the negativity that's not solving anything. My deciding who's to fault, who's at fault here doesn't really help anything. And the part of me that it satisfies is not a part that I want to encourage or feed or grow. So, you know, we're going to withhold food and attention from that part, the judgemental part, and turn our attention to anything other than that actually. But it's training the brain, you know, connecting with our spark. From our perspective here, that's one of the things we've found really works. So the gratitude that we can do that, that that is always available to us, that no one can ever take that away from us. It's a power, and it is a potent power that each one of us has. Everyone, yes, even you, each one of us has that capacity and has that power. So the more and the more we exercise it, the more habituated it becomes. And so the easier it gets and the deeper it goes and the more we can be grateful for it. I am grateful for times when I remember this. I have been talking about this for certainly many 25-minute segments, thanks to Orca and a number of years. And, you know, there will be a situation, I'll say, why didn't I think of claiming my spark? Or why didn't I suggest to that person who was asking me for advice that why don't they consider, you know, engaging their sparks and using that in the situation? I know we're all works and we're all works in progress. No one, more than anybody else, so there we have it. So that is something that we can always be grateful for. That we are never, if we are hopeless it is because we choose to be. No one else can make us hopeless. There is always ground for gratitude. If we choose to look for it, we have so much choice in our lives, in our minds, in our habits of response, our habituated thoughts. We have to become aware of the choice is a cause for gratitude. That, oh, I am not the victim of my brain. I'm not the victim of the tapes that I received in my childhood. I'm not the victim of years and years and years of seeing things this way and engaging things this way. I am not. I can make the choice to shift my focus. I can make the choice for a positive attitude, for engagement. I can make the choice to be grateful. Anywhere along the line there, that's all stuff to be grateful for. And what, as I think I said earlier, but I'll say it again because it bears repeating, is that the, there's something, I don't understand it, there's so much I don't understand. There's something about the cognitive aura or whatever that feeds on certain things and the idea that when we are grateful, when we bring gratitude to a situation, it allows the situation to be freed up from all the negative habits of thought and to sort of be available to evolve. Or if we want to use that language to be available to grace or luck, it's, our minds are creative slash destructive. They create whether it's positive or negative. It's sort of that way. And so it's by how we are seeing things. So when we are grateful, first of all, we are stopping, we're getting ourselves away from, we're weaning ourselves from the negative thoughts, from the judgments, from that which is sort of tends to freeze. And I do it myself. I had a lovely sort of semi-retreat, spending many, many hours in the backseat of other people's car this past weekend. And I said, being aware of my thoughts and how often they go to, you know, not like judgment bad, bad, necessarily, but in the line of making up a story about what happened, or why this is, or who did this to who, or whatever, just all that sort of wanting to get it in, you know, packed up so I understand it. I have a grip on it. I have gotten my mind around it. And it's the story, and I can maybe paper and grip and surround it and put it on the shelf and I've got that settled. And if anybody asks me or even gets close to asking me, oh, I've got the answer. Here it is. Take it away. And that in itself is sort of glinching up. It's creating a glitch in the free flow, the potential free flow of the thought process, the creative thought process, which can change the whole situation. Sure, quite amazing. And it can. I mean, maybe I should come up with, I mean, remember a story of, I mean, I can't because they happen all over the place. There's a wonderful story from Second World War concentration camp. A couple of Dutch sisters had been taken away to a, I'm not sure that was a death camp, but it was one of the camps. And they were shown into a barrack where there were fleas. And the older sister said, let's be grateful for the fleas. They're crazy. They're driving us crazy. We can't sleep. We have to work all day outdoors in the freezing and, you know, whatever. And, no, we're going to be thankful for the fleas. They were practicing Christians, so they prayed, thank you God for the fleas. And they were able to start a group of get the women together, to pray together, to uplift each other, to develop community, to have a sense of care and being able to take care of each other and making it much easier to support each other. And when it was almost all over, when they were being released at one point, one of the guards said, well, yeah, let you guys be there on your own because of the fleas. You know, we stayed, you know, so being grateful for the fleas, we saw, you know, just saying thank you for the fleas. They, having the fleas there, it turns out it was a really good thing. It saved lives and it made the lives of all of them much easier and more comfortable and more human. So that's the easiest story. You know, even before I was born, that story was. But there are others, and if you think about them, you can just try it. You can just try changing your attitude to be grateful, just to be grateful and to be grateful that we have the capacity to change our attitudes and that we can be grateful for anything if we look at it right with the eyes of potential for gratitude. I like to think of, and we'll be hearing about this the next few sessions, I'm sure. A good idea bears repeating, which is a good thing because as you're learning, I repeat myself a lot, that to see a situation with, oh, it's a little boy, the man walking into town early in the morning, back in the days when people walked to town, and he goes past this big manure pile and a little boy shoveling away at the manure pile. And the man was very impressed with the little boy and the diligence. He comes back in the evening and the little boy is still there shoveling at the manure pile. And the man can't believe it. And he said to the little boy, why are you, it's amazing that you're shoveling at this manure pile all day long. And the little boy says, a pile of manure this big, there must be a pony in here somewhere. So that's, I don't know what happened with the little boy except that we had a good story about him, but that is to see a situation as a potential, to be grateful, to be grateful for the capacity, to be grateful for the freedom to say, okay, this is a big pile of manure. I have the freedom and I can choose to see if I can find the pony in here because I'm sure there's a pony in here. It's like we're given this gift. It may not look like anything we want, but it's got paper, it's got ribbon, so to unwrap it and unpack it, any situation and see where's the gift. There's a gift in here somewhere. And to have that approach is helpful. The freedom to have that approach is something to be grateful for. So I'm going to be quiet and see if nobody else seems to be here physically or electronically, but maybe there's an idea that will come to me. So gratitude is not only a, it's not just one of those dorky, newfangled, new-age spiritual things. Although if you happen to like dorky, new-age, newfangled spiritual things, yeah. It carries a power. And so to practice it however you can, however you're led to, feel free to send us an email at livingmosaic2024 at gmail.com and with an idea about you're having a hard time practicing gratitude or you've tried it and what your experience has been. It's not just an exercise, it's an instrument. And there's a lot of power there, which I think is, I haven't explored the limits of it, but we have a beginning when we realize our freedom, our capacity, our agency I think is the word people use now. We always have agency and that's something to be grateful for. And once we start being grateful with our agency, then we have more to be grateful for. So we continue on. So thank you for joining us and have a blessed until the next time, which is about trouble, I think, in two weeks. Okay, take care.