Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

I rolled my eyes at people who said they felt gratitude. Until now.

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Google “gratitude” and the articles are damn near infinite.

“Gratitude: How to Change Negative Beliefs, Be Happy, And Become Successful.”

“How to Hack Gratitude”

“8 Ways to Have More Gratitude Every Day”

Part of me wants to roll my eyes. What do these people mean by “gratitude?” Do they actually feel appreciation? Or are they just trying to appear like a good person?

Maybe they’re just guilty for having privilege. A, “I should feel grateful because there are starving kids in Africa,” sort of thing.

But that’s because I’ve never understood what gratitude is—until now.

One of my goals for the rest of the year is to do Tibetan tonglen for five minutes every morning. Tonglen is a “giving and taking” meditation practice. You imagine someone who is suffering and breathe in their pain as dark, polluted air. Then you breathe cool, healing air towards them.

The idea is to develop compassion for ourselves and others. The Zen Buddhist teacher Roshi Joan Halifax says that tonglen “asks us to invite suffering into our being and let it break open the armor of our heart. The tender spaciousness that arises awakens selfless warmth and compassion.”

Tonglen is becoming a doorway to an emotion I’ve been rolling my eyes about for years: gratitude.

This morning I imagined my grand aunt who recently fell and broke her wrist. I felt compassion, sure. I don’t want her to suffer any longer. But I also felt appreciation for the fact that my body is in good shape. That I have my health. That I’m not cooped up alone and hurting during coronavirus.

And it wasn’t an intellectual thing. It wasn’t a should, like, “I should be grateful because I’m healthy and others aren’t.” It was an organic sense of appreciation in my body. My shoulders softened. The center of my chest—dare I say it, my heart—became tender.

As the Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön writes, tonglen “is designed to help ordinary people like ourselves connect with the openness and softness of our hearts.”

For a brief moment, maybe a few seconds, I was in awe of this life that I’ve been given. I was aware—in my bones—that it all could be gone tomorrow.

The thing about gratitude—the heart wrenching thing—is that once you start feeling it, you start feeling it for everything. “Gratitude needs practice,” writes the palliative care social worker Stephen Jenkinson, who has been with hundreds of the dying. “Gratitude for the things that don’t seem to help, that aren’t sought out or welcome—that’s a demanding kind, and it is needed in hard times.”

This morning, I also felt gratitude for my bum knee. I appreciated the parts of my heart that are broken from losing people I love. For a few seconds, I even was grateful for coronavirus giving me the opportunity to slow down and be with myself.

I’ve learned so much from the pain I’ve been through. From the perspective of gratitude, it’s all a gift.

That’s gratitude—even if it makes me want to roll my eyes.

I’m a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. If you’d like to work with me on your meditation practice or being more mindful in your life, reach out.

Download my free ebook on starting and sticking with a meditation practice here.

Stop waiting for everything to get back to ‘normal’

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Close the other browser tabs, put your phone in a drawer, and take a few deep breaths. Ask yourself, silently, internally, “How am I holding back? What am I waiting for?”

Not in the sense of, I should be doing more. With wide open curiosity. In the sense of, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” as the poet Mary Oliver asks.

Part of me is waiting. For things to be just right. For all my work to be done. For the weather to be perfect. For enough money in my savings account. For the lover I’ve always wanted. For the community I’ve so badly needed. For coronavirus to be over so we can get back to “normal.”

Occasionally, I am awoken, and the part of me that’s waiting let’s go. In the dark morning my dad would come to take me fishing. Hank Williams Jr. cassette tapes and the windows down on the way to the river. The smell of the boat engine’s gasoline. Its phosphorescent sheen in the water. Largemouth bass jumping as the sun rises. Life was living through me, as it always is — but I wasn’t stopping it.

Nowadays it’s a friend pointing out a hawk above us. Or a bite of a good meal. Or when I volunteer at the food bank.

And sometimes, even rarer, I wake myself up. I somehow remember to be mindful, to not be so hard on myself when I realize I’ve forgotten to pay attention. To not see my preoccupation as more evidence that I’m sleeping through life. To not hold myself liable — because, what is a “self” anyway?

Stephen Jenkinson, a social worker who has worked for many years in palliative care, says, “You’re not supposed to feel bad about having forgotten. You’re supposed to feel more. That’s the invitation.”

What I hear in that is this: When you realize you’re waiting for something that will never come, don’t pull back even more. Get curious. Step towards the mystery. Stop resisting life because you’re afraid of what comes at the end of it — because that’s coming, whether you resist or not.

In other words, assure that part of you that’s holding back that it’s okay to back off, surrender, let go. Whisper the words of Elizabeth Gilbert in its ear: “You are afraid of surrender because you don’t want to lose control. But you never had control; all you had was anxiety.”

I’m a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. If you’d like to work with me on your meditation practice or being more mindful in your life, reach out.

Download my free ebook on starting and sticking with a meditation practice here.

Photo by Drug Addiction Clinic Vita

Lonely in lockdown? Here’s one powerful way to cope.

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All the meditation I’d done over the years didn’t mean shit. A full day’s work and two glasses of wine didn’t either. I was spending yet another Friday night alone — this time in a steampunk-themed AirBnB apartment in Gainesville, Florida.

I’d been at a conference for communications professionals all day but hadn’t communicated enough, been social enough, made enough friends. I — in my essence — wasn’t enough.

At least that’s what part of me thought. But, at first, I couldn’t see the thoughts as arising from just a part of me. They were all I could see, as real as the retrofuturistic steam engine decorations on the apartment walls. They were a familiar story I’d been telling myself since I was a lonely kid: no one thinks I’m enough.

Until I remembered what I’d been practicing with my therapist. She’d taught me to slow down and get familiar with thoughts. She’d helped me notice stories I’d been telling myself for years about who I am, how I compare to others, how the world works. She’d encouraged me to describe the thoughts as coming from “parts” of me, not all of me. Most powerfully, she’d helped me see my parts as friends, not as signs that I’m some broken, weak, irredeemable freak.

What she’d been teaching me is a form of therapy called Internal Family Systems, known as “IFS.” IFS identifies parts — or subpersonalities — that we developed when we were young. For example, I have a tendency to work almost constantly, to always be checking off my to-do list, a part of me I now call “Striver.” First thing every morning, Striver barks orders from the driver’s seat of my mind: Get to work. You’re lazy. Stop wasting time, you loser. (I wrote at length about Striver in my ebook How to Get Out of Your Head.)

In Gainesville, the part that had taken over I call “Lonely.” Like all parts, Lonely is a younger version of myself that has the rigid, extreme ideas of a child: No one really cares about me. I’m going to die alone. We all die alone.

When Lonely jumps in the driver’s seat, I often get anxious and text a bunch of friends for some sort of connection. I might mindlessly scroll through dating apps. I mostly just feel like shit.

But this time I practiced what my therapist had taught me. I imagined Lonely as a young boy sitting beside me on the couch. I put my arm around him and said internally, “It’s okay. You’re allowed to feel lonely and scared. You’re allowed to feel whatever you feel.” After a few minutes, my shoulders — which had tensed into knots — relaxed. The sounds of Gainesville’s main street bustling outside, rather than confirming my brokenness, put a smile on my face.

I no longer felt alone. Or, I felt alone, but it wasn’t bothering me. It was okay. I was okay. I turned on one of Lonely’s (really, my) favorite shows, Seinfeld, and watched until I fell asleep.

IFS goes beyond simply observing thoughts without judgement, known as “mindfulness.” It helps us “form I-thou relationships with [our] parts, rather than the more detached, I-it relationships that most psychotherapies and many spiritualities foster,” writes Richard Schwartz.

It’s not the only method — there’s cognitive behavioral therapy, reparenting, and more. But IFS is helping me slowly accept all of my parts — all of my messy, imperfect, beautiful humanity — and I couldn’t recommend it enough.

I’m a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. If you’d like to work with me on your meditation practice or being more mindful in your life, reach out.

Download my free ebook on starting and sticking with a meditation practice here.