gratitude

The speaker reflects on the concept of "enough" in a world obsessed with success and validation. Their girlfriend reassures them that they are enough, sparking deep self-reflection and gratitude. They discuss the radical notion of being loved and accepted simply for existing, without needing to prove anything. Embodying gratitude for life itself, they touch on spiritual teachings about eternal existence and the profound beauty of simple existence. The importance of stillness and gratitude is emphasized, highlighting the transformative power of embracing gratitude for life's spontaneous beauty. In a world that's always pushing for more, more success, more proof, more validation, what does enough mean to me? My girlfriend, what a wonderful woman she is, been with her for about 10 years now. She often says to me, you are enough. When she says those words to me, because a lot of times I'll go through, I'll be in a period of doubt or deep self-reflection, vulnerability, and I'm wondering if I'm doing enough for those around me. Am I enough? Am I good enough? All the things, all the fears and doubts, because again, these conversations, what I'm doing here, talking to you, this is just me reflecting on my own experience. I'm just talking. I'm working out my own thoughts and wondering if maybe in the process of doing that, if somebody else can relate to that and gain something from it. What a wonderful thing that would be if I could help others. Anyway, my wonderful partner and girlfriend, Lauren, she'll say to me, you are enough. Man, even just saying that now, I can feel my eyes water because there's something so profound and wonderful in being told that you're enough. Because we strive so hard and we seek to do and to be and to please and to just be told you are enough is a wonderful thing. I'm writing a play and there's a line in my play and it comes from, here's again, Sri Ramakrishna who, you know, we'll get into him later, he is my guru, he is no longer in the body, he left his body, he died in 1886. Anyway, I can't remember now if I came up with this line or if I read it from him, but the idea that we don't need to do anything to earn the love of God and I think he talks about how you don't need to do anything to earn the love of your parents, you know, just being, just existing, imagine for a moment that just the fact that you exist is enough. It's so radical and beautiful and I wish everybody in the whole world could feel at some point, for some moment, that just the fact that they came into this world, they are enough, they don't have to do anything to earn love and acceptance and celebration. Now that may sound naive or woo-woo or whatever it is, but man, let it be. Gratitude possibly entering into the realm of the overused word, but we're not going to allow the fact that a word can be overused, we're not going to allow that to deprive it of its meaning. Language is so important and gratitude is such a wonderful thing to embody. It just opens up a channel of positive emotion and love and joy. Those times that I can enter into a space of gratitude and really truly feel grateful and not be thinking or feeling how can I achieve and what if I this and the doubts about that and am I good enough and all the things that we deal with, when I can just sit and again, I think it really comes down to finding that bridge to stillness. I can sit in that place of stillness, even if it's with others, and feel and experience gratitude for the air that I'm breathing, for the life that I've been given, for the body that I have, for the people who love me, for the people who I love, for existence itself. I sometimes talk about this idea of the good news. Jesus used to talk about the good news and Krishna in the Gita, I think, when he touches on the idea that you are never born and you will never die. I mean, that is just the best news ever when you really kind of understand what it means. Here we are in this lifetime experiencing this incarnation and we'll go from one to another until it's time for us to go home. The only real truth with capital T is that you have never not existed and you will never not exist. I mean, that's just the best news ever. So allowing yourself to embody a place of gratitude, not for your life situation but for life itself, that's a really profound and beautiful distinction that Eckhart Tolle makes. The difference between your life situation and your life, life itself, the spontaneous emerging of life. Wow. I mean, this is why the Buddha could just look at a flower, you know, or hold up a flower as an entire sermon, let's say. I mean, it's just so profound. Might sound silly but there's some real profundity in it because language can only take us so far. So let me just put out into the world that at this moment, right now, sitting at my kitchen table on a chair, recording with nobody else around, I am grateful. Arigatou gozaimashita.