A Mason's Work

[00:00] Yesterday, we talked about appreciation as being the shallow end of the sort of gratitude
[00:07] continuum.
[00:08] Today, I want to talk about the deep end, and the deep end is different in its entirety
[00:15] from what appreciation is.
[00:17] And I say it's different in its entirety because the texture of it is just something
[00:25] else.
[00:26] We'll get to it in just a second.
[00:27] At the end of last week, we talked about surrendering, that flow state that you enter when you're
[00:36] doing good work, when you stop managing the experience and become a part of it.
[00:42] This is the difference between going to a concert and feeling the music.
[00:50] When you go to a concert, you can attend and be there for what's happening.
[00:57] When you're feeling the music, it moves you in a way that is kind of like they described
[01:05] the force in Star Wars.
[01:06] It obeys your command, but it also influences your actions kind of vibe.
[01:10] When you look at the experience of gratitude that you have, there is this ego stepping back.
[01:23] Self-consciousness kind of drops and fades away, and you're just the work, or you're just the
[01:31] rhythm, or just the groove.
[01:32] Whatever the case may be, you're there fully enmeshed in the present moment.
[01:39] And that type of surrender, as you move through it, naturally transitions to gratitude.
[01:47] You go through this process where that ego dissolution starts to become this awareness
[01:59] that you're part of an understanding or a part of an experience that's happening.
[02:06] And so what does it feel like?
[02:07] You probably have had this already, but I'm going to give you an attempt to describe what
[02:13] it feels like so that if you haven't had it, you kind of know what you're looking for.
[02:21] When you're genuinely present with work and the experience matters, what tends to emerge
[02:27] is this very specific physical sensation.
[02:31] Emotionally, it's like a bittersweet kind of tender, but when we look at it, it's heart-centered
[02:40] in a way that's not like woo-woo heart-centered.
[02:43] It literally has a physical quality to it.
[02:47] You can feel it in your chest.
[02:50] There is, for a lot of people, a full-body kind of sensation, a physical...
[02:56] It's almost a rawness to the experience.
[02:59] It's humbling without being diminishing.
[03:04] It's full in a way that's not...
[03:09] You feel filled with this experience in a way that is oftentimes, for some people, overwhelming.
[03:20] But it's hard to articulate this without making it sound really complicated or really kind of
[03:26] woo-woo.
[03:26] When you get to that experience, though, it is definitely a kind of full and complete enmeshment
[03:35] with the present moment.
[03:38] And that is a surrender gratitude experience.
[03:41] You don't choose to feel it.
[03:44] It kind of arrives as a product, naturally emergent from letting the ego out of the way long enough for you to actually see what's going on and how you fit.
[03:57] I want to be honest about something with this.
[04:01] It feels amazing, but you can't live there, right?
[04:07] It's not a vacation if you live there kind of thing.
[04:10] You may have had that experience yourself.
[04:12] If you try to stay in that space where you're constantly kind of in awe of the present moment and feeling genuinely great gratitude and having that experience, you'll be paralyzed.
[04:28] You won't be able to kind of function or move, right?
[04:32] We talked about it a little bit yesterday about the gap.
[04:36] You need those gaps and we tend to solve those in everyday life.
[04:40] And that tension is what oftentimes moves us from the caves and out into the world to build houses.
[04:46] When we know that this is the case, it means that you have to cultivate a practice that supports both experiences, both that tension of everyday life, as well as the transcendent gratitude experience.
[05:05] When you can create both of those, you become more resilient, more agile, more capable of handling the things that you experience in your everyday life.
[05:18] And as you build your appreciation practice, which we discussed yesterday, and cultivating that noticing, it creates a strong foundation for those gratitude experiences to come to you more often, to emerge more often.
[05:34] And when you start to cultivate this, you'll be able to enter that state of gratitude at will.
[05:41] And that gratitude state is in many ways regenerative.
[05:46] It feels cleansing.
[05:49] So when you're looking to get out of the moment and really begin to appreciate that deeper understanding, you're going to want to cultivate the other stuff we talked about yesterday.
[06:06] Those appreciations, those interoceptive moments where you can kind of build this baseline for gratitude to emerge.
[06:16] For today, I just want you to think about a time where you kind of lost yourself in the present moment and the gratitude that emerged from it.
[06:28] Find that moment.
[06:29] We'll be talking about it just a little bit more over the next couple of episodes.