Authentic Gratitude

Dear Deep Living Lab Community,

As we enter the holiday season, I’d like to share a brief excerpt from my unpublished and upcoming book where I’ll be introducing the EnneaCrossings™:

Then, I invite you to join me in the heart-centered practice to integrate these themes of gratitude and generosity. 

May our individual and communal hearts be available to humbly acknowledge the many sources of unknown sacrifices, unsung contributions and unseen guidance that allow us to meet today with grace and kindness.  May our depth of gratitude and generosity of spirit flow to where it is most needed.

Love,

Roxanne

“Gratitude [and] generosity … are intertwining attitudes that are connectors to the realm of higher consciousness, to the Infinite.  They are entryways into non-dual consciousness.

By living with an embodied attitude of gratitude, we recognize that everything in life is a teaching on receptivity and acceptance of reality.  Oriented to our wholeness, the experience of gratitude is not relegated to just the experiences or situations that we prefer, but to all of life.  It invites us to recognize that we are the flow of life itself, which comes with a vast range of experiences, some of which our ego likes and some it would prefer to reject or avoid…

Generosity is a basic law of nature. As an example, trees provide nourishment and shelter for birds, insects and some small animals.  When they shed leaves, nutrients are given to the soil. The enriched soil provides an environment for more seeds to germinate and flourish. A felled tree offers other living creatures with life-giving sustenance through its decay. A reciprocity of nature’s generosity through the cycles of life and death are worthy teachers...

Gratitude and generosity are intricately threaded together. We can imagine them embedded in an infinity symbol, with one loop of the symbol representing the receptivity of kindness and compassion inflowing into you, being graciously received and appreciated in your heart.  The unending loop releases its generosity into another… Here, the connection with another being is heightened, and with it, the power to obliterate the experience of separation.  Our hearts know one another.“

Excerpt from Roxanne’s upcoming book introducing the EnneaCrossings™

Listening with Your Heart: A Practice for this Holiday Season

Make contact with Nature, bringing your curiosity and heart to this active engagement of just being with the focus you choose. Should you select (for example): 

• A rock or stone—reflect on what it took to form that rock, perhaps intense and fiery heat that led to molten lava, or massive shifts from deep in the earth to create differentiated layers of rock over the eons. Perhaps it rose from an ancient sea. Might there be some ancient animal DNA in that rock? What elements of the rock do you share in your body? 

• A tree—reflect on that tree standing in this place, having met and survived untold winds, rains, drought, extreme temperatures. Consider the life of the tree with its internal capillary system, and giving shelter to animals or insects. Perhaps the tree provides shelter from intense sun. It absorbs CO2. It knows about the cycle of life and death. What is unique about this particularly tree? What elements of this tree’s life do you share in your body? In what ways are you connected? 

However you engage with nature, bring your focused attention, curiosity and heart to an exploration of your relationship to this aspect of nature. 

Nature knows life and death, including the natural cycles that just are, and those external forces that hasten the destruction of life. Invite yourself to be with, to allow whatever shows up for you. Let thoughts drop away. 

Notice how your heart is affected during this experience.