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Cleanliness, Complaining and Creating a Culture of Gratitude

An interesting thing that happens when you are really engaging with the deeper philosophy of yoga. I'm sure it happens for people who pray deeply and study christian scriptures, or have other religious or spiritual practices. Whatever it is you focus on - suddenly you see it everywhere around you. If you start reflecting on, focusing on truthfulness, then you will find that every day some message comes to you about the importance of being truthful, the benefits, the techniques.

This is what is happening to me with cleanliness. Everywhere I look I see some reminder, some new emphasis. It's really gratifying - it's like being fed the very thing you actually need to eat.

Somehow this article came across my computer screen - facebook or otherwise. It's written by a neuroscientist and talks about how complaining rewires your brain to make you complain more. I think this basically true about anything you do or any practice of thought - your brain adapts to make it easier for you to keep doing that thing. It's how we get better at things we do more often. But it can also create subtle barriers to change. And how you think affects perception, decision-making, emotional and physical health. The author even suggests complaining releases cortisol, which can affect your immune system.

So rewiring your neural pathways to make complaining easier has pretty deep consequences for the rest of your life.

I'm just thinking about this right now because the onset of Trump era is going to offer up many opportunities to complain. Even making truthful observations about the world as it will be may rewire the neural pathways to make it harder to see the good. And will definitely have the negative immune system effect.

The author offers a couple of solutions, the most powerful one (for me) being to focus on an attitude of gratitude. This reminds me of the need now to be very intentional about finding things to be grateful for every day. And, again, that cleanliness of mind is a kind of resistance. It is essential for problem-solving and decision-making capacity, for physical health, for finding happiness in the midst of an unstable world in a time of unpredictable change.

I sometimes see people adopt a gratitude practice, on facebook say, where they post daily about something(s) they are grateful for. I going to do some version of that - it may or may not be a public pronouncement, but some way of intentionally noticing and observing gratitude for the world around.

For today, I'm grateful for all the people who encouraged me and inspired me to write this blog. It's helping me already.

With love, solidarity, and gratitude for everything I have been given.


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