Appreciation for What Is

It's one thing to bear with it all.

It's quite a different energy within us when we are grateful for it all.

As a person who has lived with depression, chronic pain and various health issues for the past 35 years, I have a lot of experience with endurance. I have spent years and years enduring living in a body until I could finally be released. I said 'Yes' to this, but it was a "Yes, I will endure with as much grace, courage and wisdom as I can until I am released from the suffering." It was not an appreciation of the experiences of being a body. There are always pleasures. Even when in pain, the numbing effects of alcohol or drugs can be appreciated. But this numbing is an attempt to get away from an experience that we have chosen to have. We would not be having the experience if we had not chosen to do so.

So, there is a whole other level of 'Yes.'

There is the possibility of appreciation for and gratitude for every single experience that we have ever had in the physical realm within which we make our way.

Yes, what an honour and a pleasure it is for me to experience this, to be this. This every moment being and becoming is a miracle of self-expression and creation.

Physicality itself is the gift of the present moment. It is not 'that which must be borne so that I can do what I came here to do.'

It is more something along the lines of this:

Wow. I get to be here on this amazing planet, part of this amazing collective of human beings, exploring physicality, expressing all of the love that is in my heart here in this world. I get to be this littleness enjoining the limitlessness. I am transforming the littleness, the limited physical world, transforming it with the love that is in my heart. I am the self who stands separate and alone in the world of form and feeling, and also I am the observer of that self. I say yes to every single moment, to every single experience. I appreciate every moment. I am grateful for every experience.

That is the crux of the matter. Appreciation is the essence of the shift from bearing it to something very different. I appreciate the ache in my back, the throb in my feet, the sunlight blinding me as I look westward at day's end.

I appreciate every experience. I appreciate all that is.


When we say 'Yes' to all of the experiences, everything changes, our experience of everything changes, because we shift something deep within us.