Following up from Jennis piece about thankfulness as resistance , Christelle and I watched the above talk by Anthony de Mello on Sunday evening. I picked it, with the subject of freedom, as this resonates so much with us all at the moment in the cycles of abuse and being free.
What I didnt realise as I watched was Anthony was about to share how gratitude is a freeing process. For in the video he describes how we can be free, as we practice gratitude and thankfulness.
Whether its bad previous experiences, good ones, possessions, fears and ambitions, his instruction is very similar.
He says, when youre ready to, look at the thing, as if picking it out from the filing cabinet, look at it, talk to it, and say to it something like ; ‘__________, I learned ______ from that experience, thank you for teaching me, I do not need to keep being reminded of you’
or for an item, what he describes, is very similar to what Maria Kondo was suggesting last year, describe it, and thank it for how it helped, how it did the thing it meant to do, and the memories, but now its time to be gifted to someone else.
Through the process Anthony is suggesting that gratefulness is a process of freedom.
Its not about holding those things, and living in the past, the fears, or nostalgia, neither is it aboiut collecting items or ambitions.
Freedom is a process of gratitude.
We can be free, from the horrors of the past, from the traumas, and be in safe places, with our minds still tormented. Freedom involves us being able to look at it, calmly, and somehow, acknowledge it, and speak to it, taking the power away from it, and to us.
Gratitude as deep freedom.
James Ballantyne 
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