By Steve Ray, HBI Advisory Board Member

Steve Ray is a groupwork facilitator who helps groups learn the art of working well together. In the hundreds of groups Steve has facilitated over 15 years, he believes that people’s ability to connect deeply with each other is often limited by their capacity to act with real kindness. Learn more…

Is this blog title an overreach? From my personal experience with gratitude…no! 😊

Although the title of this blog may sound like a big overreach—the claim that gratitude can literally change our reality and heal the world—I assure you, it’s not. When I reflected on the work of Dr. Robert Holden (psychologist, bestselling author, and founder of The Happiness Project), Jazz legend Miles Davis (1926-1991) and his belief that there were no musical mistakes, and the wisdom of an old Taoist parable about a Chinese farmer and his lost horse, this title spoke to my heart. My own journey with gratitude has been one where the actual world I experience profoundly changes depending on my heart attitude. So, if we can change our individual realities through gratitude then this just might be the missing jigsaw piece to healing the world collectively.

“The miracle of gratitude is that it shifts your perception to such an extent that it changes the world you see.”

– Dr. Robert Holden

I accepted an invitation to experience the world very differently by opening my heart.

It all began about 20 years ago when I attended a Reiki Tummo workshop, a practice which on its surface looks like learning to channel energy for healing purposes. While I had heard of Reiki, this variation was new to me. So, as a scientist by training, my curiosity pulled me to an introductory Reiki Tummo session at a local neighborhood community center, ahead of some workshops that were happening the following weekend. I learned that Reiki Tummo brings together ancient practices that have been fragmented through time—Kundalini energy and Divine/Universal energy. Kundalini energy is the energy center that lies dormant at the base of the spine in every human and is the “tummo” part of the design. Tummo is Tibetan for “inner fire”. The Divine/Universal energy made up of Rei (universal) and ki/chi (energy), interacts with an individual’s kundalini energy, bringing together the macro and the micro energies of our existence and with it, the essence of unity or one-ness. 

I also learned, through personal experience, that this remarkable practice naturally opens and activates our ‘spiritual heart’ or our feeling center. For me, over the many years since first experiencing Reiki Tummo, a deep connection to peace, happiness and Love has slowly emerged. Through this connection, I have come to realize that, somehow, I’m truly a part of unlimited Unconditional Love or Divine energy. Circling back to Dr. Holden’s quote, the world I’m now experiencing is different because I’ve been changed by my heart’s innate connection to Love.

An open heart creates a natural shift in the experience of gratitude.

The opening of my heart center has given me the capacity to be grateful in a way I didn’t know was possible. When deeply connected to my heart, my life feels like a gift and everything in it feels somehow purposeful, even the things that are deeply challenging at times. Somehow, I’ve come to accept these events and situations as ‘facilities’ or opportunities for making conscious choices about what direction I want to go in. When I’m disconnected from my heart, the gratitude evaporates and I’m back in a place of need, wanting something to fill the gap. In this disconnected state, I’m seeing through a lens of lack—what I DON’T have (or perceive I don’t have), instead of what I do have. When I connect with my heart, the reverse happens. The lens of gratitude naturally shifts and expands, and I find myself in a place of abundance. My perception shifts and my reality literally changes depending on my heart attitude.

I am learning to fill the “craving something more” gap with gratitude instead of wants and desires.

That said, this level of gratitude is still fleeting, yet it is becoming a more consistent part of my state of being. Sometimes I revert to my old habits that pull me away from experiencing it, especially when I follow my wants and desires to fill a gap or a lack. I can’t even articulate exactly what this is, other than it’s an underlying state of craving for more. Having discovered my heart and the gratitude that flows when my heart is open, I can now clearly see that our reality is what we make it; it becomes what we perceive to be and consequently what we choose to act on or follow.

Miles Davis didn’t believe in Wrong notes or mistakes—according to him, “there are none.”

Music has always been an important part of my family’s world. So, I found the following story about the legendary Miles Davis and its parallels to Dr. Holden’s work deeply inspiring and beautifully synchronistic.

American Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock, shares the lesson he learned while performing one night in Stuttgart with the iconic Davis, who is remembered as one of the most innovative, influential and acclaimed figures in music history. From the 2018 article entitled, Herbie Hancock Explains the Big Lesson He Learned From Miles Davis: Every Mistake in Music, as in Life, Is an Opportunity:

Making what anyone would reasonably call a mistake in the middle of one of Davis’ solos—hitting a noticeably wrong chord—Hancock reacted as most of us would, with dismay. “Miles paused for a second,” he says, “and then he played some notes that made my chord right… Miles was able to turn something that was wrong into something that was right.” Still, Hancock was so upset, he couldn’t play for about a minute, paralyzed by his own ideas about “right” and “wrong” notes.

“What I realize now is that Miles didn’t hear it as a mistake. He heard it as something that happened. As an event. And so that was part of the reality of what was happening at that moment. And he dealt with it… Since he didn’t hear it as a mistake, he thought it was his responsibility to find something that fit.“

– Herbie Hancock

Hancock drew a musical lesson from the moment, yes, and he also drew a larger life lesson about growth, which requires, he says, “a mind that’s open enough…to be able to experience situations as they are and turn them into medicine…take whatever situation you have and make something constructive happen with it.”

What matters, Davis is quoted as saying, is how we respond to what’s happening around us:

“When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad.” Or, as he put it more simply and non-dualistically, “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.”

Applying Davis’ wisdom to my own life, I now see that I was unconsciously creating a pattern within me defined by fear (mostly manufactured), segmenting the world into “good notes” to be grateful for and “bad notes” to deal with and avoid in the future. I have slowly started to realize that everything I go through, each opportunity to play a “next note”, gives me the choice to spontaneously reinvent my present song. I’m learning to hear the sound of gratitude in every note, whatever it may be.

My reaction to events DIRECTLY reinforces either the positive or the negative.

Following a jazzy improvisational flow like Miles, my “next note” leads me to the old Taoist parable Sāi Wēng Lost His Horse and it basically goes like this:

Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors visited him to commiserate, saying, “We’re so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” To which the farmer simply replied, “Maybe.” 

The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening, everybody came back and said, “Oh, what luck! What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again simply said, “Maybe.”

The following day the man’s son tried to break one of the wild horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors came again and said, “Oh dear, we’re so sorry to hear about your son’s leg. That’s truly unfortunate.” The farmer simply responded, “Maybe.”

The next day an enlistment officer came to the farm looking to draft young men into the army, and upon seeing the boy’s broken leg, he left the farm allowing the boy to stay with his father. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “How lucky you are that you can keep your son! Isn’t that great!” Again, the farmer simply said, “Maybe.”

This is another example of how our interpretations of situations as “good or bad notes ” or “lucky or unlucky events” or “opportunities or disasters” color the way we respond. The stories we tell ourselves shape our reality. There is only what happens and what note we choose to play next. That’s it. And regardless of events, the Taoist farmer through his “maybe” response chooses peace, balance, openness, and receptiveness without an attachment to the story or its outcome.

Heart-centered gratitude contains the gift of redefining our reality.

This doesn’t mean that I now view terrible things as wonderful. Terrible things that happen remain intrinsically terrible. Yet, just like the farmer, I always have agency over how I’m going to react to these events, and THAT’S where the gratitude comes in. The alchemy at play through being grateful shifts my perspective so the story or event itself no longer has a tight grip on me; it no longer defines who I am or dictates how I behave. When I’m connected to my heart, reactivity is transformed into an experience of gratitude. Simply put, gratitude now redefines my reality and I can better choose gratitude, Love, and heart connection over the craving for something “more”.

AND this Is Why I believe that gratitude CAN Truly heal the world.

Heartfelt gratitude is the antidote to a false reality we have created by turning away from our hearts. Dr. Robert Holden’s quote is accurate: gratitude really can shift our perception to such an extent that it not only changes the world we see, but how we experience it. And the wisdom of Miles Davis and the Taoist farmer further illustrate this. How we choose to respond to things, whether they look like “good notes”, “unlucky events” or “maybes” on the surface, directly changes our reality both personally and collectively. And one day, when experiencing heartfelt gratitude becomes our natural attitude, our wants and desires to fill any perceived gaps will cease, and we will finally realize that:

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.”

– Author Unknown