Filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowosky tells the fable of the man holding two lottery tickets, sitting on a street curb, laughing and crying, at the same time. When asked why he was laughing, he says that he bought two lottery tickets and one of them won him $1 million. When asked why he was crying, he answers because the other didn’t win him anything.
In our final week, it may be no surprise to those of you know me that we end with gratitude. The simple question I’m going to ask is: where have you been ungrateful for capitalism?
In week 1, we met Francis Weller:
The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them… How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair.
What I see in so much anticapitalism talk is that when we only carry grief and rage against capitalism, we bend toward cynicism and despair. I know it’s hard for this people in this group to process, but where can you be grateful for capitalism? Because a lack of acknowledgement for what capitalism has given you is another word for entitlement. As we cover in FF1, the hedonic treadmill is a large reason why it’s so hard to be grateful for anything, we simply become accustomed to the gifts we’ve been given. But gratitude is the practice, because we become accustomed to everything we’ve been given. What could you be grateful to capitalism for?
I’ll give an example, given to me by a teacher years ago: a car. Realize that everything, literally everything, that a car is made of is pulled out of the ground, condensed with unimaginable force, and made into utilitarian beauty that you climb into without a single thought. And when you drive or ride in a car, there are tremendous explosions inside the engine, tremendous violence harnessed and contained, in order to propel you down the road 60 miles an hour. It’s a miracle that you literally could not explain to someone 150 years ago.
Been in a car in the last week? Did you take it for granted?
Take that idea and think about electricity (10 cents a kilowatt hour?), mobile phones, flight, the grocery store, the elimination of childhood diseases, the list goes on ad infinitum.
A hundred years ago, everyone knew someone with polio. It was a disease that stalked every child and struck fear in every parent across the globe. President Theodore Roovevelt came from one of the wealthiest families in the world. That did not make him safe from it. Now, today, do you know anyone with polio?
G.K. Chesterton wrote, “When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or whether you take them with gratitude.” In capitalism, why be grateful? You’ve “earned” it. You deserve it. The word “deserve” comes from French for “worthy of service” (de-serve). There’s that idea of “earning worthiness” again. Paradoxically, capitalism does not want you to feel grateful for it, because if you stopped to be grateful, you might feel like you had enough. Recognize that entitlement and not-worthiness are tied inextricably together.
That opposite of both is grace, recognizing that we’re living in a gift. The ego project, so tied to the capitalism project, tells us “I will only be happy if _____.” Where have you believed, “I will only be happy if ____?” You’ll see that beneath all our unhappiness is this idea. Interestingly, if you stepped off the hedonic treadmill, i.e. the hamster wheel, for a moment and let go of your “not-enoughness,” you might be able to acknowledge what capitalism has given you.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, in Braiding Sweetgrass, wrote, “When we realize we live in a world full of gifts not a world full of stuff the world becomes one of reciprocity and Gratitude.” She was writing about the natural world, but does that not apply to everything? As Richard Rohr says, “everything belongs.” To reject anything means you’re not fully accepting and embracing the world.
DEEPER: Do you think that craving and aversion would disappear if we somehow ended or “fixed” capitalism? The Buddha and all the wisdom teachers were talking about the dissatisfaction and unhappiness of the human condition long before capitalism, as will future sages and spiritual teachers after capitalism. Where is there sufficiency in your life? Where is there surplus? The world is as perfected and wounded as it ever was.
My dear friend Terces Engelhart once asked me “What is the experience committed to having? That is consciousness. That is attention. Where you put your attention creates your experience.” And attention is our most precious resource. Victor Frankl, Holocaust survivor, observed, "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Choosing our experience of the world, including capitalism, is emotional freedom, the thing we’re really talking about.
“Nothing can reveal itself to us which we do not love.” ~ Rudolf Steiner.
Rudolf Steiner said nothing can reveal itself to us which we do not love. When we judge something, we cannot love it; love and judgment are incompatible. Love is a state of unconditional inclusion.
And here’s the thing - our egos are constantly judging. "I’m not good enough, you’re not good enough. something is missing, something is wrong. With me. The world. It doesn’t matter if it’s in or out, it’s judgment.
And the cost is enormous: the cost is your life. It’s our self-judgment that prevents us from connecting to others. Our judgement of others costs us the trust of others, makes them feel unsafe. It chases people away. (Do you, like me, judge people with different political beliefs than you?) Our judgment of the outside world is simply a projection of our judgement of ourselves. And the world cannot reveal itself to us when we are judging it because love and judgment are incompatible.
We judge because our egos want to be in control. But it is an illusion of control. We are never in control.
“If we are too busy to see them, hold them, or play with them, they escape our blessing, and we are bereft of theirs. Our wealth arises from our capacity to bless and be blessed. We are not blessed because we are wealthy; we are wealthy because we take time to bless.” — Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller
What happens on the inside happens on the outside. It’s the only way things happen.
If you are constantly judging capitalism, constantly feeling angry and grief about capitalism, how could you feel enough? If you are constantly complaining, isn’t entitlement part of pathoadolescence? Paradoxically the not-enoughness you feel on the inside comes out on the outside. Even in your attitudes to capitalism. Paradoxically, the not-enoughness you feel about capitalism is part of your feeling of not-enoughness on the inside, that the world is not enough as it is. Warren Buffet said, “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” The lack of sufficiency you feel in the midst of your surplus is a characteristic of capitalism (again, something it wants you to feel, so that you want more). The only solution is recogizing sufficiency, both material and spiritual. You are enough. You have enough.
I’ve started thinking of the Sabbath as the period in the week where we stop judging the world, and by extension ourselves, as bad or wrong or not enough and just exist in kairos, sufficiency, and gratitude. Because you can’t judge in kairos.
What is your deepest longing?
We started week 1 with the question: “what is your deepest longing?” What I’m going to suggest to you is to let it go. Let go of the need for safety. For love. For connection, which is the hardest thing. Let go of even your primary satisfactions. Or hold it, as the Buddhists say, “Not too tight and not too loose.” Realize that there is no need. They are always there without your effort. They are within us and around us all the time. All we have to do is recognize it. Grace.
The longing for what you already have, that’s the most beautiful thing. That you have it, but you long for it as well! The longing creates the experience!
In the end this course has all been about paradox, holding gratitude and grief. Here’s the last one: The longing creates the attention. The treasure is already within us and all our longing does is bring awareness to creating more of it. That’s the secret move.
Once you realize that, there’s nothing left to do, other than to play.
There’s a Hindu belief that Thou art That for which you hunger. You have been given as the light of the world for the life of the world. Your deepest longing is the creation of the thing you most desire. Without the longing, you would not create it in your life, it would not exist. The creation of the thing you most long for comes for your deep, mournful longing for it. It’s gratitude from grief. Is that not beautiful?
Love yourself, in all your longing. Your longing is not lack. It is creation.
Catherine of Siena said, “All the way to heaven is heaven.” So it is with all of primary satisfactions. All the way to connection is connection. All the way to presence is presence. All the way to love is love.
All the way to enoughness is enoughness.
Week 8 Practices
Before you meet with your walk-and-talk partner do these two things
Gratitude exercise for capitalism.
(I know this is hard!) Let’s take a look at that winning lottery ticket you got. Make a list of the money you receive (your paycheck, any passive income or inheritance, alimony payments from your ex, student loans, or gifts from your parents). Recognize that money doesn’t come from solely your effort; there were so many other people involved. All of these are sources of income and opportunities to receive. How did you feel when you had the money in your hands or saw it show up in your bank account? Did you pause, savor it, and give thanks? Did you rush by it, wishing there were more, or barely notice it at all, taking for granted that it would always be there for you?
List how you receive money and think about who you can feel grateful to for it.
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This money you receive helps meet your physical, emotional, and social needs. Think of what this money provides you each month (feel free to add to this list). Each time you paid for something, did you stop and think about how lucky you are to be able to buy it?
Add to this list of things money helps you receive
● Rent/mortgage, food
● Water, electricity, internet, phone
● Clothes, entertainment, travel, education
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The more you sink it what a miracle that you receive any of this, you more you’ll understand grace.
What would Grateful Receiving mean to you? How can you build a more grateful and trusting relationship with capitalism? (I presume you have the grief end covered )
(Exercise courtesy of Luna Jaffe, Wild Money)
2. Gratitude exercise: What is your deepest longing?
Go back to your deepest longing in Week 1. Where is it already present in your life right now? What if you could re-cognize that your deepest longing already exists, that you’ve already created it, out of your deep longing? And all you have to do re-cognize (“to see again”) it? See the paradox of desiring and having are acts of co-creating the beauty your heart wants to see in the world? Without your desire, it would not exist. BAM. Isn’t that a miracle?
3. Bonus gratitude for food
Learn about the word the Japanese say before every meal, “itakimasu.”
Bonus video: Amor fati
Such a pleasure to be with you in these last 8 weeks. I hope you stay in touch.