Beyond Performative Gratitude: Entering the Pleasure Essence

Gratitude—it’s a word so many of us use to allow for the grace of our lives to affect us. It’s almost an expected part of the new-age arsenal. It’s something so many people talk about as part of their practice; it’s expected if one is to be ‘spiritual’. So many of us are full of gratitude journals and lists of the things we are genuinely grateful for. I think it was Oprah Winfrey herself who normalized the gratitude practice—implementing it into the mainstream in the 2010s. Yet what I have found in so many of my clients and friends is that one can list the 10,000 things they are grateful for and still feel jilted by the world. There is an authentic difference between naming the things you are grateful for, devising lists, and recording your fortunes, and actually feeling grateful. So many of us write our gratitude lists because we feel like we should, like we owe it to something or someone to acknowledge all our blessings. I remember when I started a gratitude journal—every night before I went to bed, I wrote down all my blessings, all the numerous and benevolent graces of my life that day. It was incredible to witness, but that’s all it was—it was witnessing—it wasn’t feeling. And let’s be honest: so many of us know that a pathway towards more abundance lies in the act of gratitude, so we do it because we should. I know in many ways that is why I did it. It’s hard to speak so simply about such a large and multi-dimensional topic, but in our current capitalist new-age paradigms, we are grateful because we should be, because it’s a tool for getting more, for getting into the abundance frequency.

It was the great mystics of the mystery schools who helped us understand what the true meaning of magic is: when your emotional body, intuitive body, and your thinking mind are in unison—when they are merged. If we are to work with the deepest energetics of gratitude truly, it must be something that we feel all the way deep into our bones. Not something we make into a habit or chore.

There is a deep lesson inside the frequency of gratitude, if we can reach it. If we can surrender to its depths without asking anything from it, it is the pure essence of receptivity. Receptivity is when we open and allow ourselves to be touched and affected. It’s when we allow ourselves to be filled with an energy that is not self-generated. It’s a yielding, a surrender of ego—and if we engage our emotional body and truly allow ourselves to feel deeply into what we are receiving, we lose time and allow ourselves to be nourished on deep and fulfilling levels. You can’t be in a state of gratitude while in a state of wanting. You can’t be hiding a motive inside of yourself while writing out your fortunes—it suffocates all authentic nourishment.

Instead of writing out lists and crafting spells around the myriad of fortunes, I challenge you to sit with one simple thing. The sunshine on your face, a teaspoon of honey, a hot bath, a good cup of coffee. Make it a ritual, make it a moment. Sit with that thing, surrender fully to it. Feel its essence enter into you, feel into every subtle layer of the thing, and allow it to permeate your being. Surrender to its life force, and allow it to deeply affect you, body, mind, and soul. Receive it and feel into the power of its magic. When you engage your emotional body in this exercise, you will have truly entered the realm of receptivity.

It’s so hard for so many of us to be truly receptive. It requires that we let our guards down, and in such a dog-eat-dog world, that can feel terrifying. Many of us don’t know how to be authentically receptive; we talk about it, but we don’t know what it really feels like. Yet, the paradox is that if we can never relish in the authentic bounty of this earth, in its decadence and majesty, we are sending ourselves the message that we aren’t worthy of such things.

Authentic receptivity is a feminine virtue. We yield, we surrender, we open, we allow. We don’t push, we don’t force, we don’t act. Authentic receptivity is the key to self-worth because when we allow ourselves to receive, we deem ourselves worthy of such a thing. We fill our own cup, we relish in the energetics of pleasure. Pleasure is the medicine of the Gods, and it is the paramount feminine virtue. 

Over the holidays, especially Thanksgiving, we are asked to be grateful—it’s performative. Let’s reclaim it, let’s work with it, and make it our own. Let’s truly integrate the spirit–our own spirit into the thing. Instead of numerous lists, take one thing and go so deep into it you lose yourself, you lose time. Meditate on its essence, allow it to penetrate your being, relish in its energy, feel the deep pleasure inside such a thing. Then you will have reached into the deepest core of what gratitude is truly about; an essence of pleasure only you can touch.

TAKE ACTION: Book a clarity call with Chase to see if her vision + clarity could offer you the insight you may have been needing.