Surrender-Gratitude

Moving from the "shallow end" of appreciation, we explore the "deep end": Surrender Gratitude. This is a profound, heart-centered experience that emerges when the ego steps back and we become fully enmeshed in the present moment.

Key Highlights:

• The Flow Connection: How the "surrender" of a flow state naturally transitions into a state of gratitude.
• Physical Sensation: Describing the bittersweet, humbling, and sometimes overwhelming "rawness" of a true gratitude experience.
• The Necessity of the Gap: Why we can't "live" in a state of constant awe, and how the tension of everyday life moves us to build and create.
• Regenerative Power: How building an appreciation baseline allows you to enter this restorative state more frequently.
• Today’s Challenge: Reflect on a time when you lost yourself in the moment and remember the gratitude that emerged from it.

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ Thanks to our monthly supporters

• Tim Dedman
• Jorge

Creators and Guests

Host

Brian Mattocks

Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

[00:00] Yesterday, we talked about appreciation as being the shallow end of the sort of gratitude
[00:07] continuum.
[00:08] Today, I want to talk about the deep end, and the deep end is different in its entirety
[00:15] from what appreciation is.
[00:17] And I say it's different in its entirety because the texture of it is just something
[00:25] else.
[00:26] We'll get to it in just a second.
[00:27] At the end of last week, we talked about surrendering, that flow state that you enter when you're
[00:36] doing good work, when you stop managing the experience and become a part of it.
[00:42] This is the difference between going to a concert and feeling the music.
[00:50] When you go to a concert, you can attend and be there for what's happening.
[00:57] When you're feeling the music, it moves you in a way that is kind of like they described
[01:05] the force in Star Wars.
[01:06] It obeys your command, but it also influences your actions kind of vibe.
[01:10] When you look at the experience of gratitude that you have, there is this ego stepping back.
[01:23] Self-consciousness kind of drops and fades away, and you're just the work, or you're just the
[01:31] rhythm, or just the groove.
[01:32] Whatever the case may be, you're there fully enmeshed in the present moment.
[01:39] And that type of surrender, as you move through it, naturally transitions to gratitude.
[01:47] You go through this process where that ego dissolution starts to become this awareness
[01:59] that you're part of an understanding or a part of an experience that's happening.
[02:06] And so what does it feel like?
[02:07] You probably have had this already, but I'm going to give you an attempt to describe what
[02:13] it feels like so that if you haven't had it, you kind of know what you're looking for.
[02:21] When you're genuinely present with work and the experience matters, what tends to emerge
[02:27] is this very specific physical sensation.
[02:31] Emotionally, it's like a bittersweet kind of tender, but when we look at it, it's heart-centered
[02:40] in a way that's not like woo-woo heart-centered.
[02:43] It literally has a physical quality to it.
[02:47] You can feel it in your chest.
[02:50] There is, for a lot of people, a full-body kind of sensation, a physical...
[02:56] It's almost a rawness to the experience.
[02:59] It's humbling without being diminishing.
[03:04] It's full in a way that's not...
[03:09] You feel filled with this experience in a way that is oftentimes, for some people, overwhelming.
[03:20] But it's hard to articulate this without making it sound really complicated or really kind of
[03:26] woo-woo.
[03:26] When you get to that experience, though, it is definitely a kind of full and complete enmeshment
[03:35] with the present moment.
[03:38] And that is a surrender gratitude experience.
[03:41] You don't choose to feel it.
[03:44] It kind of arrives as a product, naturally emergent from letting the ego out of the way long enough for you to actually see what's going on and how you fit.
[03:57] I want to be honest about something with this.
[04:01] It feels amazing, but you can't live there, right?
[04:07] It's not a vacation if you live there kind of thing.
[04:10] You may have had that experience yourself.
[04:12] If you try to stay in that space where you're constantly kind of in awe of the present moment and feeling genuinely great gratitude and having that experience, you'll be paralyzed.
[04:28] You won't be able to kind of function or move, right?
[04:32] We talked about it a little bit yesterday about the gap.
[04:36] You need those gaps and we tend to solve those in everyday life.
[04:40] And that tension is what oftentimes moves us from the caves and out into the world to build houses.
[04:46] When we know that this is the case, it means that you have to cultivate a practice that supports both experiences, both that tension of everyday life, as well as the transcendent gratitude experience.
[05:05] When you can create both of those, you become more resilient, more agile, more capable of handling the things that you experience in your everyday life.
[05:18] And as you build your appreciation practice, which we discussed yesterday, and cultivating that noticing, it creates a strong foundation for those gratitude experiences to come to you more often, to emerge more often.
[05:34] And when you start to cultivate this, you'll be able to enter that state of gratitude at will.
[05:41] And that gratitude state is in many ways regenerative.
[05:46] It feels cleansing.
[05:49] So when you're looking to get out of the moment and really begin to appreciate that deeper understanding, you're going to want to cultivate the other stuff we talked about yesterday.
[06:06] Those appreciations, those interoceptive moments where you can kind of build this baseline for gratitude to emerge.
[06:16] For today, I just want you to think about a time where you kind of lost yourself in the present moment and the gratitude that emerged from it.
[06:28] Find that moment.
[06:29] We'll be talking about it just a little bit more over the next couple of episodes.