Perhaps the most notable overall change [in the awakening mind], though, is a general sense of well-being. In the same way that the taking for granted syndrome inevitably leads to frustration and dissatisfaction, ongoing gratitude leads to contentment and fulfillment. You will no longer crave things you don’t have or need, since you’re now able to appreciate what you do have. You’ll be free of the constant niggling need to add more to your life or to change your life situation, like an addict who is finally free of the craving for drugs.

You will also feel an enhanced sense of presence. In chapter 1, I mentioned that many qualities of wakefulness are interdependent, and this is particularly true of presence and gratitude. Gratitude brings us into presence, and presence creates gratitude. Our blessings are always in the present, whereas the taking for granted syndrome takes us out of the present, into imaginary future scenarios.

You might wonder: Is it actually possible to live in an all-encompassing state of gratitude, continually aware of the myriad blessings in our lives? But we don’t have to extend our gratitude so widely all the time… Gratitude should be a constant, underlying trait that arises organically in relation to our experience. And when we do have free moments of contemplation, we will naturally find ourselves extending our gratitude more widely, to encompass all of life itself and the Earth.

We should also remember that, as suggested in chapter 1, it’s unrealistic – and even unnecessary – to live in a perpetual state of spiritual ecstasy. Of course, we often have to focus our attention on practical tasks, such as driving or cooking or earning a living. In those practical moments, our sense of gratitude may recede from our awareness. But it will always be in the background, naturally arising when we relax our attention. This applies to all the other qualities of wakefulness… in general.

Steve Taylor, The Adventure: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Awakening. pp.51-52

Steve Taylor’s point about presence and gratitude is an important one. In sitting still, there is nothing, apart from the continual drift of thoughts, to distract us from the fact of our sitting, the weight of our body, the scatter of sounds in the background, the blessed pattern of our breathing. What we are is here, now, in this place and instant – and that is not other than the open ground itself, present before and beneath the space and time in which we live and die.

As Eckhart Tolle frequently points out, presence is in some way analogous to waiting: to wait with full alertness is to be fully present, fully attentive to what is. “Beyond the beauty of the external forms, there is more here: something that cannot be named, something ineffable, some deep, inner, holy essence.” (The Power of Now, p.96)

To be fully present is to be finally free from the constant burden of the little self – defensive, grasping, threatened – that keeps us from our own life, from the gratitude that is our true relationship with what actually is. To sit still in the silence of our heart is to be present at last, in the “ineffable… holy essence” that is our home.