How About Just Faking It?

For many of us the suffering in the news triggers all sorts of pain. While I aspire to live out of a deep trust of love and life, when I’m triggered this trust feels almost impossible.

This is a fake nose at the Chabot Space and Science Center in California.

How about just faking it?

Qigong Master Chunyi Lin has taught me the healing art of faking gratitude and forgiveness. Even when you fake it you receive powerful healing benefits. And as the saying goes, “Fake it until you make it.”

My current experiment is with feeling gratitude for what is emerging through all of the violent stories in the news. It can feel strange to be grateful for these painful times. Gratitude doesn’t come easily, so I have to begin with faking it.

As I take time to cultivate gratitude (even pretend gratitude) I notice that my suffering lessens. I am more present. There is less room for fear. (Chunyi Lin teaches that gratitude and fear cannot exist simultaneously.) I feel returned to a path that I recognize leads me to a place of deep trust. Faking it is what helped me get home.

This Could be a Good Time too

Even if it takes a little faking it to get there, I want to live into trusting the possibilities poet and wise elder Louis Alemayehu wrote about in a recent Facebook post:

“…. This could be a good time too. We may be actually discovering relatives we didn’t know that we had. Actually things could not be other than they are now. We were made for these times of transition/transformation….”

It’s a rare person who feels only creative potential in each moment. If you are not there, what if you just took a moment to pretend?

What if before you read the news you chose to pretend to read it as someone with deep trust in our ability to transform? What if you wrote about these times in your journal from the point of view of someone who is discovering relatives they didn’t know they had? What if you practiced a gratitude mediation (pretend gratitude is okay) for what is emerging through this time of suffering? How would you feel different afterwards?

I’m curious if you do any of these experiments what you discover.

With love and peace for all,

emily

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