There is a hackneyed platitude that says "there is so much to be grateful for." Usually it is wielded as a consolation for failure. But like most clichés it has the ring of truth. For if you and I are fortunate enough to take the next breath, we have received a gift.

But how often do we feel the gift of breath, or even another moment of life? Mostly these things are taken as givens, the underpinning of our lives, upon which our all-important personal desires are thwarted or fulfilled. That is until air becomes unavailable for a few moments, or we have a near-death experience. Then the preciousness of breath and life are felt at the core. Then, all the small complaints become petty in comparison. For a little while, anyway. And then the old ways of seeing set in again.

Though I do not now adhere to a particular religion, I have, in the past, made some forays into religiosity. My motivation was at times curiosity—to experience different forms of worship and spiritual practice. At other times I felt a profound disillusionment with my life, and the tendencies and patterns which had produced so much suffering and disappointment, and I wished to resort to an intelligence greater than my own.

For me at least, assuming the beliefs and practices of religion produced a profound feeling of humility, and out of that fertile soil (the word humble comes from the Latin humus, meaning ground, or soil) grew a slender stalk of gratitude. For in relating to what is called God, Adonai, Allah, Brahman, Buddha (I use this loosely since, as we know, Buddhism is non-theistic) I felt the largeness of what sustains all life, mine included.

I needed to practice religion with belief suspended, for I eschew belief as weakness. Of course it didn't require disbelief either, which is equally weak. Instead I practiced religion experimentally, while still giving all of my attention, openness, and willingness to the effort. So when I prayed "There is no God but Allah"; or, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is One," I was compelled to understand them not at the level of words with pat definitions—for instance differentiating Allah from Elohanu—but to strive, through my religious practice, to experientially fathom the gist of what these words meant.

What arose was a practical experience of God, which I provisionally defined as "that which is at a higher level than I am." I defined God this way so that I would have something to remember in every moment, something to relate to in every person, something to strive to see in every object, and something to serve in every situation.

There is an admonition from the teacher Gurdjieff to "realize your own nothingness" (though he sometimes expressed it differently to compensate for his students grandiose notions of themselves—particularly the French—calling them "merde de la merde"). This is not a directive to despise or belittle oneself, and certainly not to feel meaningless insignificance in the face of an infinite universe, but instead to recognize that the "me" that is always claiming the position of the personal pronoun is a fiction; that we are really completely helpless to and dependent on a force or intelligence that is much larger. First of all one has to see that one is nothing, in order to be open to receiving help toward becoming something.

Religious practices of worship, prayer, or supplication, are means to recognizing the meaningful smallness of our own person, our interdependence with all life, and our dependence on a vast Being responsible not only for the form and life of the body, but even for the neural phenomena that gives rise to the sense of self we call "I". A deep, tender gratitude flows from the recognition of this dependence and interdependence. But formal religious practice is only a means to this end. What we are after is the disposition of wakeful gratitude that invites appreciation for all the otherwise burdensome, annoying, or even infuriating minutia; a disposition that puts us in a position to serve—to be useful not to our petty, personal selves, but to the Self that is the life that flows in all and everyone; a disposition that enables us to say (and mean): "To serve the situation, is to serve my Self."

—Jason Stern