You can’t catch what you don’t see
Gratitude is a capacity. You can’t fake it, like you can’t fake riding a bicycle.
Appreciation is another capacity.
Appreciation means: seeing value. Gratitude means: acknowledging value.
There are three levels of values:
- Cultural or systemic values. 80% of people see those. They are different culture by culture. But most of them are universal… meaning they are in all cultures… These values are binary, like an on/off switch.These are the “two drawers” the book The Art of Hunting Humans talks about, loser/winner, sad/happy, good/bad, useful/useless, smart/stupid, right/wrong, etc.
- The second tear is the value, extrinsic value, the use value humans place on things: they are personal values, mostly… They are closer to what people pay for, with money or reciprocation: tasty (food), a nice conversation (companionship), useful, interesting, beneficial, etc.A bowl of soup, a wedding ring, a Thanksgiving dinner, a nice conversation…Anything will have, albeit not acknowledged, not noticed value on all three levels.
- The third level is the godlike level, the intrinsic level, and most people don’t notice it, don’t value it, don’t provide it… Even if they know the words… but they are like appreciation: you can say the word as much as you want, the word does not create appreciation, the capacity creates the being.The capacity of appreciation is, like everything in reality, can be expressed in percentages… capacity not on is zero, fully open is 100.
It is one thing to appreciate the obvious, and quite another thing to appreciate what is not obvious… because in the moment it is not visible yet where the value is, or it doesn’t FEEL GOOD…
Too much, too strong focusing on systemic value robs a person of their ability to have spiritual, third level, godlike capacities: generosity, love, enthusiasm, creativity, intuitive, etc. Continue reading “Why you can’t see, don’t see value… what is in the way?”
Once you distinguish something, you start seeing it everywhere… not only where you expect it, but really everywhere. This is done by something called the reticular activator or reticular activating system.
