“A glorious life is filled with companions who have open hearts. It generates joy moment by moment. It is the continual experience of gratitude.”
~ Gary Zukav
Do any of us understand the importance of gratitude?
How grateful are you? In this sense, by gratitude I don’t mean just saying thank you if somebody gives you a gift, or holds a door for you. That is just politeness, or social convention.
Gratitude isn’t words, it’s emotion. It’s opening our heart to experience that lets our energy flow out in a particular way. Emotions are all indicators to us of how we are releasing energy or how we are “vibrating”. These emotions tell us what state our energy is in, and therefore where we are headed in our lives—towards something great that we’ll enjoy, or something not so good, that we won’t enjoy.
Learning to focus on emotions, and to see what they’re telling us about our energy, is an important step in learning to be a conscious creator. And learning to nurture and magnify the emotions that serve us well is an equally important step.
So if gratitude isn’t about words, what is it?
Gratitude Is Vibration Gratitude is an emotional vibration that makes it easier to manifest those things that we want. This works in two ways. One is that feeling a “positive” feeling like gratitude puts us in sync with things that we desire. By raising our vibrations we make it easier to attract what we want. The other is that by expressing gratitude for that which is not yet manifest, we are adopting a posture of assuming that what we want is already there. In this way we encourage it to move from our energy level into our physical life. When we express a desire, the fulfillment of that desire is immediate in the non-physical realm. As soon as we ‘want’ it, it exists in the field of non-local intelligence, the field of pure potential. We are not able to have a burning desire for something that is not in our power to create. The two go together. So as soon as we think of it, it’s there in the quantum field. Quantum physics has demonstrated that merely by observing (noticing; turning our attention to) something, we bring it into being. Reality comes into being through consciousness turning its attention in that direction. The hard part is learning how to bring those things we have created in the quantum field into our material life. How do we get what we want, which is always created instantly, to manifest in physical form? To do that we have to become the person who has it, is it, or does it. We have to become the finely tuned receiver of that thing. We have to step into the reality where we already have it. One of the best ways to do this is with gratitude. Gratitude expresses trust in the process. It makes a leap across time, and in a small way puts us into the position of already having received that which we have asked for. This opens the energy circuits, so to speak, and allows that thing to come into material form in our life. A Small Experiment Think about stepping outside your house on the way to work. Pause on the doorstep and look around. Notice the sun or clouds, the landscape, whatever it is, any plants that are growing, traffic, the weather or season of the year. Do an experiment. One day when you go off to work, stop for a moment. Notice how easy it is to let the critical train of thought start: the lawn needs cutting again, it’s cloudy, this weather really sucks, the car needs washing, the traffic is loud this morning, I should really clean up the yard… Notice how it feels to be thinking this. Are you hunched, shoulders bunched, frowning? Think about how your energy must be moving and how hard it is to feel good in any way when these thoughts are in your mind. Then change those thoughts. Do a deliberate switch, and focus on each thing that you criticized and see it in a different light. Express gratitude for your home, your car (or other transportation), the weather, the larger environment in which you live, all the busyness of people getting ready for work or school. Just practice this experience of gratitude and notice how it’s easier to breathe deeply and relax your body. A Willingness To Receive Think of something as simple as receiving gifts on your birthday. Some you have asked for, some are surprises. When you open a gift there are many responses you might have. If it’s something wonderful that you love, or if the giver is someone you cherish and love, your response might be open-hearted and wonderful: Oh thank you, I love it, I love you for giving me this. Feel the openness in this kind of response. You are truly receiving this gift. You’ve taken the energy here into your reality in a welcoming way, it becomes yours. On the other hand there are those other gifts; token gifts that you know no thought has gone into, or things that people give you that are inappropriate, or not to your taste. Your more guarded reaction here might be: Thanks. How kind of you. This kind of gift you don’t receive. It might live in your house, but it doesn’t have an energy equivalent in your spirit. You haven’t opened yourself to the experience of it. The first example is gratitude; the second is just politeness. If you look around your house at the things people have given you, you can feel the difference in quality. Some things are yours in a full and meaningful way, and some are just clutter. Gratitude is about a willingness to receive. When we are grateful we open our whole selves to the experience we encounter. We acknowledge the presence of what is happening and the value it has. When we cultivate an attitude of gratitude, we allow ourselves to become receivers. It’s like turning on the radio. If I want to listen to music on the radio, I have to turn on the receiver. The sounds are all out there, they already exist in the “field”, in the air all around me. They are being broadcast from many stations all the time but I will never hear the music if I don’t hit the "on" switch. I turn on the radio, and then adjust the dial until I get the exact station that I want. This is what we’re learning to do, become finely tuned receivers. Our emotions are the key to learning what we are tuned into. The more depressed, closed in, afraid, angry and sad we are, the more we’re going to "receive" static and chaos. The more we feel love, joy and gratitude, the more we’re going to tune into that which we truly desire. You Can Start Small The wonderful thing about gratitude is that it’s easy to start small. How can you feel joy if you are afraid, ill or unhappy? Feel joy? It’s not possible. But you can feel a little gratitude. You can look at tiny little things and focus on them. Thank you for my dog. Thank you for this parking space. Thank you for a sunny day. Thank you that in this minute I don’t have a headache. Thank you that someone smiled at me. Thank you that I know how to type. Anything. You can start wherever you are and focus on things that are as small as they need to be, in order to be genuine. That’s all it takes, the genuineness of the feeling. It doesn’t matter what you are focusing on, just how genuinely you feel the gratitude. That is, feeling truly grateful for your new car you just won in a contest isn’t better or more effective than feeling grateful for that hot cup of coffee in the morning. It’s the feeling that counts, that small opening of your energy system that lets your attractive power start to work and teaches you how to receive. The Universe Is An Infinite Source Gratitude teaches us not to get in our own way. It helps us learn that the universe always answers, that whatever we desire, it’s already there. It’s ours, we have it, we deserve it, we don’t need to earn it or figure it out—it is already there. We just have to put down our constructs of what needs to be done, give up figuring out how to make it happen, and learn to be receivers. Gratitude teaches us that the universe is an infinite source for anything we could imagine. Being grateful is like stepping into that moment of receiving, time-traveling ahead just a bit to meet the future moment – and encouraging it by feeling what we will feel when it comes. Who Are We Grateful To? When we express gratitude in terms of thanks – thank you for this parking space, or I am so grateful for my dog – who or what are we addressing? Who are we saying thank you to? Some people have trouble with this practice as it is reminiscent of traditional religion, which tells us that only a god or gods can give out the goodies, and we have to be properly grateful for what we get. In conscious creation, we see this from a broader perspective. Each one of us is a part of the universal energy, of All That Is or God. We are each the expression in living material form of the One energy that is the source of all reality. As a part of this energy, we are not separate from it but living expressions of it. We are the universe in the form of a human, this human. As an expression of the universe, it is our nature to be creators. We use the universal energy that is our nature to create our reality; or, the universe uses us to create for it. It works both ways at once. Understanding this, we can see that gratitude is expressed not to any outside source, but to ourselves as active extensions of the universe. We are doing it, and the universe is doing it, through us. This paradox is central to our true experience. Our gratitude isn’t payment offered to some obliging God that we have cajoled into giving us something. Gratitude is an act of receptivity to the energy that is our own nature, an act that opens the channels of energy to allow what we desire to flow into our experience. We are addressing our own true nature as it allows the universe to unfold within it. By Margie Waters
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