Gratitude

This week's blog is from my book, Oms From the Heart. If you enjoy the offering, you can find the book online for purchase here. 

I write about gratitude a lot it seems.  Actually, it’s a great topic to revisit over and over again because in my humble opinion, it’s easy to forget to be grateful.  It’s easy to get caught up in the drama or mundane activities in life and forget to give thanks. 

And then of course there is the age old, “you cannot attract anything new into your life until you are grateful for what you already have.” 

And how about changing your verbiage from, “I have to do this, that and the other thing”, to “I get to do this, that and the other thing.”  That was a big one for me. 

Carolyn Myss says that, “Everything beyond the breath is a gift.”  What if we could wake up and remember that all day long?  That the sheer fact that we woke up and had another day in this body was an epic gift. 

I live life with no regret because I know that everything happens for a reason.  I believe that this production we call our life is created to bring us home to our soul.  And I believe it happens in ways we understand and ways we don’t.  But to separate events into categories of good or bad, or helpful or not helpful, would be a disservice to the magic of it all.  We must be grateful for everything.

Everything.

But I would like to explore another idea around gratitude that I’m not sure I have explored before.  It’s the idea about how we define gratitude.  And by that I mean specifically, how do you show gratitude?  How do you receive gratitude when it comes your way?  Because I think this is important. 

Some people keep gratitude journals.  Some people meditate in the morning giving thanks for it all before it’s happened.  Some people write thank you notes.  Some hug tightly and love deeply.  Some display grandiose gestures of gratitude by buying gifts and out-of-this-world offerings.  Others give thanks and then pay it forward. 

I hesitate to tell anyone what to do … ever.  But in this case, I find a combination works nicely.  But whatever your way of being in gratitude, the most important thing to remember is to actually feel gratitude. 

More precisely, embody the feeling of gratitude, because our emotions drive everything. 

Do you know what gratitude feels like?  If you don’t, start feeling it now. 

I feel it in my heart.  My heart expands and then I notice my breath.  My breath feels like particles I could see in front of me if I had on special glasses.  My limbs tingle.  My connection to Soure comes alive.  I feel like time has stopped and I’m in a vortex of swirling love.  And I feel it when I am offering up gratitude and when I am receiving it… there is no difference.

You see, in my opinion, the feeling of gratitude gives us that connection to the higher realms of consciousness.  We know we are connected and it’s a like a rush through our bodies that is really unexplainable. 

If we dig a bit deeper into gratitude and we really feel it, we can begin to recognize the true abundance in our production, in our life.  And we not only receive that gift/gesture in gratitude, but we can’t wait to give it away.  We can’t wait to be in the flow of giving and receiving all at once.

We are in the flow of life and everything begins to create itself as if by magic.  Not only that but we truly recognize that there is no separation or difference in anything.  That everything that is happening is perfectly and divinely orchestrated.  And that all we have to do is set intentions that mean something, give them just enough attention and then sit back in gratitude for everything we have and are experiencing already. 

That’s it.  Know how you show gratitude … understand how you receive gratitude and then get in the flow. 

Photo courtesy of Gaiam and Nicole Howe