Gratitude

Gratitude seems like a feeling, right? Our heart swells with joy and we have a sense of a cup so full it spills over. This feeling is just that, a rich, powerful, humbling feeling. It gets our attention and changes our attitudes and, who knows?, maybe our DNA. It's that strong.

Here's the thing. Gratitude as a feeling is like the weather. It sweeps in like a storm and changes everything in its path, causing plants to grow, leaves to fall, leaving both birth and death in its wake.

What do we do when we don't FEEL gratitude? When we think life pretty much sucks and can't think of a single thing that deserves a nod much less a thank you. What then? Maybe we need to think of gratitude as an essential state of mind, something we need, a discipline that has to be practiced. This is not a swelling of the heart situation. It's practicing such deep awareness that we notice on a cellular level the status of our being.

For me, this means sitting quietly until my breathing overshadows my thoughts, until that moment when a truly deep and unplanned breath cleanses my psyche and I'm still. A shift sometimes occurs then. Planted securely in this place, breathing in this breath, I notice tiny things. My hamstrings are relaxed. My heart is beating steadily. My third eye seems to open. On one occasion, I felt the physical sensation of pores and orifices opening as if ocean waves were flowing in an out of me. In this practice, gratitude flows in with that first deep breath. I try to practice this daily so that my awareness of gratitude as an abiding state of mind can be tapped into at will.

This practice of the gratitude discipline sustains us when everything seems to hurt, when fear overwhelms us, during that heart attack, while family members melt down, during rejection, when our job is cut, when we don't want to get out of bed. Get up and do this practice. Sit until the breathing slows and we come into an awareness that flows over, under, and through the day-to-day troubles of life.

Bringing us to the truth about gratitude. Gratitude is part of our essential being. It's a force that births us and sustains us. What makes a seed grow into a tree or a human, for that matter. The force of gratitude. Gratitude channels divine energy into form. It's the spilling over of universal or divine gratitude.

Best of all, it's a renewable energy. It fuels creation, ours and the gods'-- Anne