gratitude

Gratitude is a sustaining force that gets us through the most difficult times, and helps us enjoy the best of times. It is one of the most powerful expressions of the language of the heart.

Gratitude is so fundamental to our emotional being that it is barely noticed by us, although it operates almost all the time. It nurtures our cellular and molecular selves, our emotional and energetic lives - it is as important to our many levels of being as sunlight and water.

Even in our economic lives, we find that prosperity is a side effect of gratitude. We can accomplish a lot through hard work, perseverance and fortitude, but accomplishment is not prosperity. The many tall towers built around the world are signs of accomplishment, but are only things that will crumble in time: true prosperity is indestructible and outside of time. When we are busy fulfilling our important, energetic and spiritual needs, true prosperity opens the resources available to us despite perceived obstacles or impossibilities.

True prosperity is a state in which we are grateful for everything in our lives. There is a certain feeling of comfort that emerges when one is happy with what is going on around them, and the feeling seems to be mirrored by the environment and other beings in it. This feeling comes with an unspoken 'thank you' attached to it, whether one believes in deities, ancestors or nothing at all. If the thank you is removed, then it is easy to escape the happiness and dive back into the comfort zone of worries and doubts. That's because gratitude is a sustaining force.

This kind of feeling can be expanded: this state can be aroused and made permanent through the consistent practice of gratitude. This is one of the states of living in the true heart, in which worries cannot arise: if something like a problem emerges, the most creative and stress-free, joyful, compassionate, balanced and loving solution will become available. In this state, even problems are gratefully accepted opportunities to grow and experience wisdom as both the giver and receiver.

True gratitude insists that you be thankful for everything you have and experience. When you are consciously and sincerely thankful, you will have everything you need, and never need more than you have.

So many of the things we want, as opposed those we need, are grafted onto us by cultural paradigms and emotional patterns. No human has ever suffered from a sailboat deficiency, and no one has been born with a need to possess a 26 room house. Our human needs are simple, and can be satisfied by giving and receiving love, which is easily expanded by the practice of gratitude.

This practice is simple, but not easy. The reward is the return of energy normally wasted on anxiety, want, hope, doubt and fear. This recovered energy can be used to maintain the well being, which includes the manifestation of prosperity.

Through gratitude you become a creator of the good times, simply because your energy becomes coherent and therefore attractive to people, circumstances and things. Your increased energy will alter your perception and level of accomplishment so that anger, frustration and fear will transform into compassion, motivation and fulfillment. The most important thing is that the attitude towards "having" is transformed, and receiving is no longer a passive act, it becomes a dynamic and positive force that energizes the world around you.

Give thanks daily for the body, mind, family, friends, teachers, environment and universe; in short, for everything you experience. Do it creatively. To do so honors the Spirit and the Earth, and, through the dynamic heart, broadcasts this honor to the Universe.

Contribute in every way you can: give back to the Universe more than it gives to you. You will thereby add momentum to the cycle of gratitude in yourself and the world.

Eventually, gratitude becomes a silent and constant partner that energizes thought, word and deed. It unlocks a door that those filled with fear cannot enter, and leads to a world where even the darkest of times are filled with wonder and joy.