GRATITUDE
by Gary Rosenberg

The season of gratitude is upon us beginning with Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday.  While this is traditionally a time for family and friends to gather around the dinner table to enjoy a feast of turkey, dressing, squash, potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and more, Thanksgiving can be a time for pause and reflection.

Symbols of Thanksgiving include Pilgrims, turkeys, pumpkins, tall big buckled hats, Native American Indians or any combination.  Let’s remember that the Pilgrims were devout Christians who fled Europe to seek religious freedom.  They were Calvinists who wanted to practice their religion free of the state church of England.  In 1559 it was a crime not to attend services with official Church of England congregations. The Pilgrims fled England and arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620.  They held a ceremony of gratitude in the fall of 1621.  Native American Indians while not sharing their religious views celebrated a robust harvest with the Pilgrims which helped them survive the winter.  This is the story we are told and the premise for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Thanksgiving from its beginnings has been an interfaith holiday about faith, Nature’s bountiful food and gratitude towards the Divine.  Gratitude is the core of Thanksgiving and while often expressed in the reciting of things to be grateful for is not always recognized for the power this emotion and thought has in creating our realities.  Gratitude is an attitude which needs to be practiced every day. 

Beyond the story of the Pilgrims, gratitude is a powerful thought and when expressed with sincere intentions can manifest God’s goodness in our lives each and every day. When the thought of gratitude interacts with the Universal Laws it becomes most powerful.  In fact, once we understand the workings of the Universe in our spiritual evolution, we will see that we can be grateful for everything that happens in our lives whether we define these things as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’

First, remember from my past writings that we are immortal.  Our true essence is love, pure consciousness which can and does re-manifest itself in new forms as we progress through the different stages of our spiritual evolution or self-realization.  We can be grateful that the Creator created us with this immortality though at this time we live in the corporeal world with the illusion of being mortal.  If we express our deepest gratitude to the Creator for this creation, we may find we become less fearful and more accepting of the inevitable transition (death) to our next spiritual stage.

The Creator made us as powerful beings capable of creating our own realities with our thoughts.  

However, we don’t always get what we want because the Creator also established Universal Laws  http://www.abundance-and-happiness.com/universal-laws.html   which everyone is bound by and which offer us the ‘rules’ of the “Game of Life.”  Following the Universal Laws will help us to become more powerful in creating lives of goodness as God wanted.  Not following these laws can result in increased challenges, pain, suffering and a longer path to self-realization. 

We can be grateful for these laws because they guide us and we can be grateful for the challenges, struggles and pain we face in life, because they remind us we have made some error as regards the Universal Laws and need to get back on track.

Remember, there is no right or wrong – God does not judge us and we should not judge ourselves or others.  God loves us unconditionally, as we should love ourselves and others.  There are only errors that need to be corrected.  There are consequences to these errors which need to be accepted as a reminder we have to make changes to our thoughts and actions. Regardless how many or how consequential these errors are we can always find our way back on the path to goodness with the help of the Universal Laws.

If we look at the world we have created and find it wanting in so many ways, we can be grateful that this world reminds us of who we are by showing us who we are not.  The pain and suffering we experience is a reminder that we have as humanity gone far from the path towards goodness and that we have a lot of work to do to correct this.  We can choose to take action to change this or not just so long as we understand there are consequences for our action or inaction. The Universal Laws remain in play always and until we individually and as groups: Communities, cities, states and countries come together in a concerted effort to correct what we have done, these Laws will continue to remind us we are on a path towards pain instead of joy.

We can start making this correction with our own lives, our own thoughts.  For in the midst of all the pain and suffering in the world, people can still carve out realities of goodness, joy and love if they choose to.  This is the beauty of God’s creation.   We can choose to be fearful, angry hurtful, jealous, sick and depressed or we can choose to be loving, caring, joyful, creative, healthy, vibrant and powerful people in our lives regardless of what challenges Life presents us.  And as we are presented with challenges we can take the time to understand what may really be going on and work to correct the situation shortening the time of pain, distress, anger, fear or ill-health we may be experiencing always remembering that we are immortal and nothing can destroy our true essence.  We are that powerful.

There is much we have to be grateful for every day.  Once we begin to express gratitude towards the Divine and those we meet on a regular basis the power of gratitude only grows.  When the power of gratitude interacts with the Law of Attraction, we get more of what we want each time we express gratitude for what we receive.  When we express gratitude towards others, the Law of Reciprocity (what goes around comes around) results in us receiving more expressions of gratitude and goodness from others.

If we express gratitude in advance, we can begin to expand our created realities exponentially.  For example, what if we express the thought of gratitude for the doctor or healer we are going to see for some ailment and then express gratitude for that ailment healing and express gratitude to our body for eventually healing this ailment?  All of this gratitude has been expressed in advance of any physical outcome and will trigger Universal Laws to react to our thoughts, our expressions of gratitude in advance.  Try practicing gratitude in advance over a period of time and see what happens.  

Experience the look on people’s faces as you express gratitude to them at no particular time for being a good friend, spouse, child, co-worker, the person at the check-out, etc.  If you are really adventurous, try expressing gratitude to a stranger for all the good things they have done.

Gratitude is a powerful thought and an expression of our deepest appreciation and love for our fellow human beings, Nature and God.  Practice it often and with the sincerest of intentions to create a life of love and joy all around you. 

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving full of gratitude, joy, peace and love.