GRATITUDE

This is a word, along with abundance, manifestation and other key words, that we often hear in the context of living a more full life or attaining some ideal life. We often hear that we have to practice gratitude and we go around thanking people for holding the door for us, or serving us our food. While there is nothing wrong with being polite, it’s just that; being polite. A look in the dictionary tells us gratitude is the quality of being thankful. Maybe it is a little different than that and I’ll explain.

While drifting off to sleep, in a state of complete relaxation, I contemplated my day. I had finished the work on my book and I rewarded myself with a hike through the desert, later we went for dinner and desert, then came home and Nadine and I spent time together. Next my mind drifted to the early morning.

---

We have two dogs, one a medium size pit bull mix the other a small Cairn Terrier. Both are enthusiastic to the point that it irritates people, and I admit sometimes I don’t have patience. They are intelligent and training has worked on the bigger, older dog so I know it will work on the pup. He jumps and runs around, squealing and barking whenever I come home, like I am a long lost family member (some people can probably relate). I want to train him to have manners and not jump on people and be generally obedient, so I trained him early in the morning when the house was quiet.

I began to contemplate why he is so joyful that he is unable to contain himself. He is in a state of being. Maybe it’s gratitude? We are told that in order to have abundance we should have gratitude. This dog has everything it needs to leave a full life. He’s fed, bathed, loved. He has a bed to sleep in. Maybe he has this abundance because of gratitude? Maybe gratitude is more than a quality? Maybe it’s a state of being? Like unconditional love. We hear that term bandied about quite often and nobody seems able to explain exactly what it means. It’s a state of consciousness but most of us don’t realize it because we can’t let go of our conscious reality long enough to be in it.

Perhaps gratitude is unconditional love? Think about it; how can you be grateful for something you don’t love this way? You can say you are, but are you grateful intellectually, because you know it’s proper? Or are you grateful emotionally, because that’s who you are? I don’t think we can have gratitude without love, so it seems they are one and the same.

My thoughts turned to the wonderful woman lying next to me. We have been blessed us with six children and been together for thirty plus years. Still, inside, my heart leaps like that little puppy whenever I think about her. When I think of the funny comments she makes, or when she does something for me. Unlike the dog though, I don’t assume she feels the same way, I know it. I feel it.

So, what did I get from this contemplation? Unconditional love expresses itself as gratitude. We can’t feel unconditional love toward one thing and hate another at the same time. It’s a state of being. We must remember that if we are unconditional love, we are complete and we have everything we need and want, and if we have everything, we have gratitude. It can’t be absent in a state of bliss. I think bliss is a word that describes being in a state of unconditional love.

Find your bliss. Become unconditional love and everything else will fall into place, and you will have gratitude.

Hope you enjoyed this and have gratitude in your presence