gratitude
As we once again find ourselves on the threshold of the Thanksgiving holiday, the season of gratitude, I want to thank God for everything in my life that is wrong, for all the things in my life that I have either lost or never received, and for all the outcomes that did not turn out right.
…I want to thank God for the relationships that are no longer a part of my reality in the way they once comfortably were, for the friendships and lovers who transitioned out of my life and moved in new directions, and for the encounters with my Brothers and Sisters on Planet Earth that were less than pleasant and far from an experience of Oneness.
…I want to thank God for the money that is not in my bank account. I feel especially grateful for having to give up some of the things in my life I truly enjoyed because I could no longer afford to pay for them.
…I want to thank God for the moments in my life when I felt alone, as though nobody understood me or even cared, the moments where the silence in the room echoed loudly, the colors of life were drained of their vibrance, and time stood dreadfully still.
…I want to thank God for the professional promotions I did not receive, the career opportunities I was overlooked for, and the jobs I was matter-of-factly asked not to return to.
…I want to thank God for the aches and pains in my physical being, the nights where I am plagued with insomnia, the extra body weight I have had a difficult time shedding, and the way my mirror stares mockingly back at me some days.
…I want to thank God for the rattle in my car, the leaky faucet in my bathroom, the slowest line at the bank, the disproportionate number of red lights during my morning commute, last night’s quarrel with my spouse, the empty orange juice container, the paper cut, the stubbed toe, the neighbor who mows his yard at 6:00 a.m., and the one red shirt that mysteriously found its way into my washing machine along with a load of what is now formerly white clothes.
Yes, God, thank you.
The wonderful and lovely occurrences in life present us an obvious opportunity to experience and express gratitude. Appreciation flows generously in moments of ease and abundance. But how can we experience thankfulness in the midst of strife and turmoil? How can we feel abundant when we feel as though we have nothing? Is it possible that the events in life that reveal themselves to us under the guise of calamity hold within them the same opportunity for self-realization as those which seem to appear peacefully and effortlessly?
The people, places, and things which show up as “wrong” serve to illuminate that which is “right,” remembering that it is only within the human understanding of “wrong” or “right” that anything can be judged as so. There is not a single occurrence which does not lead you to a higher experience of Who You Really Are, whether you are being invited to that remembrance through an experience of having or not having, losing or finding, propelling forward or retracting back, feeling frustrated or feeling overjoyed.
I will be expressing my deepest gratitude to God for the “nothings” in my life this Thanksgiving and thanking Her for the expanding awareness that continues to allow me to see the possibilities within what might otherwise appear to be “wrong.”
How about you?
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team atwww.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
Neale Donald Walsch said recently, “A master lives in gratitude at every moment.”
How can we guide our children to find their own meaningful experience of a life of gratitude?
In the U.S., the month of November is often a time to reflect on one’s good fortune. As we approach Thanksgiving, social media is inundated with “30 Days of Thankfulness” posts, while many renew their attention to charitable giving and volunteering as an outpouring of their gratitude. These phenomena are demonstrations of one of the core concepts of Conversations with God, “There is Enough,” which teaches us that the world is an abundant place in which every person can get what they need and that scarcity only exists as we, collectively, allow it to persist. Feeling this way in November is a great step toward a thankful life, but what about feeling gratitude during the other months of the year?
In a society which is centered on external factors of happiness — acquiring more material things, improving physical appearances, and glorifying competition — it can be difficult to instill a constant and unshakeable sense of inner completeness in your family’s hearts and minds; however, when approaching life through your spirituality, you learn that instead of looking out there, you must start searching within to find fulfillment. In fact, the root of all happiness is gratitude. Being grateful helps us to see everything more positively, even the aspects of our lives we wish to change. Encouraging children to embrace and embody gratitude assists them in their spiritual development, as well as their view of the world around them.
Children learn by example. One way to demonstrate your own gratitude is to, as they say, find the silver lining in negative situations, and share those sentiments with your children. Another way is to share your abundance with others by donating time, resources, or just a kind word to another. Giving of yourself to another person helps you appreciate your own gifts and blessings. A daily practice of gratitude allows it to permeate your thoughts more fully, becoming an integral part of your Be-ing. To this end, children, whether school-aged or even younger, can contribute to your family’s daily gratitude journal by drawing pictures, writing words, or even verbally expressing gratitude (for you to write for them).
Whatever way you choose to bring an awareness and practice of gratitude into your home, it will bring you closer together. I believe you will find that it takes the edge off of a rough day, endears you to each other, and easily becomes a large part of your dialogue and vocabulary…allowing you, and your children, to live in gratitude at every moment.
(Emily A. Filmore is the Creative Co-Director of www.cwgforparents.com. She is also the author/illustrator of the “With My Child” Series of books about bonding with your child through everyday activities. Her books are available at www.withmychildseries.com. To contact Emily, please email her at Emily@cwgforparents.com.)
I keep hearing that I am “creating my own reality.” Yet things happen in my life right and left that I do not want, have never wished for, and certainly am not actively choosing to create. Why is this occurring, and how can I get it to stop?
— Elizabeth S., Davenport, Iowa
Dear Elizabeth,
Creating our own reality. Yup, that’s being thrown around a lot these days, isn’t it? Neale Donald Walsh has said that he believes this notion is one of the most dangerous things being put out there by the New Thought community these days, in fact. Why? Because no one really explains what this means.
Do you create your own reality? Yes, and kind of! I will begin with “kind of”. Life, as we live it, and experience it, in form and function, is never completely our creation. Life is a co-creation. All who have any connection to an event, great or small, co-created that event to give each the opportunity to experience something for Divinity. Of course, this is on a soul level. It is also assuming that you believe that we are all here, in this reality, so that Divinity may experience what Divinity knows.
It’s like we are all building a sky scraper together. Each of us is in charge of one piece of the whole, and we are doing our very best to do our part as well as we are trained to do it. Then there is an earthquake, and the skyscraper falls down. Perhaps one of the builders was lax in their job and can take some responsibility for the skyscraper being vulnerable, but no one created the earthquake that revealed that/those vulnerabilities, and no one person can take responsibility for everything.
The events of the building and the collapsing of the skyscraper did, however, create the situation in which you ARE responsible for creating your own reality. How did you feel about and during each situation? Did you get up eagerly to go to work and do your job? Did you drag out of bed and curse each moment on the job? Were you sad when the building fell? If your job might have created the weakness, did you take responsibility? Did you fall into fear and depression? And on and on.
Everyone who had anything to do with that skyscraper, from beginning to end, including observers and reporters, and cleanup crews and people who read about the accident 10 years later, has co-created the skyscraper and its events so that each can experience what THEY choose, on a soul level, to experience through that event.
CWG says that everything is presenting us with the opportunity to decide, declare and do who we really are.
Elizabeth, I am really sorry that you are experiencing so much in your life that you do not desire. You ask how you can get it to stop. I have a suggestion.
Change your mind about these events.
Don’t look at them as things that oppose you and your desires. Consider looking at them as opportunities to be who you really are. Then do something else that, in our culture today, seems very counterintuitive. Be grateful for it all.
I have found that by moving into gratitude, I move away from being stuck in the emotions that hold my feet to the ground, and prevent me from moving forward. I acknowledge that I had every right to be sad, or mad or whatever, but that now it is time to see these things as signals that something isn’t really working, and thank them for being in my life.
I can now look at my life and see that things I thought were perfectly awful at the time, were placed in my life so that some time in the future I could use the experience to help myself or others from a higher knowing. Mostly the worse I perceived the incident to be, the more I found I was able to use my knowing from that incident to help others that much more powerfully.
You can not, and do not create your world all by yourself, Elizabeth, but you do create your own experience of the event…and you are capable of changing how you do that. The book, “When Everything Changes, Change Everything”, by Neale Donald Walsch, explains how to do this and gives some very powerful tools to use as well. If you haven’t read the book, and can’t afford to buy it, it is available to read on the site for free! And there are volunteer Spiritual Helpers there to be with you as you integrate the process.
I hope this has helped,
Therese
My question has been a burden for me as well as for others around me who are in the same boat. So many of my friends dear to me are going through so much of the same, and it appears so is much of the world. Dislocated is a great describer, for we are unable to be independent as in self-supporting through some economic means. Living with parents and relying on government assistance is growing tired. I have within the past year graduated from a University with a B.F.A. in painting and drawing, with a minor in art history. I know it is a degree that really cannot propel one into a great financial state, nevertheless it was what I truly desire and I create daily in my studio. So now I am very frustrated applying for jobs without a response and am going to be fifty five years old. I stay well, meditate, ask for my desires to be presented and enjoy my being. But I still see the struggle to be independent going unfulfilled. I apply much of what I have learned from CWG, but yet as friends and I feel so forsaken. ~ Thomas
Dear Thomas,
You’re right, this is a challenge a lot of people have, in different contexts; you are certainly not alone in this. And none of them, including you, is forsaken. It’s wonderful that you have such desire and passion around your art, and you sound very clear that that is what you wish to spend your time doing. However, the “story” you are telling is one of lack and limitation. Before I go any further, Thomas, I hope you receive my words with love and forgive my being so direct, it’s just that this is something that we all do at times, myself included, and it serves us all to be aware of it.
The more you talk about, think about and tell others that your life in terms of career and earning money is a struggle, the more you will continue to experience that. The more you focus on the lack, on how hard it is to “make it as an artist,” the more of that you will get. Furthermore, as long as you choose to look at your degree as one that will “not propel you into a great financial state,” that is exactly what you will continue to experience. You see, Thomas, life proceeds from our idea of it, or to quote one of my favorite lines from CWG, “All you see in your world is your idea about it.” While you may not be able to completely control what shows up in your life, or your friends’ lives, you can most certainly control how you choose to perceive it and, therefore, experience it. If I were you, Thomas, (and by the way I was you but in a different context at one time in my life) here is where I would start:
– Change your idea about your life. Decide right now that you can have all that you desire, that it is indeed possible. Don’t worry about “the how,” just decide that this is true.
– Take your focus off your perceived lack and limitation, and all of the frustration that comes with it, and instead focus on gratitude. Focus on what you do have right now, what you love about your life just as it is, how thankful you are to have such a wonderful support system and that you are still able to create through art. In fact, I encourage you to make this a daily habit – each day write down at least 10 things you are truly grateful for. Make your last thoughts of the night before drifting off to sleep and your first thoughts upon waking ones of gratitude and appreciation for what is.
– Stop giving energy and attention to the story of “I can’t earn good money as an artist.” Tell a new story, first to yourself and then to others.
– Instead of waiting to feel happy, secure, and abundant when you do get hired to do what you love to do, be all of that now. This is a great gift we all possess but not many of us use consciously. Yet it is entirely possible to create the emotion you think the “having” of something will provide for you, right here and right now. Choose a desired state of being and commit to “being” that for an entire day. For example, if you choose “abundant,” focus on thinking abundant thoughts, speaking abundant words, and taking abundant action. Write the word “abundant” down on a piece of paper and carry it with you all day, or better yet, post it somewhere you can see it. Create an abundance-inspired piece of art!
You have the power to change your experience of life, Thomas, and no one can take that away from you. Yet you must be willing to take responsibility for your life, be willing to see it another way, and trust that you deserve everything you’ve ever wanted.
(Nova Wightman is a CWG Life Coach, as well as the owner and operator of Go Within Life Coaching, www.gowithincoaching.com, specializing in helping individuals blend their spirituality with their humanity in a way that makes life more enjoyable, easy, and fulfilling. She can be reached at Nova@TheGlobalConversation.com. )
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