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In Gratitude, You Accept Yourself and Are Doubly Blessed

by kathmandau on March 21, 2008

I am almost ashamed to say that I am a latecomer in openly acknowledging the importance of expressing gratitude as spiritual ritual—Yes, I realized I’ve missed the mark for Thanksgiving.

You see, I got hung up along the way on what I suspect was personal semantics. But I also had some intuitive guidance that there was more to it than that—something I had to resolve rather than just complying. I always internally recognized my joy and pleasure for my good fortunes, and felt that this state of mind radiated outward as a complementary blessing to the entire universe around me. I did not, however, manifest my experience in any sort of focus on gratitude.

One part of the initial roadblock seemed to be the idea of just who was I offering thanks to? Yes, I believe in a higher consciousness, an initiator of all that is, a source energy or intelligence. My concept of an intelligence so expansive would not allow me to ascribe it with a personality trait that would require or desire tribute for boons.  Personality is ego, and ego is not the Absolute.

Tao Te Ching, Verse 34
To its accomplishment it lays no credit. It loves and nourishes all things, but does not lord it over them.

If I offer a gift (gratitude) that is neither desired nor useable by the professed recipient, who is the gift (and the giving) actually for?

This brings me to the other part of my conflict. I often get my guidance by a process similar to feeling around in the dark (or with a more dignified simile, like dowsing). In a meditative state, I psychically ‘reach’ about (sorry, but it is very much like feeling for something in the dark for me) until I connect with an idea or an experience that resonates with my 3rd and 4th chakras (my “gut” and my heart)—truly finding a matching resonance that makes me certain that I have located what I am scanning for. In cases where I cannot find “an answer”, I have come to realize that this most often tells me that I am either asking the wrong question or proceeding into the process with preconceived ideas that are causing a conflict.

Whenever I have felt my gratitude, and scanned to know who I was connecting with in this process, I could never get outside of my own presence. Initially, I took that to mean that I was inappropriately focusing too much on myself. Yet, I eventually realized that for me the proper exercise of gratitude was being fulfilled, and in doing so I did not need to shift my awareness outside myself.

Next I looked into the definition of gratitude, thinking that this search might serve a function similar to a koan, some indirect inspiration. What I found was:

Gratitude: warmly or deeply appreciative of kindness or benefits received; thankful.

So I looked up Appreciation: clear perception or recognition.

This led me to accept that the core essence of gratitude required no more than mindful recognition of what I possessed or what I received. With this, I noticed that gratitude for me is an act of personal significance, primarily. Now I am not speaking of or disregarding the individuals—physical or non-physical—that may have had a hand in bringing any blessing into my life. I am just speaking of the spiritual ritual or acknowledgement that was not being completed in my own experience.

I realized that I carry out gratitude as an act of internal focus, not external. In order to complete the spiritual process of a blessing experienced, it is not someone outside of myself that I need to offer acknowledgement to, but to my own spirit. In the offering of thanks, I realized I was validating my need or desire that had been fulfilled—my right to have that need, and to accept its fulfillment. In the expression of gratitude, I was accepting myself, in both states of need and fulfillment. In doing so, I am allowing the energy of my own spirit, manifest in this life, to complete its flow in this blessed act…the divine flow.

What could possibly have been wrong with expressing gratitude without first coming to terms with so subtle a distinction? Nothing at all. There are many paths of great value that I cannot follow, not because there is anything wrong with them, but simply because they are not the food that nourishes my spirit. My intuition would simply not allow me to be comfortable with sitting down to gratitude without first coming to learn the personal lesson that it had prepared.

“Anyone who imagines that their good fortune is achieved simply by their own merit or efforts is fooling themselves.” Jon Pertee (a timber-frame contractor/yoga instructor that provides my day job at present), 2004

Copyright 2008 CG Walters

C.G. Walters primarily writes fiction that focuses on the mystical, metaphysical, and mythical insight that we all possess. His current novel, Sacred Vow is first and foremost a metaphysical love story, a tale of soul mates—twin flames—a journey toward our one true love…in its infinite expressions…bringing together two individuals from disparate realities—but one spirit—to heal the rift in the Collective Consciousness.

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