The Arc Of Gratitude
There’s an arc to gratitude. It starts with no reason to be grateful, then through practice you move into finding something to be grateful for, then as you keep working you’re able to be grateful for everything, and finally you end up grateful for no reason. So there’s no reason to be grateful, grateful for something, grateful for everything, and then grateful for no reason.
I want to talk a little bit about the grateful for everything as a practice, and the reasons why gratitude works and why we’re using it. Why do we bless and give thanks for everything? The first thing that I want to talk about is that we realise that there’s only one thing going on. There’s only one life, one love, one power, one presence, one ultimate activity of good that is already complete, already perfect, and is forever unfolding or emerging in this quantum field called life experience, and that everything in truth is conspiring to reveal more and more good. The whole Universe is conspiring to put itself on display through you.
Everything, meaning the whole Universe is designed to continually unfold and reveal more and more of its good, more wholeness, more abundance, more love, more life, more joy, more freedom, more creativity, but in order to experience that more ever presently we have to move into that state of consciousness where we can accept gratitude as a premise to live by. I have heard it called being an ‘inverse paranoid’ where we believe that everything is conspiring for the greater good. One great example in nature is the oyster. What basically happens is a little piece of sand gets into the oyster and as an irritant, it doesn’t feel good, and so as a way to combat that discomfort and that irritation, the oyster starts releasing a chemical and enzymes, and starts trying to cover up that irritant. As a result of this process comes a beautiful pearl, one of the most highly prized gems on the planet. This is the oyster’s way of embracing that grain of sand that turns it into a pearl, this priceless or very high valued gem. In religious statements it is called ‘The Pearl of Great Price’. What this means is this. When you learn to embrace all of life’s struggles and challenges, and bless them, name it all good, give thanks for it in the recognition that everything is conspiring for good, you begin to release this inside out chemical process within yourself that turns that frustrating irritant in your life into the pearl of realisation, an awareness of the real nature of life and of your being, which becomes the Pearl of Great Price, something you would never sell, and you never exchange that experience and the pearl you got out of that, and so life becomes—and that pearl of such beauty and power and value, you must be willing to pay the price by embracing those grains of sand instead of rejecting them, trying to avoid them, fighting them, naming them bad, and instead begin to use gratitude, and start blessing and giving thanks for everything, knowing that everything is conspiring for your good. And even just take a moment right now, and just look at your life.
Where are you cursing that sand in your shell right now? Where are you fighting some problem? Trying to get rid of it, trying to get over it, under it, above it, cursing it, wishing it wasn’t there. Whatever’s appearing in your life bless it, give thanks for it, embrace it and radiate love to it.
Become a master of gratitude. And watch the pearls of good come out of this practice.