Gratitude and the Gap

Mind the GapIf you’ve ever been in England you’ve seen this expression “Mind the Gap” posted in the underground stations, to alert you to pay attention to the space between the platform and the train. It’s a valid warning, you don’t want to get your foot stuck in the space between, or drop anything down in there…you’ll never see it again.

In Eastern thought, though, the gap is a much desired place to be.  The gap is the space between your thoughts…usually referring to the practice of meditation.  Mystics and yogi’s recognize that no one can simply stop their thoughts, or “will themselves” to quiet their mind.  What we can do though is to widen the distance between our thoughts and cultivate an awareness of that space — to be mindful of the gap and to encourage it.  When we do this, we are rewarded with peace of mind and increasing our ability to hear the voice of the Divine within us, among other things.  The gap is the golden place, where transformation occurs.

The gap that I am thinking about today is also something to be mindful of – and it has the potential of being a golden, transformational time.  It’s a the place we sometimes find ourselves in that’s between no longer accepting an old way of perceiving ourselves and the world — and not yet experiencing the fullness of what we now know to be true.

It’s that place between “no longer” and “not yet”.

For example:  Maybe you no longer accept the idea that you are a victim of circumstance.  Maybe you used to believe that outside circumstances or situations controlled your experience in life.  Perhaps you used to accept that your employment was dependent on a specific company or individual.  Or that your experience of prosperity was determined by your employer.  Maybe you once believed that your ability to love was dependent on another person.   Or that your body is subject to the diseases of old age.  Whenever we have repeated experiences in our lives or an ongoing challenge, we know it is a direct result of what we believe to be true about ourselves.  It’s first a thought… which if continued, becomes a belief, which then becomes our experience.  This is the Law of Cause and Effect, or the Law of Attraction, or the Law of Manifestation.  Whatever you want to call it, it’s exacting.

Anyway, your old ideas about your limited self are now in the past.  You no longer accept that nonsense.  You know that you are a powerful co-creator in life and all that you have ever needed is within you.  You know that the Source of all your good is the Infinite, limitless, unbounded.  This is the Source of all…which created you out of Itself. You are an expression of It, therefore you are already whole and complete, abundant, love-filled, joyous, fulfilled and all of your needs are met now.  You know this in your heart of hearts.  However, you are not yet experiencing that truth in your life.    You are in the gap.

So, what is the “gap” and why is it that we don’t manifest our new consciousness immediately in our lives?  Why do we have to be in a “gap?”

Well first of all, it’s a good thing that ideas in our consciousness do NOT manifest immediately. Think about it.  Think about all the fearful fantasies you have had.  The nightmare scenarios you have imagined for yourself such as, “That bump on my skin is cancer, I know it!” or if you have kids and you temporarily can’t find them, you think, “They’ve been kidnapped!” or perhaps your fearful thoughts about the world, “We’re all gonna die in a nuclear blast!” etc.  Thank God there is a time gap between the thoughts we hold in our minds and what actually manifests — so that we can review it all and make sure that’s what we really want to create.  Most the time we come to our senses and remind ourselves that ultimately, all is well.

So, the buffer zone of the gap gives us a chance to re-examine our beliefs.

Secondly there is the natural order of growth from the formless to the form in this dense, physical universe.  Ernest Holmes once wrote:  “The Truth is instantaneous in its demonstration, taking only such time in Its unfoldment as is inherent in the law of logical and sequential evolution.”

So, then the question becomes:  “Well, what do I do while in the gap?  Is there anything beneficial I can do?”  And, that’s a good question! It’s actually vital.  Because many of us, when we don’t realize we’re in the gap…when we don’t see an immediate response to our prayers, or to our new consciousness…we think that it doesn’t work, and we begin to doubt and fall back into our fears and our negative thinking patterns.  And that just negates the new awareness we’d developed.  It’s like taking one step forward and one step back. Ever have that experience?

So, we want to nurture the environment of the gap while we are in it in order to allow for our new consciousness to emerge from that fertile time.  And we can do that best by practicing proactive gratitude. Here’s what I mean…

You know when you plant seeds in the soil, it takes some time before you see anything happen.  From the surface it looks like nothing is happening.  But, under the surface, a tremendous amount of energy is being expended to release the hidden potential within that seed, to push through the hard shell and then through the soil. That’s the gap experience.   If we water the soil where the seeds are planted we will create a nourishing environment for the seeds to grow.  That’s what gratitude does – it nurtures the environment in the gap that allows for your new consciousness to emerge into experience.

So, looking for things to be grateful for and focusing on those things, and celebrating those things, creates the energetic current that allows for the manifestation.  This is an important, golden time where you want to reaffirm the realizations you have come to regarding your limitless nature and your worthiness of all the good you can imagine for yourself.  You want to water that soil with as much positivity and affirmation as you can.  Practicing proactive gratitude does that.  It gets you to a place where you realize, “yeah…there is a lot of good in my life – look at all this good!  Look at that beautiful sunrise. Look at the abundance all around me.  I’m so grateful for my health…for the things that do work well in my body.  I’m so grateful for my wonderful, supportive friends, and my spiritual community that nurtures and supports my growing awareness.  God must love me…the universe must indeed be for me!”  So you get to a place where an abundance of good just feels natural to you.  And when that happens, the manifestation of your new consciousness is immanent.  It’s a heartbeat away.

Secondly, a very important thing we want to do while in the gap is to surround ourselves with positive people…life-affirming folks who are themselves on a path of spiritual growth.  This is a sensitive time.  We can so easily be influenced by others’ energetic vibrations during this time.  So negative, doubt-filled people are not the ones we want to be hangin’ with when we’re in the gap.  We want to surround ourselves with only those who will affirm our growing awareness with us and can help us see the good that’s in process of manifesting.

So practice proactive gratitude daily, choose who you hang with carefully and remember that this is a fertile time. If you tend to it wisely, you will reap the rich harvest of your new expanded awareness.

Be mindful while in the gap!

The Powerful Energy of Thanksgiving

This time of year is rich with the transformational energy of gratitude.  Therefore, I invite you to join all of us who participate in the Gratitude Experiment in making a commitment to practice proactive gratitude on a regular basis.  Searching for, focusing on, and celebrating the blessings in our lives…large and small…increases our blessings and makes for a life truly worth living   And what better time to start than today?

To support you in that effort, here are two prayers…one Native American, and the other more Judeo-Christian in perspective.  And isn’t that the combination which led to our nation’s first Thanksgiving?  Enjoy!

Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing through night and day–
and to her soil, rich, rare and sweet
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing light-changing leaf
and fine root-hairs, standing still through wind
and rain, their dance is in the flowing spiral grain
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Air, bearing the souring Swift and the silent
Owl at dawn.  Breath of our song
clear spirit breeze
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers, teaching secrets,
freedoms, and ways, who share with us their milk,
self-complete, brave, and aware
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Water; clouds, lakes, rivers, glacier,
holding or releasing, streaming through all
our bodies salty seas
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to the Sun; blinding pulsing light through
trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where
bears and snakes sleep-he who wakes us-
in our minds so be it

Gratitude to the Great Sky
who holds billions of stars–and goes yet beyond that–
beyond all powers, and thoughts
and yet is within us–
Grandfather Space
The Mind is his Wife.

So be it.

Gary Snyder (after a Mohawk Prayer)

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Give us thankful hearts…in this the season of Thy Thanksgiving.  May we be thankful for health and strength, for sun and rain and peace.  Let us seize the day and the opportunity and strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities, and let us ever remember that true gratitude and appreciation shows itself neither in independence nor satisfaction, but passes the gift joyfully on in larger and better form.

W.E.B. Du Bois

It’s No Mystery

It’s no mystery that practicing proactive gratitude transforms our lives.  There’s no big esoteric, metaphysical phenomenon happening here.  It’s really quite simple.  Here’s how it works…

You make a conscious choice to pull your attention away from all that’s going badly in your life, and begin to focus on all the great stuff…things you normally overlook, or take for granted.  As you do, your mood begins to brighten.  As you continue to do this, your attitude begins to change.  You’re happier, more open to experience and more vibrantly alive.  As that happens, the people around you begin to respond to you differently.  They want to be around you. Your relationships begin to improve.  Your friends want to introduce you to other people. They want to share things with you.  You start finding out about opportunities you never would have known about.  Rather than being pessimistic about your chances with people and/or opportunities, you are suddenly more confident and willing to step out of your comfort zone.  Before long, more opportunities….the right opportunities…begin to come your way.

No mystery…just the realization of the natural law of cause and effect.

Don’t believe me?  Try it for a week and see for yourself.  You must have a commitment to the practice though.  Begin in the morning as you’re getting out of bed — find one thing to be grateful for. Then when you’re brushing your teeth, find another.  As you’re having your coffee, find another.  When you’re in the shower, find another thing to be grateful for.  As you’re heading out the door, find another.  And on and on throughout the day, continue to look for things to be grateful for.  When people around you are finding every reason to complain, you be the one to find something in that situation that is a blessing.  Others may pooh-pooh you at first, but stay with it.  They’ll begin to want to hang around you.  Just being around you makes them feel better, and they won’t even know why.

Keep this up every day for one week.  Then, please share your experiences with me and all the readers here.

I’m so grateful for your willingness to try this!

Gratitude and the Box

The reason a consistent practice of gratitude is such a powerful tool to transform our lives is because it connects us to our Source.  It connects us directly to the Infinite Organizing Power of the Universe (whether you call it God, Infinite Intelligence, Universal Love or whatever.)  Gratitude helps us emerge from the little box we’ve been squeezing ourselves into and opens our eyes to an amazing world where we are loved, where there is harmony and order, wholeness, and limitless good.   

These boxes come in all shapes and sizes.  Some are labeled “I’m a victim” others, “nothing works out for me” or “I’m not good enough” and still others “I’ve got to push real hard to make things go the way I want them to.”  What is your box labeled? We all have them.  It’s simply a part of the consciousness of humanity. Some of us have made our boxes really elaborate!

 But when we begin a practice of gratitude, we begin to peek out of our box and see that, in fact, there may be beauty all around us. We begin to notice that there may be an underlying order and harmony in our lives. We begin to understand that we may, in fact, be Sourced by the Infinite and that Source is limitless.  It’s not always completely obvious…we may have to look real hard to find it. Sometimes we can see only the possibility of limitless good.  Or we see it working in other’s lives and we open to the idea that it may actually be possible in ours as well.

And then sometimes we discount it, rationalize it, disown it and go back into our little box.  After all, it’s comfortable in there.  We’ve grown accustomed to it.  We’ve spend our whole lives there.  So it takes effort to open the box again, and then still more effort to keep it open.  That effort is a daily practice of proactive gratitude (click here for a reminder of what those steps are).  When we practice daily proactive gratitude we are keeping the box open.  We are “owning” the good all around us.  As we do this, we are actually activating the possibility in our lives of that which we had only caught a glimpse of while we were peeking out of our box.  We are activating the possibility, so that that possibility becomes a manifest reality.  The possibility of opportunity becomes opportunity. The possibility of harmony becomes the reality of order and purpose in our lives. The possibility of limitless good becomes the reality of increased prosperity.

Once that possibility has become an actuality in our lives…once we see and live in “Divine grace”…we can no longer go back into that little box.  We’ve outgrown it for good. We are now living in gratitude every day.  And that’s when magic happens.

It all start though by just peeking out of the box…noticing the blessings, noticing the good in our lives…celebrating the good, and documenting the good by writing it down daily.  That’s our practice. That’s the practice that liberates us from the box and allows us to experience an amazing life.

Gratitude Experiment: Day 44

How blessed I feel to have found the practice of proactive gratitude in my life. I know that at any moment, I can turn my attitude around. I can turn my day around. I am not  a victim of circumstance or conditions.  Whatever life presents, I have the choice of discovering…of uncovering…the blessings in any situation.  Then, suddenly I’m filled with joy. I feel blessed and loved by the Divine.  Suddenly I’m lifted out of the muck and mire of human experience and transported to a magical place of miracles.   A miracle, not only that I have found and experience joy and abundance in the midst of a challenge, but also that I am now attracting more of the joy and abundance in my life. I am on the vibrational frequency of joy and abundance…and that’s what I am attracting more of. 

The same is true for each one of us. At any moment, you have the choice to choose what you will experience.  I hope you’ll choose to discover…to uncover…the blessing in every experience.  Then, you will never be a victim again. That’s true freedom.

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I am grateful for such a fabulous day…sun shining, cool, moist and sparkling.

I am so grateful for the wonderful dinner with friends…people  who enthusiastically enjoy life!

I am grateful for really good bluegrass music…live.

I am grateful my daughter showed signs of maturity today…handling disappointment with grace as she cheered on others who took the prize. Hurray for her!

I am grateful for that tree today, that is feeling it’s innate “spring-ness” and despite the fact that we have another month of winter, at least, is beginning to bud.  What trust.

The Gratitude Experiment: Day 13

Consistency is key.  It’s only when we incorporate intentional gratitude as a daily routine does it become proactive.  Practicing daily intentional gratitude gradually becomes a habit pattern in our consciousness and we have then shifted the energy in the balance of receiving blessings.  And it is then that we become magnetic to more blessings. 

This is the experiment. This is what we’re out to prove on an individual and a collective level.  Make a commitment to log in and post your gratitudes every evening before going to bed…or every morning when you rise.  Whatever suites you best.

On to gratitudes…

I’m so grateful that my house is clean from top to bottom and I didn’t have to do it!  God bless Christina.

I’m grateful for the loving support of everyone in my Keys Club Meeting. 

I am grateful for the beauty of the trees in winter…you get to see the bones of the trees. 

I am grateful my daughter is sleeping through the night more nights than not now.  We’re all more rested. I’m so grateful!