Living with Gratitude

Dear Friends:
Gratitude is the energy of appreciation. Usually it is created by contemplating all the blessings in one's life. For instance, consider what you are thankful for. Perhaps you feel deep gratitude for a friend, a loved one, or a pet. Why do you feel thankful for that being? How has that being influenced you in a positive way? Remember a time when you smiled or laughed around that being. What characteristics do you admire about that being? Take a few minutes to write about why you are so fortunate to have that being in your life. This kind of writing is an invocation of the energy of gratitude. It is uplifting, heart-warming, sweet, and delightful.

Even if you feel irritation toward someone, you can soften the charge around the person by remembering all the nice things about that being. Then the problems may seem small. One can always turn a negative into a positive. For instance, if the person pushes your button, you can think, "Oh, not again!" or "How wonderful that I can see my negativity more clearly now and heal it once and for all!" Indeed, if you were surrounded by people who fed your ego all the time, it would be very difficult to grow. Do we like to be at the mercy of people or circumstances that push our buttons?

​We need people to draw out our darkness, so we can see where we are still reactive to the world. The world is not the problem, but rather our interpretation of it. By working out all our reactivities, we become more and more impervious to what happens outside of us. Therefore, we can feel gratitude for that person who triggers our deep-seated issues. Just think: "I can't wait for the next trigger to come along! It is my opportunity to purify the issue, to see through it, to clear it out of my system." Once all the triggers are cleared out, we feel at peace.

Much love,
Brian
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