A Little Gift
With my deepest gratitude for all the support my book has received this past year.
Here in the United States, when today, we focus on gratitude, I felt compelled to post a free chapter from my book, Guidance from the Universe: Hopeful Messages for Everyday Challenges. The chapter of course, is Gratitude.
Below you’ll discover that each chapter is divided into 3 sections. Everything in italics is the message I downloaded from the Universe, next is my story for how I used the information. At the end, I offer questions to jumpstart the readers’ own musings on the topic.
Here now: Chapter 8: GRATITUDE
To reach for gratitude, all one must do is to remember to be thankful. When one is grateful, one’s heart opens to the bounty of what life is. For your life matters as all life matters. Being grateful reminds you.
No one is alone on this earth. Gratitude connects you to the Divine and to others, a memory of connectedness that opens hearts and feeds your soul.
Gratitude has no boundary. It’s limitless. Saying thank-you is pure of self, pure of ego, pure of desire. Gratitude pulls you out of self… pulls you away from the poor-me stance that would have you believe you are a victim.
Gratitude is your blessing.
Your improvement.
Your ability to know more, to see farther, to direct change.
Be thankful. For gratitude lifts your spirit. Gratitude praises life, the life that is yours, the one you know. Make time to be grateful and you will feel more of what living offers.
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I don’t recall when gratitude journals became the rage or when I heard about them or from whom, but I found the idea worthy. Back then, I was troubled by my inability to get close to people. I felt emotionally distant from those I cared about, unable to fully connect.
I spent many years admonishing myself for feeling this vast separation from others. So, when I heard how a gratitude journal might open my closed heart, I jumped at the idea.
At bedtime, I picked up a pen and opened my black, hardbound journal, with its unlined paper, to write what I felt grateful for. My dog ended up on the page along with my home, friends, job, and a few other things. I scrawled a rather comprehensive list, but no matter how many nights I put pen to paper, the exercise fell flat.
I might as well have been writing my grocery list. I couldn’t muster an emotional connection. After a few frustrating weeks, I put the journal back in its drawer, convinced that although gratitude might work for some, the practice clearly didn’t work for me.
As I matured and grew in awareness, my inability to give freely to others became increasingly troubling. Holding back emotionally from friends and lovers, while seeking their reassurances before I would show affection, struck me as selfish and self-absorbed.
I was sick of the constraints I put on myself. I wondered again if a practice of gratitude might change this view.
For inspiration, I went back to what Guidance said on the subject. When I read the passage about gratitude pulling focus away from the self, I probably lifted my head from the page because at that moment, I noticed a photo on my desk with fresh eyes.
The picture shows my friend Ann in the foreground with her back to the viewer. She is looking up at white, billowy clouds in the distance, circling like halos that hover above the mountain peaks of Ama Dablam in the eastern Himalayan range.
With her arms raised high above her head, Ann reaches into the vastness of a purplish-gray wintry sky. Her fingertips are spread, stretched wide, pointing upward into the atmosphere.
After months of staring at this image, I recognized a reverence I hadn’t seen before. It was as if Ann were praying, thanking the heavens for her good fortune—to be alone there, amidst nature, surrounded by the overwhelming beauty of snowy mountains as far as the eye could see.
With the sun gleaming through my office windows, I stood from my chair and raised my arms above my head, copying Ann’s pose. I said thank you out loud to no one and “no-thing” in particular.
I bolstered my hope. I waited. The exercise returned zero results. Like the gratitude journal before, I felt detached from my mission. What was I supposed to feel when I gave thanks?
Unlike last time, I refused to give up. I remained motivated. I committed to the practice. Each day upon entering my office, I reached out to the Universe, raising my arms to say thank you.
Again, I was confronted by the familiar protective layer around my heart. With my eyes closed, I asked questions. Where is gratitude? Is it in my heart? Is gratitude all around me?
The saying “fake it till you make it” might explain what happened. After weeks of simply raising my arms to say thank you, a type of miracle occurred.
My mind went blank. My questions about gratitude slipped away. A warm sense settled through me, the way a smooth shot of whiskey soothes.
A vision appeared. I saw a large slate gray metal cage wrapped around my heart. As I watched, the door flung open. Then the entire cumbersome contraption vanished.
Stunned, I observed my heart, revealed for the first time—crimson, large, and bright—beating exposed and free. I wondered if the cage would return. It didn’t. I expected to feel vulnerable with a heart so unprotected. But that didn’t happen either.
My heart continued to pump. Its new healthy status in my chest felt natural—more natural than the safety I had wrapped it in for far longer.
The image of Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge came into view. I had never read the book, A Christmas Carol, but had seen countless movie versions, and each had been fixed in my imagination since childhood.
Three ghosts visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve after he falls asleep. One, in particular, takes him back to his childhood that is filled with hardship and disappointment. The sad memories transform his heart from one of bitterness to love and compassion. Like Scrooge, I also remembered why I had closed my heart in the first place.
I learned at an early age that an open, expecting, vulnerable heart gets hurt. As a child, I experienced disappointment from doctors and my parents, who all promised I would be better off after surgery to equalize my leg lengths. The trauma of that surgery and other failed surgical attempts left scars, not only on the operated leg but on my young loving heart.
That heart—the one I came into this world with, the one with all its caring purpose—was battered and bruised. I protected her.
Although I know of people who became more loving when they were denied love as a child, I became cautious, unable to trust that others had my best interests at heart. This left me cynical and emotionally distant, not just from others but from myself as well.
I spent years unable to greet friends with a smile instead of a wary eye. My gratitude practice, like Scrooge’s ghosts, changed my view.
Gratitude is a memory of connectedness that opens hearts and feeds your soul.
Guidance’s words ring true for me. When I say “thank you,” and I do it quite often these days, my heart softens and once again I allow gratitude’s oceanic power of unconditional love to wash over me.
REFLECTIONS
I went from being someone who couldn’t figure out what gratitude could do for me to someone whose spiritual well-being increased due to the practice. And wouldn’t you know — when I feel grateful, my gratitude compounds.
Gratitude offers us a moment to feel one with love. With that said, there are as many ways to practice gratitude as there are ideas. So, whether you already say “thanks” or are struggling as I did, finding what works is important. Here are some suggestions.
1. Would holding a rock in your hand while saying what you’re grateful for keep gratitude close? And if so, why not keep that rock in your pocket or handbag throughout the day to stay humble to all that gratitude offers you.
2. Would writing or reciting a gratitude prayer before going to bed at night or before getting out of bed in the morning aid your practice of gratitude?
3. Would reaching your arms up in the air to say “thank you” like I did help you to feel gratitude? I continue to love this ritual.
I often buy books that end up on my shelf without being read. I forget I own them. Years later, I’ll come upon one of these books collecting dust and open its pages to discover that it’s the perfect read, exactly what I needed in the moment.
Like those books, I shelved gratitude for years until the timing proved exactly right. Trust the timing that’s right for you. A grateful practice can be done hourly, daily, weekly, or whenever you remember.
There’s no right or wrong method either, just the one that’s right for you. My only hope is that you add gratitude to your spiritual practice because, as I discovered, the benefits will show themselves to you.
For fans of Tarot, I didn’t choose each card in the book based on the Tarot card’s traditional meaning. I chose each card in the book using my intuition. In the book, I reveal why I chose each card. Here is what I wrote for why I chose The World card for gratitude.
“The grace of gratitude can move any mountain we encounter.”
