Gratitude By Lazaris As a child you were taught to say thank you when it meant something and when it didn't. The words can tumble out of your mouth automatically. Therefore, you may assume feeling gratitude will be just as easy. Perhaps the word is as easy to say, but the feeling is more intricate to feel. On your Sacred Journey, feeling gratitude can mean everything—just saying it, however, has no importance whatsoever. What is gratitude? Here is another concept defined in the metaphysical you know tradition. Everyone knows the word, everyone knows it's important, but very few really know what it means. We have spent hours exploring and unfolding the details and the subtlety of gratitude. Its power still lies untouched. Its depth is still unfathomed. As part of your Sacred Journey, begin by realizing that gratitude is thankfulness. It is thankfulness to those who have helped you create your own reality. It is thankfulness to yourself and to your awareness, to your worth. It is being thankful for the value you are willing to feel. Gratitude is also being thankful that you were willing to create and willing to receive the love your seen and Unseen Friends continuously offer you. Even if you were only willing to let it in for a moment, be grateful. Gratitude is more than thankfulness. It is also feeling joy. Happiness is the fulfillment of your needs. When you have a place that you can call your home and feel is your home, when you can work and be financially responsible, when you can engage your brain and mind in thinking about a future to unfold, then you are happy. Joy is the fulfillment of your preferences. Joy is the feeling of peace and tranquillity that your home provides. The productivity—the learning and understanding about yourself and about those with whom you interact while working—contains the joy in your career. The joy is what turns a job into a career. Joy is being able to dream Dreams that do not ever have to manifest. Gratitude is feeling joyful. Gratitude also involves spontaneity. To be thankful, to be joyous, is not enough. To be spontaneously thankful and spontaneously filled with joy—that's gratitude. If you have to think about it—if you have to remind yourself to feel it—you may be on the way, but you are not there yet. Gratitude is a powerful tool. If you will allow yourself to feel grateful, your processing and programming can work immeasurably better. Your success can be exponential. The stuff of life can improve markedly. As you feel grateful about what you have, you start having more things about which to feel that gratitude. When you are using a reality creation technique that just does not seem to work, look at your level of gratitude. One of the major reasons people do not let the techniques work is that they do not want to feel grateful. There are many of you who will directly and indirectly sabotage yourselves just so you do not have to feel or accidentally end up feeling grateful. Think about it. You have come across a particular reality creation technique, and it works! Excitedly you use the technique, and eagerly you celebrate the ensuing successes. Then, strangely and without warning, you just stop. You forget to use the programming method. You just stop. This has happened to you many times. Often the reason has to do with guilt. You feel guilty because it's so easy. More often it is reluctance to feel grateful. It is amazing to watch people totally shut down successful realities just to avoid gratitude. Gratitude is powerful. If the resistance to or fear of it can shut down your entire reality, imagine what embracing it could do! So, why? Why are people afraid of gratitude? There are several reasons. Many are afraid of being used, feeling that if they are grateful then they are beholden, and therefore can be used. Others fear hurt: They have felt thankful and have given away their power to the source of their gratitude only to be disappointed and hurt. They have silently decided, Never again. Still others fear appearing weak. They assume that if I am grateful to you, then you have done something I did not or could not do for myself. You are stronger, I am weaker. Similarly, some are angry at the idea of gratitude; some hate feeling grateful. In fact, they do not really hate it. Gratitude makes some people feel needy. They do not hate gratitude: They hate needing. Another resistance to gratitude results from the consequences of feeling it. When you feel grateful, it is really difficult also to blame and be righteous. It's impossible to feel self-pity. You just cannot be a victim, and martyrhood is impossible when you feel grateful. You see, gratitude is a way of feeling love. You cannot feel love and self-pity at the same time. The two are mutually exclusive. However, when given a choice to feel self-pity or love, sadly, many will still choose self-pity. To them, gratitude is an enigma. It is also very difficult to feel better than and to feel gratitude—though some have managed, with adroit mental gymnastics, to do so. Those of you who still want to be vindicated by reliving your past will not allow yourselves to feel grateful. Gratitude is an adult emotion that is felt spontaneously now. Finally, many fear gratitude because it means there is something or someone out there that is more than they are. Many want to think they are all that is because it is too frightening to consider that there just might be more out there than you know. Some go so far as to assert that they are the fullness and totality of God, just so they do not have to deal with the something and someone more who is out there. When you feel grateful to a friend, you are admitting that they are more than you—not better than you, just more than you at that spontaneous moment when they acted in such a way as to produce the bubbling up of gratitude in you. Many confuse more than with better than. Perhaps that is because the consensus reality thinks that if some is good, more is better. The two are worlds apart. The fear of something more increases when you feel grateful to your Unseen Friends—counselors, guides, guardian angels, your Future Self, your Spiritual Self, your Soul and your Higher Self. There are many Unseen Friends. Some say the spiritual path is a lonely path. Only if your path is one of hate and alienation is it lonely. If your path is filled with love, filled with doingness from giving to caring so as to produce the beingness from security to knowing, then the spiritual path is crowded indeed! So many do not want to admit or deal with that unseen world. They run from gratitude because they do not want to admit or deal with a Love that just may be more than theirs. We are a nonphysical entity, a consciousness without form, a spark of light, and a spark of love. We have never been physical. That is hard for people. First, there is a certain egocentricity that says, If I am physical, then everyone is. Certain people who live in California and in New York are shocked to hear that there is a world east of the Sierras and west of the East River. They are even more alarmed to realize that there are some of you who have no desire whatsoever to go to California or New York. They cannot believe that there are some people—there are those who actually exist—who have no intention of ever living in either place. It is startling! Well, in similar fashion, there are those who have never been physical and have, likewise, no desire ever to do so. We are one. Secondly, it is difficult because our existence says there is more out there than you know. There really is a something and someone more out there. The fact of our existence says there just might be a God/Goddess/All That Is out there, too. There just might be a God/Goddess/All That Is who loves me, who knows my name. Not that we are that. No, but our existence makes the reality of God/Goddess/All That Is more possible, more real. Those who fear or resist gratitude also find us difficult to accept. They find a living, breathing, loving, and embracing God/Goddess/All That Is even more difficult. It would have been much easier, we suppose, to say that we once lived in Atlantis or Lemuria, or that we were a great monk somewhere high in the Himalayan Mountains. You could not verify that information, either. It would have been easier to make it so the Channel's body would walk around with eyes open. We suppose we could have just mimicked the Channel altogether and let everyone think we were he. Any and all of these things would have made our message more digestible—would have made us more appealing to the consensus reality. The problem is that we have this quirky think about honesty: We always insist upon it. Also, part of why we are here is to remind you that there is a God/Goddess/All That Is who loves you and whom you love more than you have been willing to admit. Despite the hurt, you do love. Further, the reality of us reminds you about gratitude. Both feeling gratitude and being grateful are integral parts of your Sacred Journey. Always remember: Gratitude is not a requirement of God/Goddess/All That Is. Gratitude is gift. It is a beautiful tool of your growth. It is a powerful force on your Journey Home—on your Sacred Journey. With love & peace. Lazaris 1987,1993 Concept: Synergy & NPN Publishing, Inc.
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From the book The Sacred Journey: You and Your Higher Self, by Lazaris. To be placed on Lazaris' mailing list to receive notification about seminars and new tape releases, please call or write Concept: Synergy, 407/642-2399, PO Box 3285, Palm Beach, FL 33480. | 
