This week is Thanksgiving in the US. For the last few years, the whole month of November has been transformed by many people into a period of expressing thankfulness. I’ve really enjoyed reading posts on Facebook that are part of the “30 Days of Thankfulness” meme; it’s nice to read what other people are thankful for, and often it reminds me what I’m thankful for myself.
With all this thankfulness churning about, I want to make sure that we’re not missing the key ingredient that could put this appreciation to work for us: the feeling.
There are words like “thankfulness” and “appreciation” that we could throw around interchangeably to mean “identifying something that we’re happy exists.” But there’s only one word that gets to the breadth and the depth of feeling that can accompany this identification: gratitude.
Gratitude isn’t just a mental exercise; it’s an emotional experience. If you’ve ever been so happy and thankful that you’re at a loss for words, that’s gratitude. It’s an emotional experience so deep that it incapacitates your mental abilities for a moment or two.
Gratitude is a feeling that’s so strong, it’s no surprise to hear that it’s one of the most powerful energies you can create for manifesting. The Teachings of Abraham mention it all the time: To manifest or change something, get yourself into state of gratitude for anything – not even necessarily the thing you want to create – and you will naturally release the resistance that keeps it from coming into being.
Because gratitude is such a powerful, creative, uplifting emotion, let’s take full advantage of this Thanksgiving opportunity to create change in our lives. Not because we want to turn this special holiday into a selfish rampage of material manifestation, but because gratitude is a mindset we could be living in most of the time – that would help us feel happy most of the time – and this is a good time to be reminded of that.
So this week, and any other time that you’re listing the things that you’re thankful for, take a few extra moments to experience the emotional side of it:
For each thing (or situation or person) that you’re thankful for, pause to picture it in your mind and then feel in your heart how grateful you truly are.
Let those feelings fill your heart, and sit with them for a minute or more.
Imagine that those feelings are spreading into every cell of your body and out into every atom of this world and the universe, intending that everyone and everything could experience the depth of gratitude that you’re feeling at that moment.
Your turn
What are you grateful for today? What absolutely fills your heart with love and gratitude until it spills over into the universe? Take a moment to sit in that gratitude, and then share with the rest of us in the comments below.