The prayer is thank you. If we understand our life as our guru, then whatever comes to us is for our evolution, emancipation, and empowerment. What interferes with that posture, that paradigm, is judgement. The perception that X circumstance, Y person or Z event is tragic, harmful, toxic, wrong, shameful, embarrassing, etc., eclipses revering our life as guru, eclipses gratitude. Judgement rains down as shoulda, woulda, coulda. Comes like a hailstorm of critique, comparison, and complaint. Judgement also keeps us in the pain of a situation because it imprisons and disempowers us. Our emancipation and peace are on the other side of that because our life is always inviting us to discover—to access—more power, deeper response-ability, wider options within. To choose gratitude in the face of what comes is both brave and vulnerable. Whatever it is, we have the opportunity to raise our consciousness, to evolve, through it. In this way we also contribute to the raising and evolving of the collective consciousness. Gratitude is our portal to empowerment and emancipation.
Wonderfully stated. Gratitude - I needed to hear this today. Thank you!
Very wise, Mary, thanks!
It reminds me of Doug Good Feather, Lakota author (Think Indigenous: Native American Spirituality for a Modern World) and activist, who writes that no matter what our circumstances, gratitude is available to us:
"When we engage with the world from a place of gratitude, it’s the difference between trying to make something happen and allowing something to happen. The defining difference between effort and effortlessness is the virtue of gratitude. Why is gratitude such a core concept of joy, contentment, and well-being in our life? The ancestors tell us there are two primary reasons. The first is that a person cannot exist in a place of fear and true gratitude at the same time. The second…