Be Warned – It’s Contagious! Gratitude!

God’s beautiful, pure and clean flowing waters are falling from the skies today.

Crystal beads sit like polka dots on my windows as I gaze beyond them to a magnificent huge sky of variegated shades of grey and white.  I love the way these shades and shapes are shifting and gliding along, bringing what others may call a dreary sky, to life.

Small wisps of grey “cottonwool” become tiny dancing figures, a horse’s proud silhouette, a beautiful woman’s profile, and then the shape of a court jester.

I then gaze down at the greenness below. Tiny points stretch like eager children raising their arms above their heads, receiving life giving water and showing gratitude with vivid verdancy.

This sight fills me with love.  You may ask, what do you love about this sight?”

Let me explain.  The kind of love I feel is a warm, happy, mellow, peaceful, forgiving, almost singing in my head, kind of feeling. It is not specifically aimed towards a particular person or thing, but seems to radiate from my warm breath as I inhale and exhale slowly.

It seems to me that it is coming from a part of me that is so innermost that even my heart cannot fully contain this wonderful sensation.  My heart and soul combine with such primal force that I, as a mere human being, sit in silence and awe of this encompassing feeling.  That is, Gratitude.

To be grateful means thankful. Thankful for something and thankful to someone.

It is easy to be thankful for a gift.  However there are many people in the world who have never experienced this.

There are also some who cannot or do not know that feeling of gratitude even then.

Words of thanks come from the inner pure self, and yet they can be locked away or tainted with impurities as they reach the mouth.

It is not my purpose here to explain such things of the world.  I am writing here of my experiences in the hope that my darling little ones, and in fact all my readers (for which I am very grateful), may glean some kind of positive notion of the wonderful word which is not used very often by the world at large.

To look upwards and be mentally and spiritually lost in an endlessly glorious blue sky with warm glowing sunshine, to hear and see nature all around, one might say it is easy to feel gratitude.  For me it is, anyway. I am saddened to say that in reality, it’s my opinion that the world (generally speaking) does not even raise their collective heads to see that blue vastness, let along feel gratitude for its beauty.

Before I start sounding insensitive to the many people who suffer in extreme poverty and horrific conditions, I offer my prayers to the One Power, who I believe loves us all and has a place of comfort for all of us after earthly constraints are transcended.

I am grateful every day for my fortunate life, where true struggle is a stranger to me. As I ponder my new life unfolding, I also look back on what has happened beforehand and notice my memories of so-called struggling. Emotional struggling and fear were my burdens.

My newfound daily ritual of welcoming the day is to listen silently or sometimes allow the words to float out as I exhale, with that which comes from my heart and soul.  Gratitude.

Daily life in general does not lend itself easily to idyllic leisure where sky gazing and gratitude can be given their utmost attention time-wise.  Yet I find even on work days and chore days I can feel gratitude for having my needs met with money to feed myself and a roof over my head.

I you think hard enough, you can always find something for which to be grateful. A cliché, but true.

I now feel gratitude for those struggles that led me to this point in my life. To have everything perfect and easy does not bring forth those     soul- deep emotions of non-ego driven gratitude, I believe.

So, as I go back to my Sunday sky pondering and notice my window now entirely covered in those clear polka dots, I leave you with the reason and purpose behind all my gratitude.

Positive Happiness!  We all want to be happy.  My happiness, I have discovered, comes from the day starting with gratitude.  Simple.  I leave home with a smile and therefore I receive a smile, a nod or a greeting in return.  Imagine a world where everyone did that! My gratitude seems to build through the day, as I say Thankyou (to that great Power of the Universe) for that nod, smile and greeting, or whatever it may be.

Be warned though –  Gratitude brings happiness that is contagious.