How does honesty jibe with gratitude? I have always been a very grateful person. I notice and give thanks for all I have; family, home, businesses, Love, friends, freedom etc. But I have not always extended gratitude for pain, or discomfort or apparent lack. I certainly have not extended gratitude for the pain or terror or loss experienced by those I love. So how do honesty and gratitude work together?
Honesty includes all in gratitude. Gratitude is always honest.
In other words, I do not have to choose or figure out or (God forbid) strain to think of something to be grateful for. I can allow gratitude free reign. This is part of honesty’s great gift, unconditional gratitude. When and as I am becoming more comfortable with honesty I am finding that my gratitude for everything is becoming more apparent. My gratitude is actually always present, I just don’t always notice this. I can be grateful for both walking and my pouchy tummy. I can be grateful for my generosity and having exactly what I do (or do not have) in my purse. I can extend honest gratitude for someone being in a state of upset that I caused (or invited some how) because this is what is in front of me. This is what is now. It is beginning to dawn on me that my own fear of being left out (after all this is why I believed in Jesus when I was age four; to not be left out of Heaven) is some sort of alarm bell to ultimately awaken in my that NOW is what is being left out when I leave out gratitude and awareness. I am here now. If I leave me out, I AM not fully here now, am I?
It is enough to extend honesty and gratitude and be here now. What else could I need? What else could you need? Pause and close your eyes and breathe deeply into this truth. You are here now. Be honest and grateful for your own Self. Breathe again. And breathe again. Now open your eyes gently and give thanks for everything good and bad, happy and sad, simple and complicated. It is here now and so are you.
Thank you. Thank you.
