Good morning!  It's Thanksgiving week here in the states, and we're very
grateful for your visit!  We wish you all the best on this wonderful
holiday that somehow gets most of an entire nation to stop what they're
doing, spend time with loved ones, and focus on gratitude and love.

The Powerful Process of Gratitude
Rhonda Byrne

Honor Life with. . . Gratitude
Iyanla Vanzant

The Missing Thanks
tom walsh

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Ray Stannard Baker

Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest person it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.

Edward Sandford Martin

Thanksgiving Day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest people, but be careful that you do not take the day and leave out the gratitude.

E.P. Powell

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.

Johannes A. Gaertner

Every morning, I do not get out of bed until I have felt the feelings of gratitude for this brand new day and all I am grateful for in my life.  Then as I get out of bed, when one foot touches the ground I say, "Thank," and "you" as my second foot touches the ground.  With each step I take on my way to the bathroom, I say "Thank you."  I continue to say and feel "Thank you" as I am showering and getting ready.  By the time I am ready for the day, I have said "Thank you" hundreds of times.

As I do this, I am powerfully creating  my day and all that it will contain.  I am setting my frequency for the day and intentionally declaring the way I want my day to go, rather than stumbling out of bed and letting the day take control of me.  There is no more powerful way to begin your day than this.  You are the creator of your life, and so begin by intentionally creating your day!

Gratitude was a fundamental part of the teachings of all the great avatars throughout history.  In the book that changed my life, The Science of Getting Rich, written by Wallace Wattles in 1910, gratitude is its longest chapter.  Every teacher featured in The Secret uses gratitude as part of his or her day.  Most of them begin their day with thoughts and feelings of gratitude.

Joe Sugarman, a wonderful man and successful entrepreneur, watched the film The Secret and contacted me.  He told me his favorite part was the gratitude process, and that his use of gratitude had contributed to all he had achieved in his life.  

It is impossible to bring more into your life if you are feeling ungrateful about what you have.  Why?  Because the thoughts and feelings you emit as you feel ungrateful are all negative emotions.  Whether it is jealousy, resentment, dissatisfaction, or feelings of "not enough," those feelings cannot bring you what you want.  They can only return to you more of what you do not want.  Those negative emotions are blocking your own good coming to you.  If you want a new car but you are not grateful for the car you have, that will be the dominant frequency you are sending out.

Be grateful for what you have now.  As you begin to think about all the things in your life you are grateful for, you will be amazed at the never-ending thoughts that come back to you of more things to be grateful for.  You have to make a start, and then the law of attraction will receive those grateful thoughts and give you more just like them.  You will have locked into the frequency of gratitude and all good things will be yours.

Someone once asked me, "When was the last last time somebody gave you something valuable and expected nothing in return?"  This person went on to say that valuable did not necessarily mean expensive.  As a matter of fact, valuable in this case meant priceless.  I really had to think about it.  Most of the things I had considered priceless, I had received from my children.  Many of these things were not even tangible.  Things they had said to me or done for me, I considered priceless, but there was usually an expectation of them receiving something in return--even if it was a thank you.  I responded that I could not remember.  As I said it, a fleeting thought passed through my mind:  "God did.  God gave you life, and you weren't required to do anything to get it, nor did he expect anything in return."  Just as the words ceased in my mind, the person talking to me said exactly the same thing.  "God did."

It makes no sense to complain about the wrapping paper when you know that there is a gift inside.  We like pretty wrapping paper, with matching bows and nice cards.  When a gift is nicely wrapped, we take our time to open it.  We don't want to mishandle the paper.  Because it looks pretty on the outside we anticipate there is something just as nice on the inside.  This is not always the case with the gifts we receive, and it certainly is not the case with the life we have received.  The experiences and conditions of life are the wrappings; they are not the essence, the invaluable gift.  Many of the things we complain about, worry about, create drama about, and fear in life are simply ugly wrapping paper.  They may not be pleasant to look at or live through, but they do not affect the essence of life.  When we think about the true meaning and value of the gift of life, the only worthy response is gratitude.  As expressed here, gratitude is more than a word or a gesture.  Being truly grateful for the gift of life must be an experience.

At the age of forty I became extremely depressed about all I had done and not done.  I was always doing something or forgetting to do something.  The minute I stopped doing one thing, I had to find something else to do.  At times, I found no satisfaction in what I had done, so I kept doing.  It is very easy to get so wrapped up in doing what you feel needs to be done that you forget to be grateful for the ability to do.  To walk.  To breathe.  To think.  These are gifts.  To see.  To hear.  To feel.  These are invaluable gifts.  Each of these gifts is an inherent element of the life we have done nothing to receive, and we are asked for nothing in return.  These gifts are so liberally bestowed upon us that there are times when we act like spoiled children.  We take our gifts for granted.  We are ungrateful.

We must learn to experience gratitude as an experience of being alive.  When we become grateful to this degree we will begin to notice the small things.  Things like the blinking of our eyes, our hair growing, our skin stretching when we move our bodies in the act of doing.  When you are grateful you listen to the beating of your heart.  You marvel at the growth of your finger- and toenails.  You acknowledge everything you have; more important, you recognize who you are.  You are a living expression of the Creator of the universe. . . .

Gratitude is a state of consciousness.  It is an experience of living in a state of joy.  I have watched the expressions on the faces of people caught in a traffic jam.  I see how irritated they become.  I watch them trying to weave in and out to get somewhere.  I often wonder how many of them are grateful to be in a car?  How many of them are grateful that they have a watch that informs them that they are about to be late?

Gratitude means living without the fear of death.  We can become so preoccupied with dying--when we will die, what we must do before we die, who will take care of this or that after we die--that we forget to live fully right now, in the moment we have.  If you choose to live in panic, drama, and fear, life will accommodate you!  It will give you exactly what is required to experience your chosen state of mind.  If you want to live peacefully, joyfully, and abundantly, you must choose to discover these experiences as often as you can, and you must be grateful for them.  My father always said, "You must want what you have before you can have what you want."  Gratitude is like a magnet that attracts more of it to itself; the more grateful you are, the more you will receive to be grateful for.

Electricity does not care if you believe in it or not.  When you want to experience light in a dark room, the only requirement is that you flip the switch.  The electric current moving through the wires does not care if you like it, if you know how it works, if you believe in its power.  The light responds to the connection of the circuits that happens when you flip the switch.  Life works the same way.  It does not care if you like it.  Life is not concerned about convincing you that it is good or abundant.  Life will not stop because you do not believe in it.  And whether you believe in life or not, you will not rust or fall apart if you stand still for five years.  The only requirement for you to live a full and valuable life is for you to flip the switch, to make the connection.  Gratitude is the connection between who and what you are and the full magnificence of life.
   

The Missing Thanks

Each year when I'm faced with creating an e-zine for Thanksgiving week, I find it an amazing struggle to find enough new and different material to fill the issue.  I call it amazing because I have a small library of my own at home, consisting of a great number of books dedicated to the concept of living life fully and getting the most out of life.  I have books about positive thinking, spiritual living, the laws of attraction, the power of prayer, and many other topics that one would think would include something about gratitude and thanks.  I have books that present 30-day and 90-day and year-long "programs" that are designed to help people live their lives more completely and deeply.

Yet there's very little in these books about Thanksgiving, about gratitude.  It seems counter-intuitive to me, since I personally can't even imagine living a full and healthy life without being grateful for the wonderful things in life, the great gifts that we all have received and continue to receive.  To me, a 30-day program that doesn't include at least one day focused on gratitude is missing perhaps the most important element of a full life.  After all, as Cicero said long ago, "A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues."  If we don't have the parent of all other virtues here in our hearts, how can we hope for those other virtues to grow strong enough to help us to make our positive contributions to the world?

The Internet is full of information of all different kinds, yet my searches for Thanksgiving material usually result in recipes and cooking instructions and tips for entertaining and dealing with relatives and houses full of people.

Perhaps I'm just disappointed because I'm not finding what I expect to find in the books and magazines and other publications.  Perhaps my own expectations of what other people should cover in their own writing are unrealistic--after all, if they don't feel that gratitude is that important, then they needn't cover it for my sake, right?  But Don Henley said something very profound in his song "My Thanksgiving":  "Now the trouble with you and me, my friend/Is the trouble with this nation/Too many blessings, too little appreciation/And I know that kind of notion--well, it just ain't cool/So send me back to Sunday school/Because I'm tired of waiting for reason to arrive/It's too long we've been living These unexamined lives."

Is it a trouble for us if we're living unexamined lives?  Is it trouble if we don't appreciate the gifts and blessings we have, if we don't feel a sense of gratitude for things like food and shelter and music and friends and family?  Experience tells us that it is.

In my own life, gratitude plays such a huge role that I'm astonished that more people don't focus on it.  Thankfulness helps me to recognize and appreciate all of the miraculous things that happen to us, with us, and around us every hour of every day.  The people I've known who don't practice "active" gratitude have been the unhappiest people I've known, who tend not to see the beauty of things and people because they take them for granted.

This Thanksgiving I want to focus on the thanks that I feel for everything in my life--even the obstacles and trials--for I know that they all go into making me the person I am.  They all are contributing to helping me grow into the person that I'm meant to be.  This world truly is full of remarkable and beautiful things that are there for all of us, from trees that give us beauty and oxygen to the people who encourage and help us and love us to the rivers that carry water to our reservoirs and water tanks and keep us alive with their precious gift.

Last year we were living in about 200 square feet of space in a motor home, and we spent almost an entire year in that space.  Living in that small space made my wife and me realize just how little we actually needed in order to live happily and healthy, and now that we live in what to us is a huge apartment, I realize just how many of the things that we have in our lives are extra blessings, things that aren't at all necessary to keep us alive, but that help to enrich our lives and make them fuller.

For all of the blessings we have--those necessary for basic survival and those that enrich our lives past the basic level--I hope to be thankful and appreciative.  If I'm not, then I'm the only one keeping my life from being enriched by gratitude, the "parent of all other virtues." 

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Iyanla Vanzant

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