On Gratitude

I have a lot to be grateful for lately. I've found myself in my car doing a lot of thanking. Although I have no real clear idea of exactly who or what it is I'm expressing my gratitude to, I feel compelled to send it out anyways. It makes me feel like I have more control over my life than I once thought. I grew up thinking that if I was worthy enough, good things would come my way. Although this belief isn't necessarily flawed, for me it proved futile. I never felt worthy enough & spent the majority of my youth feeling guilty.

I'm realizing now though, that in a round about way that old way of thinking is the same way I'm thinking now, just with a different spin. I know I deserve good things, I know I deserve to be happy and I know for sure that if I focus on good, good has to come. Weather that good comes from the God of my youth, or the part of God that is within me, within us all, it's the same thing. I'm sure of it. Gratitude has taught me that in some way we all speak the same language, but we get so incredibly hung up on the semantics of it all that we tangle ourselves in unhappiness. When I was young, I'd pray, but part of me never really believed I deserved anything I was praying for. Because I didn't believe I deserved it, it never manifested into anything. Prayer wasn't flawed, my head was. Some people talk about sending thoughts out into the universe, and in turn the universe would reflect the energy you put out. Send out positive, get positive, send out negative, receive negative. If you tell yourself a story often enough it comes true. This is what I believe to be a universal truth that runs below every form of religion and spiritual practice weather we realize it or not. The book "The Secret" brought this fundamental truth to the masses, but the the "Secret" was always the secret. Way way waayyyyy before it was talked about.

I know a girl who is deathly afraid of spiders. She sought out help in the form of a counselor to overcome this fear. As they were talking it over a spider dropped down square in front of her, hanging from its single string of silk. If that's not manifesting a fear for the purpose of healing, than I don't know what is. She put out FEAR, FEAR, Spider Fear and what do you know? That damn spider showed up and forced her to confront her fear head on.

I guess what I'm saying is that when it comes down to the core of it all, of existence, we're all the same. Whether you find your path through Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Scientology or are a Jehovah's Witness, we're all the same even though on the surface it looks very very different. Amazing what a little gratitude can do.