Soul

Archive for July, 2009

Count Your Blessings

 R20.00 Seminar

A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a R20.00 note. In the room of 200, he asked, “Who would like this R20 note?” Hands started going up. He said, “I am going to give this R20 to one of you but first, let me do this. He proceeded to crumple up the R20 note. He then asked, “Who still wants it?” Still the hands were up in the air. Well, he replied, “What if I do this?” And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty. Still the hands went into the air. My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth R20. Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who DO LOVE you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know, but by WHO WE ARE. You are special- Don’t EVER forget it.
“If you do not pass this on, you may never know the lives it touches, the hurting hearts it speaks to, or the hope that it can bring ..

Count your blessings, not your problems.

Practising Gratitude

Gratitude 

To start the day with an attitude of gratitude is truly a wonderful way to be.  To learn to be grateful in every moment of the day is something we all have to practise.  Gratitude is a practise.  Not because we are not inherently grateful because we are in our purest form.  But mostly because we have forgotten and need to be reminded of how good it feels to be grateful.  

There is so much to be grateful for.  I want each and every one of you to say out loud one thing that you are grateful for right now.  The interesting thing about gratitude is that we tend to be grateful for the “good’ things only.  When you express your gratitude remember to includ the challenging things about yourself, your life – especially those things that are so painful because they teach us so much.  

An excellent way to practise gratitude as a discipline is to keep a Gratitude Journal.  At the end of every day sit down and write down those things you are grateful for in the day starting with the words: 

1.  “I am grateful for…..”

2.  “I am grateful for….”

 

Head each day with the date and go for it.  And remember to be grateful for all occurrences, not just the “good” ones.  You will find that by practising this in writing it down and appreciating what happens within you and around you, you start looking for reasons to be grateful and this helps to keep you positive and change any patterns in your thinking which keep you away from patterns of ego – fear and guilt.  It also helps you to receive and give with much more ease and consciously.  By bringing gratitude to people, situations and circumstances around you, you will attract gratitude. Practise, practise, practise.

 Another form of gratitude if you are in a relationship is to have a gratitude journal between spouses.  Every evening spend time completing what you are grateful for that your spouse has done that day.  It is truly beautiful to tell someone you love how much you appreciate them and to be fed with what is appreciated in you.  And it is very positive because it keeps you relationship developing consciously.  It keeps you looking for the positives even when you are challenged by each other which we all know happens from time to time.  We will look at relationships and boundaries in a later teaching but gratitude forms a big part of taking a relationship from being an unconscious one to a conscious one.

 I encourage you to go out and buy an A4 exercise book for yourself and one for your relationship and get going with this practise.  It is one of the most important areas of developing ones consciousness because from a spiritual point of view, everything that happens is given in love and when we are grateful for this we start to see these events, thoughts etc for what they truly are – gifts to grow from.  We step out of our egos and into our hearts. 

This practise also starts bringing us back to our true nature – a one of giving and receiving with love and detachment.  By noticing all that is as it is – a gift -rather then placing a judgement on it, we find a quieter place to exist internally.