On Gratitude

Have I mentioned how much I love the entire concept and feeling of being grateful? It is TRULY the secret KEY to joy. I even love the word.  Just saying the word, GRATITUDE, brings me into my heart where its energy of thankfulness fills my entire body. Gratitude is the most remarkable feeling to me.  The Grateful Heart is the heart that shines and glows; it is the heart that beats in peace.  When I'm grateful for everything I have been given, grateful for the simple gifts of life, it does not mean that I can't also want something else; it just means that what I want is what is more authentic to who I am.  Gratitude is like a washing away of the hunger. It leaves me full of light and love and satisfaction.  From this place of love and fullness, I feel Holy.  I really do. This is what I have discovered: standing beside peacefulness and happiness, there are other important things that happen when I focus on my blessings. When I am feeling grateful for what I have, all the rest of the busyness and craziness of life, and the media, and the world falls away.  When Gratitude Happiness dances in my heart, all of a sudden, I can tune into what I TRULY want and need. All the "shoulds" go away.  (You should be doing this.  You should be working on that...Why don't you have this yet? Why haven't you accomplished that yet? You should have done such and such by this age) All these wicked, internal pressures go away.  I begin to see and feel my purpose for being alive! I see how one road led to the next. I see the synchronicities.  I see the golden thread of a vocation, a calling, woven through my entire life, and how each and every step, turn, twist, fall, and rise of my path has brought me here, to this exact spot. I can see it and follow it to fulfillment when I am at peace with my life, my past, and all that the past has taught me. And when I am grateful, I can feel who I am, INSIDE.  When I feel who I am, I am in touch with my Calling.  And I remember, YES! Oh yes, I now remember the things that make me so happy, I could scream, jump on the table, fall down and die, right now, because I am so happy and I have lived, fully, doing this thing I love more than anything in the world! I remember those things and then I can get back on track doing what I most love to do.  Your calling does not feel like WORK. It feels like, THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I WAS BORN, inside you. It feels like, GOD, inside you.  It feels like, I AM HOME, inside you.