Love, Respect & Gratitude

 

I feel love, respect, appreciation, and gratitude

for my teachers Pamela Wilson & Jac O'Keeffe

who have loved, guided, and encouraged me for many years.

And as I sat with my feelings they expanded to include

my Sufi teachers,

and Diamond Approach teachers,

and non-dual teachers,

and dozens of other teachers who offered personal guidance,

and others, both known and unknown

who supported me

in this journey of self-discovery.

 

I feel love, respect, appreciation, and gratitude

for the wide variety of spiritual teachings that I've been introduced to;

theistic or non-theistic, eastern or western,

ordinary and extraordinary, ancient or modern

and their many representatives who support

and guide us with writings or recordings, prayers or meditations. 

All have contributed to my greater understanding.

 

I feel love, respect, appreciation, and gratitude

for the great lineages and religions,

for philosophers, sages, saints,

gurus, mystics, shamans and the like that produced for us

exemplars for the great range of possible human experiences.

I have learned from them all.

 

I feel love, respect, appreciation, and gratitude

for my parents, friends, and family.

For Kathy, my love, support, and fellow student for 50+ years

For our sangha, our community of spiritual friends

and students, who treasure and support each other in their

shared experiences of joy and suffering, confusion and clarity, 

love and misunderstanding. Learning together we are all,

as Ram Dass said, “just walking each other home.”

 

I feel love, respect, appreciation, and gratitude

to be reminded of our humanity and compassion for those who 

suffer the most. The confused or damaged souls, the victims 

of injustice, the outcasts, the unloved, the contrarians, 

and for those who suffer helplessly with them. 

We need these reminders of our shared oneness.

 

I feel love, respect, appreciation, and gratitude

for aging, infirmity, and death,

the untethering from our bodies,

as reminders of our true selves,

and the lessons that life provides.

And the mystery,

the ultimate unknown,

the surrounding darkness,

the ultimate invitation.
~ Dick

                                                               Quotes













 

Gratitude opens your heart, and opening your heart is a wonderful and easy way for God to slip in. 

~ Ram Dass

 

If you can just appreciate each thing, one by one, then you will have pure gratitude. Even though you observe just one flower, that one flower includes everything

~ Shunryu Suzuki

 

Stop, just for a moment, and consider this: You've been given another day on this earth. This day is to be honoured. 

Let your heart break into a million pieces today, if it wants to. Allow yourself to cry today, if tears come. Feel vulnerable today, if vulnerability visits. Allow all of life to move through you.

A taste. A glance. A breath. The touch of a loved one's hand. The vibrantly alive and familiar upsurge of joy or pain. This is a day of gratitude for the smallest and most 'insignificant' of happenings, even for those which seem unworthy of your gratitude. 

This is not just 'another' day. This is your first day, and your last day. Your only day. Your longed-for day of grace.

~ Jeff Foster

 

Gratefulness for what is there is one of the most powerful tools for creating what is not yet there. What does gratefulness mean? It means you appreciate what is. You value, you give attention to, you honor whatever is here at this moment.

~ Eckhart Tolle

 

The nature of gratitude lies quiet in your heart. If you do not think of being grateful, it does not make itself known.

~ Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati

 

Our entire experience of life can either be centred in love or in fear. Love is the true nature of all creation. Everything is created from, through and for love. Love is the vibration of our being as a whole, as the infinite power of the universe. Fear is the opposite.

Our whole human experience is about this. It is about us awakening from our illusions (fears) and rediscovering love. This means we will use our life experiences in two primary ways: to remember love (to receive love) and to create with love (to give love).

If you want to feel truly content and satisfied in life, then gratitude is the key. It is impossible to feel lack when you are feeling gratitude. This is because gratitude puts you in the mindset of acknowledging what you do have. When you are in gratitude, you are focused on having, not on what is missing. This generates a strong sub-conscious energy association of fullness and wholeness.

Once you start looking at the things you can give thanks for, you will discover an almost endless space is available in your heart for gratitude.

~ Keira

 

One way I see our situation is that creation or the universe is like a tree. Love is the flowers of the tree, and the human being is the final fruit of the tree, the final fruit of creation. The thick nectar of the ripe fruit is gratitude. Gratitude for how things are, gratitude for being vulnerable, gratitude that you can be completely influenceable. Gratitude for being human.

~ A.H. Almaas

 

When gratitude replaces judgment, peace spreads throughout your body, gentleness embraces your soul, & wisdom fills your mind.

~ Neale Donald Walsch

 

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

~ Meister Eckhart

 

Gratitude goes beyond the 'mine' and 'thine' and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.

~ Henri Nouwen

 

Thankfulness brings you to the place where the Beloved lives.

~ Rumi

 

You sanctify whatever you are grateful for.

~ Anthony de Mello

 

I have lived large parts of my life in wonderful circumstances that I utterly failed to appreciate. Reasons to be happy were everywhere, but somehow I didn't connect with them. It was as though I was eating but couldn't taste the food. Finally, I've learned to celebrate the good while it's happening. I feel gratitude and praise today for what are sometimes such simple pleasures. I have learned that happiness is not determined by circumstances. Happiness is not what happens when everything goes the way you think it should go; happiness is what happens when you decide to be happy.

~ Marianne Williamson

 

Adopt an attitude of gratitude.today. Give thanks for what you see as good and give thanks for pain also. Where there is gratitude, resistance to what is lessens proportionately.

~ Jac O’Keeffe

 

The root of joy is gratefulness...It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.

~ David Steindl-Rast

 

When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect toward others.

~ Dalai Lama

 

The grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

~ Thomas Merton

 

One regret dear world, that I am determined not to have when I am lying on my deathbed is that I did not kiss you enough.

~ Hafez

 

Gratitude is the Supreme Master of emotions. It washes away fear. It fills the hole of selfishness. It is the light in the darkness, the dispeller of doom, the bringer of now. In the warm glow of gratitude the world is complete in this moment.

The peace that comes with gratitude is seductive. When it inevitably slips away, the memory of it fills us with longing. It becomes fuel for the False Sense of Authorship.

"Gratitude is the key. I know it. I should be grateful.," says the inner voice.

If it is a particularly bad day a friend or relative will echo the sentiment: "You should count your blessings! Look at how much better you have it than......fill in the blank,

- Someone in the hospital

- Someone in a war torn country - Someone without enough to eat

All of which is probably true but gratitude can be elusive. Sometimes no amount of SHOULDS (external or internal) and no lengthy gratitude lists are sufficient to bring it back. We are revealed as being powerless in this as in all things.

Such a moment, though initially painful, may be an opportunity to realize that gratitude (as with everything else) is a matter of Grace. The ultimate irony being that with this realization comes gratitude!

May it find you now!

~ Wayne Liquorman

 

Gratitude opens the door to... the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe. You open the door through gratitude.

~ Deepak Chopra

 

A person however learned and qualified in his life's work in whom gratitude is absent, is devoid of that beauty of character which makes personality fragrant.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

 

I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.

~ Helen Keller

 

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars… and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.

~ Osho

 

Gratitude is a sacred space where you allow and know that a force greater than 

 your ego is always at work and always available.

~ Wayne Dyer

​

Wear gratitude like a cloak, and it will feed every corner of your life.

~ Rumi

 

There is always something to be grateful for. Pure love has no conditions or boundaries. Love does not restrain itself or hold back. Love gives all the time and doesn't ask for anything in return. Love is a continuous flow without any limits. And all of this is inside you.

~ Rhonda Byrne

​

In order to be happy we must first possess inner contentment; and inner contentment doesn't come from having all we want; but rather from wanting and appreciating being grateful for all we have.

~ Dalai Lama

​

A man becomes a Buddha the moment he accepts all that life brings with gratitude.

~ Osho

 

The easiest way I have found to humble myself back into a state of peaceful grace is through the act of gratitude.

~ Jill Bolte Taylor

 

As I express my gratitude, I become more deeply aware of it. And the greater my awareness, the greater my need to express it. What happens here is a spiraling ascent, a process of growth in ever expanding circles around a steady center.

~ David Steindl-Rast

 

[Be grateful for the simple things in life. Don't take them for granted. After all...] What would a blind man give to see the pleasant rivers and meadows and flowers and fountains; and this and many other like blessings we enjoy daily. 

~ Izaak Walton
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