Gratitude, Sentiment or Central?

Above, is my friend Matt.  He was working an overnight shift at a twenty-four hour cafe when I snapped this shot.  Let me tell you he was grateful for that clove cigarette when he was smoking it, even though it was the middle of winter in Michigan, freezing and damp.  Since, he has quit the habit of smoking and is thankful for much more in life.  Matt is a good friend of mine, and not only do I admire him, I am grateful for him and endebted to him. Gratitude, is it a sentiment, or central to our spiritual wellbeing?  

I believe the more gratitude speaks in our lives, the less we have to really say.  Should gratitude be a passing senitment in our experience, we have lost a guiding force.  Therefore, it follows that gratitude is central to our spritual well being. We may act out of gratitude, we may feel grateful and we are grateful for things.  But do we know gratitude? Do we understand gratitude? Spiritually speaking, gratitude is the forces of kindness, compassion, love, understading, humility, tolerance, faith, acceptance, fortitude, guidance, teachability, honor, trust and decency working together to conjure a manifestation of true feeling or emotion in the workings of human kind.

Humility and humbleness aid us in our mission to understand gratitude.  Here in this 7 billion + human race we sometimes enjoy taking advantage of each other.  This is the opposite of gratitude. Imagine the following: I am your friend.  I follow you through you darkest moments and days of revelry.  We have much to be grateful for.  Then I start to lie, I steal from you, I use you vainly and for the sole intent of personal gain.  All of the spirituality between us has vanished in a cloud of resentment.  All because I took the friendship for granted.  I discounted it.  I took advantage of you and your good nature, and our firendship. Gratefullness is something that is know in Human-ness.  We experience gratitude on a daily basis but, I feel we overlook it.  Just like the above story.  We assume all the good in our lives will always be good and the bad will just fix itself.  

Gratitude is one of those things where we misplace it until we really need it most. Today’s assignment?  I suggest that we all compile a gratitude list of things that we are grateful for in our lives today.  Should you wish, compile it in the comment section of this blog post and I will start one now. I am grateful for another day. I am grateful for my mistakes, flaws and character defects as they are my biggest liability and best teachers. I am grateful for my work. I am grateful for oneconsciousness.org I am grateful for you. I am grateful for life. That is a short list but I don’t want to tie up all your time with my gratitudes.  

However, should you make a daily meditation on gratitudes, you will carry around a lot less resentment toward  yourself and others.  By keeping gratitude central we may push out the unwanted or unhealthy spiritual properities.