The Importance of Being Grateful

July 9, 2013 — grace, grateful, gratitude

Practice defines our reality. We spend our time and energy as if we had no control over them.  We learn what we study and we believe what favors our own superior position in the human crowd.  Nobody survives alone without help from others.  In history we chose the people who prepared our food and sewed our clothing carefully to make the most of the means at our disposal.  We used resources in the same way because they were scarce.  Most individuals were not lavished with great luxury, but if they were lucky they had liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Today we know nothing of the people who prepare our food like products or sew our disposable fashion.  We may have a vague feeling that everything we use was made in China, but that is usually the end of it. Many seek pleasure in acquisition of goods and services just to be piggy.  This general shift in responsibility is sad in a big karmic way because we have essentially eliminated the need for gratitude to those who serve our material needs.  We buy the workers and then discard them like the objects they make for us.

Gratefulness.org is an organization created to enhance gratefulness around the globe in every way.  The offers and courses are imaginative and very helpful.  One can study on line everything from gratitude poetry writing to living the hours like a monastic.  Given the international state of affairs I salute the Gratefulness organization for addressing the main problems right at the root.  If you have not visited these grateful folks and discovered what they are teaching, you are missing an opportunity to be guided to a more grateful state of mind.  Grace is gratitude, gentle reader; don’t leave home without it.