The Heart of the Matter

Articles, reflections, and ideas about spiritual awakening, conscious relationships, self-awareness, personal growth, creativity, community, inspired service, and more.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Happy Thanksgiving!

I’d like to wish all of you from the U.S. a wonderful and meaningful Thanksgiving Day. To those of you who aren’t in countries that celebrate Thanksgiving today, I urge you to consider contemplating gratefulness and appreciation today anyway.

Thanksgiving is much more than just a holiday with loads of food, parades, and sharing with people we love. It’s really about gratefulness - gratefulness for all the things have gone our way, but also for the people and circumstances that are our challenges.

Nancy and Jim Rosemergy tell us: “Thankfulness is one of the great avenues of God’s presence and power. When we give thanks, a door opens through which Spirit can do Its work.”Giving thanks is a choice. It’s easy to give thanks when we like what happens, but we can also choose to be thankful any time under any circumstances. As Nancy and Jim said, doing this opens a door that allows us to follow a path to change in our lives. It may not seem easy or natural to give thanks in the face of challenges, but it is a practice that can be cultivated and one that will lead to magnificent changes.

And so I give thanks for all the people I care about, for all the people who care about me, for everyone who has helped me in any way, especially for Antoinette and all she’s contributed to me in a multitude of forms, for all my learning and awakening and growth, for my home, for my job, for my income, for the car I drive, for my computers, for the opportunities I’ve been given, for my fabulous experiences acting in “Into the West” and “Bordertown,” for the people at Capitol High School who allowed me to do a long-term substitute job teaching AVID and English, for the food I eat, and for so much more.

But I also give thanks for having trigeminal neuralgia, for the healing I know is coming, and for the blessings I know are coming from it; for my break-up with Antoinette, for still being friends with her, and for the blessings I know are coming from that; for my less than abundant flow of money, for the abundance I know is flowing to me now, and for the blessings I know I'm receiving by not having lots of money; for the challenge of seeking again for the woman of my dreams, for knowing that the right woman is coming into my life, and for the blessings I know are coming as a result of my search; and, of course, for all my other challenges in life.

I invite you to join me in sitting down and consciously and intentionally writing down all the things you appreciate and also the challenges you have and whatever gratitude you can choose to have for them.

But, beyond that, I urge you to join me in just choosing to be grateful for life and for whatever comes, knowing that somehow, whether we recognize how or not, everything is either for our highest benefit or else is leading to our highest benefit.

Thank you everyone, and thank You, God.

May we all use this time of giving thanks to grow and to open our hearts.

In abundant gratitude,
Michael