Article for New Vision, The Hamblin Trust magazine
There are times in life when we go through varying experiences which affect us deeply. Some of these experiences are joyful and our hearts leap in pure happiness. Other experiences can be painful and we feel almost like drawing wings around us for comfort and protection. With the joyful experiences it would be quite natural that we should equally leap with thankfulness at the occurrence. Would it occur to us that we should also perhaps be thankful for the painful experience? I guess not many of us would leap with joy when faced with a traumatic and painful experience for either ourselves or loved ones. Yet, at a deep soul level, perhaps we should be thankful that we have been given an opportunity to go through a deeply stressful experience which would have a major significance on our spiritual unfoldment and development. It’s much easier to recognise and give thanks for the things of the flesh but perhaps we don’t always recognise the gifts of the spirit.
It is natural to give thanks when gifts are presented to us, especially when it comes from the heart. But most importantly we have also the gifts of the spirit which every lifetime gives us the opportunity to unfold and develop. I wonder how many of us are aware of these beautiful spiritual gifts lying deep within our inner being, just waiting for us to recognise them. To give thanks and gratitude is a special spiritual gift.
I suspect that each day many of us have occasions when we are truly thankful for little mercies. So many things to be grateful for in life and it’s not difficult to recognise this. How often do we give thanks for just being? Just to be. To be. Our minds may question ‘to be what’? If we meditate and contemplate often enough we will experience a moment when we have gone deep within and we encounter a sense of stillness, of nothing else except a sense of ‘being’. It is almost as if time has stood still. This is our moment of grace, our moment of thanks for ‘simply being’. Whatever the outward appearances or experiences, nothing can take this moment from us. In this moment we are ONE with all life. In this moment we embrace all that IS.
When we enter that ONENESS with all life, we have entered the realm of the spirit. When we have the recognition that life itself is a gift, a ‘gratitude’; to be grateful for life itself; to be grateful for all that life has given us, whether joy or pain, is moving into the realm of the Divine. This is the I AM and in this consciousness we express our thanks for ‘being’. No words are necessary, no outward expression but simply awareness of wholeness. We are simply ONE.
As Henry Thomas Hamblin says in his Article on Gratitude:
‘When the soul enters into union with the Divine it enjoys the consciousness of its Lord’.
