GRATITUDE MONTH: DAY 9: “I truly believe we can either see the connections, celebrate them, and express gratitude for our blessings, or we can see life as a string of coincidences that have no meaning or connection. For me, I’m going to believe in miracles, celebrate life, rejoice in the views of eternity and hope my choices will create a positive ripple effect in the lives of others. This is my choice.” ― Mike Ericksen
This is another new quote for me today. I love it very much…I am of like mind here. And I love the idea that our celebration of all of life has a ripple effect that touches others.
I have been talking about and teaching gratitude practice for many years. I torture my sponsees with asking them to do a daily list. Few, if any of them, have ever maintained any type of long-term practice. I guess I get the stubborn ones…lol…resistance!
Yesterday in a meeting, a fairly new young man shared that he was happy he had led the meeting four months ago, because he chose the topic of Gratitude and I talked to him after the meeting and told him to practice writing a daily list every morning to see if it helped his day. He has done this every day since and LOVES it. How much do I LOVE this kid?
I love seeing the connections and the patterns and the relatedness of life. I am astonished by the natural world and its many crazy patterns and the way things seemingly unrelated are attached. Most of my heroes are persons who are deeply involved with social movement, spiritual matters, or nature. John Muir said that “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
That has been my experience in so many arenas in this life. I see the miraculous in every encounter with others I get to have. I tell these stories so that others may see the miraculous as well. Our insistence, as addicts, on focusing on what is negative and hurtful is no friend for any of us.
The view that we can move our eyes away from that is a great thing! We truly can learn to see life with a new pair of glasses, as Chuck C. taught so beautifully. It is sad that so few members read his lovely words any more. They were SO important for me in those early days around here. I am grateful.
When we throw unconditional love out into the Universe, we are blessed with plenty of it coming back to us in ways that are truly healing and miraculous. I have received tremendous gifts from the most surprising places on this journey. How can I not be grateful for those?
And the more I resonate with thankfulness and gratitude, the better I see life; and the better it actually becomes. Some of you reading this are aware of some of my struggles in the last 30 years or so. And you can testify to the fact that it always turns around when I let my attitude shift into the proper gear.
This includes A LOT of financial insanity, jobs, death, health, and every aspect of my life. I am grateful to these teachers and grateful that I get to manifest healing and solutions. The greatest gift is that of continued recovery, which is, by far, the gift I most cherish.
And there are times when I am overcome by what is happening. It is not like I get a free space from which to view these things. I get to sit with all the fear, all the pain, all the uncertainty and isolation and desperation you feel. I just get to shift the view faster and have learned to keep going and not give in as often. There is no immunity here. We just learn to do what is necessary despite what we believe or feel or how it comes down.
Recovery doesn’t mean I am not required to go into some dark and scary places. In fact, I am going deeper into them all the time. All that I get from some time in doing this is the knowledge that I can and will come out if I remain open to the experience and what it has to teach me. This is all the difference! I did not know I could survive some of the things I have walked through. But I have, and I will continue to put one foot in front of the other; because I MUST continue to move into and through healing. Sitting with my brokenness does not feed anything good and fine.
Dolphin Hug 