Before I begin talking about my experience this morning with gratitude I'd like to answer a couple of questions that I've received from people following my journey.

How do I get started and what do I do once I've started?

I always start my 10 minute mediation by closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths. Then I begin with my gratitude prayers--thank you for my life, thank you for my ability to breathe, and then I move through gratefulness for my husband, children, grandchildren, friends and opportunities. After that I take another deep breath and quiet my mind and allow myself to feel the gratitude for all those things. Some days it flows smoothly and other days it's more challenging.

 
Just like today--I had a few false starts and had to start over again. It's a journey, not a destination I have to remind myself. Simply a journey.

OK. On to my experience this morning. And an interesting one it was as I mark the mid-way point of this 30 day journey. A bit of a challenge to settle down into gratitude. My conscious mind was running wild with thoughts of today's 'to do' list and I even found myself worrying about getting my Christmas shopping done. Lots of resistance for some reason.

At first I tried reining the thoughts in, which of course did not work. So I allowed them to scurry across my inner vision unhindered, like clouds being blown across the sky by a strong wind.

Then it happened--I felt a sudden, subtle shift and my mind went completely still and time seemed to stop. All sounds silenced and my outer world ceased to exist.

I sat in this profound silence and felt myself floating in what felt like a primordial soup of everything and nothing. Of course, the moment I was aware I popped out of it, but then would fall right back into it again. So there I sate, blinking in and out from what felt like existence to non-existence, from particle to wave to particle again. Back and forth, in and out, feeling gratitude in both states of being. But gratitude in a very different way that is difficult to describe.

 

I've had this experience before when in deep meditation, but this was the first time I blinked back and forth, bringing gratitude with me.

Instead of experiencing the feeling of gratitude, I believe I experienced the knowing of it--the true state of it. I believe I tapped into that place where all things manifest--the unified field that exists all around us and I felt a presence of something very wonderful.

And for that I am most grateful today.

In gratitude,

Bonnie

Gratitude Experiment--Day 3

My 10 minutes of gratitude was very different this morning. After my mind blowing experiences of Day 1 & 2, I met the resistance to change that seems to be pop up when change is threatening to occur. While we often say we want change and even work towards change, when it comes right down to it there is a part that resists the change out of fear.

And that's what I met this morning--my fear of changing! I sat with the fear and listened to its message. What if you get what you want? What will happen to 'me'? ME? Who is the 'me' that was speaking and what is the fear?

Sitting in the energy of gratitude is so powerful because I didn't have to do anything about the fear but witness it. Being in the freedom of gratitude opens me up to more Light and with more Light comes understanding. No judging, no arguing, no wishing anything away. Just more Light.

So in this expansion of gratitude what I realized was that a part of me has been so identified with scarcity, lack and struggle that the very thought of living differently meant annihilation of self. Powerful understanding!

In gratitude I looked at my patterns of struggle and lack--beginning with my parents and how they lived. Reviewing my childhood programming growing up very poor and how I lived what I believed to be real in my first marriage and even now in my relationship with my husband. My unconscious EXPECTATION was that life & marriage IS about struggle, lack and scarcity. What else would I expect because that was what I was trained to believe and trained to do--always worry about money, regardless of how much or little I had.

It explained that no matter how wonderful my life was going I had an unconscious limit to how amazing I could let it be. When I tapped the 'fun meter' as my husband puts it, then my old anxiety and fears were triggered. Once triggered I made decisions and took actions that brought me back to my
old expectations of what was real for me.

Fascinating experience! As I witnessed this all playing out in the Light of gratitude, the old patterns dissolved on their own. And in their place was born something new and fresh and without words--feelings of being more than just OK. An openness to experience a new reality.

That's my thought for today! I would love to hear about your experiences with the Freedom of Gratitude.

In gratitude and thankfullness,

Bonnie

We are all One in the Divine

This beautiful video speaks to your spiritual journey.  We are all One.  We are all Divine.  We all want the same thing--to be connected in love with our Divine Nature.  Enjoy this video and feel free to pass it on.

As the World Turns

This seems like a timely thought for our times and for the season:

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. You experience yourself, your thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of your consciousness. 

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.    Albert Einstein

So now - in these changing times - we get to open our hearts and minds to the knowledge that we are one, in total communication within the unified field. We are out of the prison of high walls and separation and expanding into the freedom of shared life, caring, consideration, honesty and integrity - what a concept!

Blessings, Katie

Be The Change

All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. Man did not weave the wave of life, he is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Chief Seattle

Our world, our existence is intrinsically intertwined. We are inseparable, all parts of one great whole that is the unified field. The very energies of compassion that bring us together in difficulty and tragedy exist always and we are expanding those energies to more of our daily lives, to more of our first thoughts when in relationship with others.

It is this current shift in sensibility that is bringing us into the fold of our evolution, our bond and our expansion into cooperation and compassion. Our lives are shifting consciously and unconsciously at higher and higher frequencies as we move toward our new normal.

It would seem that any change historically has often found increases in energy fields in two directions, a pulling apart and polarization. There often seems to be more of what was as more of what is to be builds its energy base.

Have you been experiencing a feeling of being out of balance? Have you been feeling a little 'spacy'? Have you had a sense of things being off kilter, not normal, as if the earth were shifting under your feet?

We know from our science that we are all a part of a unified field of energy, a unified field of all that is, was, and will be. And since quantum physics tells us that there is no time, except as we create it in our minds, then the unified field is simply all that is, and that includes each of us and who we believe we are.

Who do you believe you are? Who do you want to be? How do you want to be in the world? What do you want to have? How do you want to be your better you?

Ask yourself better questions and you will create that better you. The parts of you that no longer serve you have a higher probability of falling away and being replaced by what you want instead, when you know what those things that you want are.

All things are connected, look at what you want as a model of what you want, and then become that. Put your energy toward clarity for yourself and who you are at your core level, at your spiritual DNA level.

Be the change you want to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi

Love and blessings, Katie