LIVING INNER PEACE™ ARTICLE ON GRATITUDE

As we focus on the Inner Peace Principle AGratitude,@ we believe that gratitude is one of the fastest ways to come back to center, to transcend the ego and to remember your essence, your true nature.

 We all have something in our lives to be grateful for, even if you are not grateful for your own life, there is something you can find to be grateful for.  I encourage you to find that thing, or those things, and to focus on them until your heart overflows with gratitude.  The more gratitude you can feel in your heart, the more open your heart becomes. The more open your heart, the forgiveness, the more compassion, the more inner peace will spring forth.

So I invite you to take a minute to just relax for a second.  Relax and allow all the tension of the day to just melt away.  And allow your mind to find something you are grateful for.  Let the feeling of gratitude fill your heart, just allow yourself to feel good right now.  And now find something else to be grateful for.  And allow that feeling of gratitude to fill your heart.  And then find one more thing to be grateful for and allow that energy of gratitude to come into your heart and fill you up.  Now imagine that the color of gratitude is your favorite color.  See your heart filled with the radiant color and see the color overflowing, just pouring forth from your heart.  Now think of all the people in your life and all the situations in your life, good and those that appear not so good.  Take a deep breath in and release this vibrant color of gratitude from your heart into every situation in your life and upon every person in your life.  Just allow yourself to be grateful for what is right now, without judgment, just allow it to be because you say it is so.  If any resistance shows up, simply tell it you are grateful for it as well and allow it to pass as you continue on pouring out gratitude to all that is in your life.  Notice how when your life is filled with gratitude there is no room for anything other than inner peace.  Enjoy this sense of inner peace now and know that you can have this at anytime at any moment by filling your heart with gratitude and allowing it to pour over your life.  Take another deep breath in, and gently bring your awareness back into your room.  And as you bring your awareness back, think about what Melody Beattie has to say about Gratitude: 

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."

 Without gratitude there can be no inner peace. Our definition of inner peace is a sense of well-being, a sacred space you dwell in deep inside of yourself where you are so connected to your creator that nothing outside of you can move you. 

If you are willing to take responsibility for creating the experiences in your life that you desire, you will find much inner peace awaiting you as you continue with our work.  You don=t have to know how right now, you only need to be willing to take charge of your life through the free teleclasses offered, by working with a life coach and/or spiritual counselor/teacher, by praying, meditating, affirming the truth, and visualizing/seeing peace. There are many ways you can do the work if you are willing.

So as we conclude this segment on Gratitude, I'd like to leave you with these beautiful words by an unknown author.