Yoga Off The Mat: Gratitude Is Heaven
By Rev. Edie Weinstein-Moser, LSW
Pondering gratitude today. Why should today be different from any other day in my life? Mostly because, on the verge of Thanksgiving, the people around me are focusing on the subject and every church marquee’ I pass has displayed some message about being grateful. Driving in the late autumn twilight, from meeting with a couple for whom I will be officiating a wedding next year, I turned my thoughts inward, while managing auto-pilot transport safely home. So, what is that I’m grateful for? The normal stuff...shelter, job, health, car, positive cash flow. Uh uh... go deeper, I urged myself. Family, friends, spiritual focus. Deeper still. It was then that I recognized how uncommonly blessed I feel. Each day, I awaken under a cozy quilt, in a home with a solid roof above and firm foundation below. Before my feet even touch down on the carpet, I offer a prayer and an intention that this be the best day imaginable. I ask that I cross paths with whoever I am meant to, so that we can be of benefit to each other’s lives. I offer the gifts and skills I have been given to whoever they would benefit, tickling me in the process to be able to create from my heart and unlimited imagination. I determine that I will be given the tools and insights I need to face whatever comes my way this day. I ask to be able to surrender to whatever happens to be the highest outcome even if I am not overly pleased with it at the time. I open myself to be, as my friend Greg has referred to me; a chakra... "a generator, receiver and sender of energy". I tap into the spirit of the Dalai Lama and seek to live compassionately. And I ask to be guided step by step throughout the day and to follow the guidance, since I’ve seen all too clearly what has happened when I don’t. All this before I even pee! I buzz through it pretty quickly; kind of simultaneous thoughts. There was a time in my life when this wasn’t a conscious process. I breezed through life, being tossed about without aiming for a particular landing place; like the leaves that are wildly dancing outside my window at the moment. The end result was random occurrences, not the balanced outcome I experience most of the time now. Much of what I sense as gratitude begins as a warm feeling surrounding the heart chakra and radiates outward from there. It can come over me without warning, without fanfare. Those are my favorite times, when there is nothing to pin it to. With the momentum going, I mentally line up the items that continue the gratitude list....most of what brings a smile to my face relates to the people who grace my life. I shake my head in amazement when I consider how many new people cross my radar screen each day. Those overlapping soul circles that I have begun to recognize. Family of choice and chance. I feel so abundant in that regard. I envision a royal treasure room, filled with gold coins. Each new friend is yet another shiny nugget; the true treasures of my heart. Never taken for granted, always honored. Magic surrounds me. Events, people, conversations, seemingly random occurrences that add up to the same thing. Cosmic coincidences that give me the giggles. Folks I didn’t know a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago, dear to me now as my own being. What was life like before them? Hard to imagine at times. I wish I could have you know what this feels like. Since I can’t do a Vulcan mind-meld, the closest I can come to it is something called an ‘angel heart-link’ that is part of a modality called IET (Integrated Energy Therapy) in which the person connects with the energy of the angels and then sends it outward to others. So, I am taking a moment to do that now. My wish is that whoever reads this, catches that sensation of something Michael told me in a message from the other side a year or so after he died..... "This is what heaven feels like all the time. You don’t have to die to experience it." I called it ‘my transfusion from heaven." and I extend it to you now. I invite you to step into your own gratitude dance, flowing to the music of your own heart, with the people in your ever-expanding soul circles. Thank you for being part of mine. Namaste’ Gratitude is heaven itself." --William Blake
Rev. Edie Weinstein-Moser, LSW is a writer, speaker, free-lance journalist, workshop facilitator, greeting card text writer, reiki master and clown.
This article was posted by Rev. Edie Weinstein-Moser, LSW
