Gratitude is the most immediate and instantaneous way to experience grace that I know of.
It is said that gratitude magnetises grace. Like a bee with honey, grace cannot resist a grateful heart, and the moment you bring your awareness to what you are most grateful for, blessed with and appreciative of, grace immediately appears. I've begun to realise that they are inextricably linked. Gratitude draws grace, and when you experience the presence of grace embracing you, it evokes more gratitude. Like two lovers, they fall ever more deeply in love, becoming lost in one another.
Ultimately, there is no difference between the two, for to feel truly grateful is to know grace, and to experience grace is to feel blessed and grateful. It seems one cannot go anywhere without the other. These two lovers are too infatuated to be separated.
Of all the fragrances of the infinite that have followed me through life, gratitude has been the one constant. Frequently, tears well in my eyes as I realise how lucky I am to be used as a vehicle of grace in the work I do. I am overwhelmed by the tenderness surrounding me, the wisdom that arises, the joy and effortlessness of grace. I feel so blessed to be in its constant presence. How can I help but fall to my knees to thank this infinite lover for its effulgent bounty? How can gratitude ever be enough to thank the ocean of grace?
Gratitude is available the instant you bring all your awareness to this moment, and really open your being to experience what is here. Even the simple swirling of smoke rising from a candle can evoke gratitude. When you take a moment just to notice what is around you – the beauty of a specific colour in the fabric of the chair you are sitting on; the grain of the wood on the table; the pristine clarity of the glass holding your drinking water; the variety of fragrances wafting through the open window; the angelic innocence in a baby's eyes; the joyful laughter of children playing in the distance; the fact that you have a roof over your head – everything around you becomes a window into gratitude, an opening into grace. Even the food that nourishes your body and the padding footsteps around the house, signalling that you are surrounded by beings that care for you, evoke deep gratitude. And there is the unseen, the unknown, the stillness. An open heart cannot help but overflow with gratitude for this boundless presence.
Just bring your awareness to this moment and open your heart, your eyes, ears and being to what is already here, surrounding and embracing you. Every single experience in your life is an opportunity to fall into gratitude.
Gratitude is immediately here when you take time to open your heart to thank life for what is: for its blessedness, its beauty – for life itself. In order for gratitude to be true and full there must be total acceptance of what is here in this moment – even if it doesn't show up in the usual, expected, accepted or obvious form that would normally invoke it. It's when you totally embrace and accept what is, without wishing to change it or fix it; when you totally allow life to be as it is, that gratitude overflows and grace is experienced as everywhere.
An invitation
Are there areas of your life that you have been taking for granted? Has life been showering you with grace, while you've answered back that your cup is half empty? It's time to realise that your half-empty cup is actually overflowing.
Gratitude always draws grace to itself. They are inextricably linked, and when you choose to give thanks to life for all that you've been given, grace showers you in return. Grace cannot refuse a grateful heart. So, you might like to get a pen and some paper, or perhaps take out a journal.
Take a few moments to become still and let your awareness go to all the ways you've been blessed in life. Just let your mind rest in the huge magnificence of grace that has manifested in your life.
When you feel that your cup is overflowing, take your pen and begin letting that gratitude express itself on a page: keep asking yourself, 'What am I most grateful for?' Let all the small things come up, as well as the big ones. Remember the beauty of nature, and include your own wardrobe and the food you eat. Just let gratitude pour itself onto the page, and keep writing until several pages are full and you have emptied it all out.
Then just rest, bask, soak in the humility of realising just how lucky you are: regardless of your life's circumstances, grace is always present. Just rest in the open vastness that is experienced when the heart has been allowed to fully express its gratitude.
Gratitude begets more gratitude. Your list will likely become an endless outpouring. You might even like to make a daily practice of taking time to count your blessings, and put them onto paper for an entire week.
Once you start you may never want to stop, for gratitude is such a juicy experience. And the good news is it's a choice that is available to you in each and every moment.
From Freedom Is, © 2006 by Brandon Bays, published by Hodder Mobius.
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