Recently, I’ve noticed something about gratitude that’s brand new for me. For years, it’s been easy for me to feel grateful for almost anything I happen to notice, but the sense of gratitude I felt was always attached to a specific thing. I might have felt grateful for something as small as the way the light changed on a cloudy day, or hearing my cat Munchkin purring in the middle of the night, or a cool breeze on a warm day.
I could feel grateful for the wonderful friends I have, some of them going back almost seventy years. Or I could feel grateful for being married to my wife, or for where I live, or for being able to do the work I do.
What I seem to be experiencing now is gratitude on a more fundamental level. It’s not gratitude for a particular blessing or condition in my life, it’s not gratitude for all the small things I notice, it’s gratitude for the simple fact that I am.
My ability to notice all the things I’m grateful for flows from the single source of I am, but how easy it can be to lose sight of it. I am probably isn’t something many of us ever consider because it’s always there, and always has been there since before the moment we took our first breaths. It’s like expecting a fish to notice the water it lives in.
Taking the time to notice the “water we live in,” the miracle of I am, has the unavoidable effect of waking you up to the miracle of your own life. Gratitude of any kind lets you feel your own life not only more intensely, but also more intimately, but gratitude for I am is a force multiplier.
It takes that lovely experience and magnifies it beyond anything that can be imagined.
Here’s what I’ve discovered about being in this state of gratitude. It’s impossible to be bored with life. It’s impossible to take things for granted. It’s impossible not to notice the details of your life you’re likely to have overlooked. It’s impossible to feel overwhelmed by your own thinking.
But there’s another gift that flows from gratitude at this fundamental level, and it can really only be described as the “gift of all gifts.” It becomes possible to have the direct, felt experience of seeing that the I am that animates me is the same I am that animates you. In other words, it makes obvious the truth that I share my being with everyone and everything, regardless of how apparently separate we seem to be.
I’m just you, in a different body with different thinking. You’re just me, in a different body, with different thinking.
Our “beingness” is the same, not just similar. Our beingness is one.
This realization is the best hope of the future of humanity. When we’re able to experience firsthand the oneness our apparently separate selves share, there’s no impulse to abuse one another, or to abuse the planet.
Noticing the miracle of I am is the greatest gift you can give yourself. It takes no special skill, no special equipment, no special preparation. All it takes is a willingness to let your mind get quiet enough for you to see the most fundamental miracle of all.
If you’ve never experienced feeling so overcome with joy that you find yourself laughing and crying at the same time, get ready for a wonderful surprise.
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