Welcome to the November Issue of my Blog
The theme for this month is:
Gratitude and Thanks...
Thanksgiving is Everyday!


I hope you are enjoying these blogs... It is my pleasure to share this information to you all. This month’s articles are about “Gratitude” How an “Attitude of Gratitude” Can Change Your Life...

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My intention is to start a bimonthly publication to support wellness in our communities... And I Need Your Support :) .

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Life is not just a journey...
make it an adventure! ENJOY! & Much love to you all...

Peace n’ Blessings, Gail Oliver








Thanksgiving and Gratitude...
by Gail Oliver © 11-2006

As we celebrate Thanksgiving this month, I was compelled to share with you the practice of gratitude. Gratitude is an attitude that should be incorporated into our daily lives...
Become habit 365 days of the year.

Gratitude is an emotion, which involves a feeling of emotional indebtedness towards another person; often accompanied by a desire to thank them, or to reciprocate for a favor they have done for you. In a religious context, gratitude can also refer to a feeling of indebtedness towards a deity.

You may be grateful for everything in your life, your health, your family, your friends, your partner, a beautiful day, a brilliant sunset or what ever you can think of.

As you give thanks...you receive.

By acknowledging your gratitude for things, you open yourself up to receive more in life. It is the Universe’s good pleasure to bless you and make sure you receive all that you need and desire. Giving gratitude gifts the giver and the receiver.

Psychological research has demonstrated that individuals are more likely to experience gratitude when they receive a favor that is perceived to be (1) valued by the recipient, (2) costly to the benefactor, (3) given by the benefactor with benevolent intentions, and (4) given gratuitously (rather than out of role-based obligations) Research has also suggested that feelings of gratitude may be beneficial to subjective emotional wellbeing. In people who are grateful in general, life events have little influence on experienced gratitude.

Previous paragraph...(e.g., Bar-Tal, Bar-Zohar, Greenberg, & Hermon, 1977; Graham, 1988; Lane & Anderson, 1976; Tesser, Gatewood, & Driver, 1968). (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). (McCullough, Tsang & Emmons, 2004).

From a Buddhist point of view, the Pali word which we translate in English as gratitude is katannuta. The word katannuta consists of two parts: kata which means that which has been done, especially that which has been done to one, to oneself, and annuta which means knowing or recognizing. So katannuta means knowing or recognizing what has been done to one, that is to say knowing and recognizing what has been done to one for one's benefit. Hence the connotation of the Pali word is rather different from its English equivalent. The connotation of the English gratitude is rather more emotional(we feel gratitude, etc.) but the connotation of katannuta is rather more intellectual, more cognitive. It makes it clear that what we call gratitude involves an element of knowledge - knowledge of what has been done to us or for us for our benefit. If we do not know that something has benefited us, we'll not feel gratitude.

Have you ever awakened in the morning and were full of thanks for the beauty of the morning? Or have you ever been blown away by an amazing sunset, the smell of a fall day, the site of a loved one? Life is full of magic moments and experiences to be grateful for, just the fact that I am alive does it for me. One of the most profound things I have discovered with this attitude of gratitude is, I have no use for anger or resentment in my life. When faced with a challenging situation that would normally just piss me off... I now, instinctively do my best to rise above any negative reaction I may have and find a positive solution. Life will always challenge us, but I find that the challenges in life are a gift to us and an opportunity to grow and build character... to become the powerful beings we were meant to be.

Another gift from this practice is the ease of which life is experienced. You are put in sync with all things in the Universe. Life becomes easier, and obstacles become smaller and more manageable in the grand scheme of things. As you express gratitude, you are in a way rewarded with opportunities big and small, coincidences of sorts (if you believe in them of course). You are in “The Flow”.

To practice Gratitude is easy. I write at least 5 things I am grateful for from the day in my journal before retiring each night.

I’m grateful for my health.
I’m grateful for the opportunities I have.
I’m grateful for my friend that called today.
I’m grateful my family is safe.
I’m grateful I am alive!

Sometimes when I experience something I conceder to be a miracle in the moment, I acknowledge it right then and there... out loud or quietly. Even when I experience a challenge I say thanks and the situation becomes defused. At the risk of sounding nuts, I have also been know to sing what I’m grateful for when alone. Whatever works!

To be Grateful in every moment of life is easy when you realize that life must not be taken for granted. Every breath is a gift. We must realize that the happiest moments of our lives and the most challenging times are equal blessings deserving of our appreciation and gratitude. Gratitude for the ability to be a witness to our lives and still enjoy the journey. When we can come to understand that good or bad, happy or sad, we have the opportunity to appreciate these experiences... We learn our lessons and can be grateful for every precious moment we have. When we practice gratitude, we have no room for the negative aspects of life and life can become the dream we always imagined.

Practice The Attitude of Gratitude 365 Days a Year.

“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.” —Buddha

"Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart."
—Seneca

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice.”
—Meister Eckhart

“The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.”
—William James








I Appreciate All That I Am and All That I Have.

All of you have heard at one time or another, “Be appreciative; say Thank You.” What is the true value of gratitude? Gratitude acknowledges your power and ability to create. It focuses your attention on what you have, and what you pay attention to increases. It is a constant reminder to yourself of how abundant the Universe is how you can trust it’s unending flow. Appreciation is a state of mind that magnitizes money and abundance to you.

Think of your subconscious as a small child. Have you ever noticed how children respond when you praise them, how much harder they try, how their faces light up with joy and their eyes sparkle? Every time you give thanks to yourself for something you have created, that little child within you lights up, sparkles, and wants to do even more for you. Every time you say, “That wasn’t good enough; you could have done better,” that child closes down. Just like a child who is criticized, your subconscious loses confidence and courage. Appreciating yourself and thanking the Universe motivates the child within you to create even more good in your life.

Appreciation is reflected in your attitude, and your attitude can either magnitize or repel money. You may have noticed that many successful businessmen write “Thank You” letters or send gifts to those who assist them. Thanking the Universe for your abundance, either by mentally saying “Thank You” or acknowledging your gratitude aloud, will multiply your prosperity.

Every time you say “Thank You” to yourself, you instill confidence in your ability to create the things you want. Begin thanking the Universe for every small thing that comes your way, appreciate how far you have come and all that you have already accomplished, and you will overcome your fears and doubts. Give thanks for all the things you take for granted— the place you live, the friends who love you, the food on your table. Do not label what you have as inadiquate, but instead begin thanking the Universe for it.

From “Creating Money” by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer Ph.D...







Saying Grace... Giving Thanks Around the World.


Sharing food is the most universal cultural experience. Expressing thanks for food was humankind's first act of worship, for food is the gift of life from above. In every culture there are sacred beliefs or divine commandments that require honoring the giver of life--God or the divine principle--through acknowledging the sacred gift of food. By admitting us to his table, God became bound to us in a unique relationship. By admitting God to our table, we experience the love and beauty of that relationship.

The gods command prayers of thanks for food. The Bible has several citations: "And thou shall eat and be satisfied, and bless the Lord your God'' (Deut. 8:10). The divine origin of the words of the Koran are better appreciated if you understand that the Koran is to Muslims what Jesus--not the Bible--is to Christianity. A verse from the Koran, the words of Allah, the God of Islam, as recorded under divine guidance by the Prophet Muhammad instructs Muslims on the sacred origins of food and the requirement for food prayers: "Eat of your Lord's provision, and give thanks to Him'' (34:15).

While some people may believe that "grace'' is a Christian or Western notion, the etymology of the word shows otherwise. The theological notion of grace infuses the entire meaning of thankfulness. Grace is the unmerited love of God and the presence of God in us. This presence of divine love is gratuitous. Gratuitous (given freely) comes from the Latin gratuitus (grateful) and derives from the Latin word for thanks (gratia), found in many languages; Old French, gratus (thankful); Sanskrit, grnati (sing praise). Grace in Greek is charis (charisma). Charismata is the power of the Holy Spirit. A grace is the thanks-to-God utterance before or after a meal. Food has always been recognized as the unmerited gift from God. Grace is the divine reality underlying all religion and faith--that is, God's loving generosity. In the Hebrew Scriptures it is hesed (loving kindness). In the Tao it is found in the love of the Hindu triad Brahma, Vishnu, Siva. In Christian theology, grace is the human transcendent activity of God in every creature.

Whether that expression of thanks (gratia) for the gift of spiritual and physical food is voiced in a tribal ritualized saying or uttered silently or sung eloquently, a person's intrinsic spiritual nature imposes a recognition that the very food before him or her is sacred and mysterious and comes to him or her from the beyond.

Consider: The first interhuman act of the newborn child is to experience satisfaction through food. In the first hour of life our senses may transmit ephemeral sight, sound, or touch quanta, but it is the initial ingestion of milk from the mother that constitutes the first interhuman act: nourishment. The immediate response to this nourishment is a systemic and psychic satisfaction, and the hunger-gratification cycle begins at that instant and continues throughout life. The just-born infant's first human experience is a "gift'' of milk in response to its sucking instinct and food need, a gratifying experience that has an impact on the infant's psyche on its deepest level. This gratis experience is irrevocably imprinted on the newborn's uninscribed mind and is the primordial unconscious analogue to voiced prayer. Our first common human emotional experience is the gratia response for food.

The ritualized saying of food prayers in thanks for God's bounty is an acculturated experience derived through social and religious practices. This "imposition'' of formal prayer saying is a confirmation of our first primal food experience. It gives form to expressing thankfulness that reaches immediately back to our first minutes of life and is something inherently cognate within us. The gratia experience we encounter as infants is transformed and intellectualized over time into an appreciation of food as both spiritual and physical nourishment that is acknowledged in the gratis prayer.

There are four principal types of thanksgiving grace: the silent grace, the spoken grace, the sung grace, the signed grace. I thought it would be nice to include an adult and child's signed grace, they have a beauty all their own. See for yourself.

An intriguing example is two prayers of thanks that, according to the Bible, Jesus offered at the Last Supper. We don't know if the prayers were voiced or silent. Jesus' exact words (if they were spoken) were not recorded by the authors of the New Testament. In the course of the Last Supper, the Bible tells us, "Jesus gave thanks'' to God in heaven. The first grace was intoned before Jesus drank the wine, and the second divine gratia before he ate the bread. These two thanksgiving prayers of Jesus are sacred mysteries.

The Dead Sea Scrolls document another fascinating prayer of thanks that was a sacred rite of the Essenes, the authors of the scrolls. (Essene means "pious one.'') This ancient esoteric Jewish sect existed from the second century basmalah formula bismi-Llahi-r Rahmani-r-Rahim, "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.'' Basmalah is never omitted before a Muslim meal; it is the equivalent of saying grace. The meal is never ended without uttering the hamdalah, the "praise God.'' The hamdalah (colloq. hamdullah) is the required ending response to the basmalah. The Prophet is clear on the motivation for saying grace: "If you are thankful, surely I will increase you'' (Koran 14:7).

In the Hindu belief, food cannot be eaten unless it is first offered to God. It then becomes prasad (sanctified or observed as holy), something to be eaten that was blessed by God. Hinduism puts great emphasis on the loving reliance upon God. An example of this is seen in prayer 5 from the Bhagavad Gita (Song of the Lord), the most sacred religious text of Hinduism. The Gita is found in the Mahabharata, an extraordinary Sanskrit epic that dates from the second century Eucharist is derived from the Greek eucharistia (thanksgiving). In the celebration of Holy Communion, the consecrated bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him'' (John 6:56).

Food and associated prayers play a central role in religions of the Far East. Confucianism, founded by Confucius in the sixth century Tao meaning "the Way''). Taoism is based on the annual rotation of the seasons and the harmony and balance of nature. In the Tasze, the great sacrifice in the huge Altar Park (the largest altar in the world), offerings of food, rice spirits, and other gifts are placed on the altar and the spirit of heaven is invited by means of a sacred hymn to descend to the altar. Sie-Tsih, the gods of millet and corn, are worshiped in a spring and autumn sacrifice. The modern Chinese expedient gratia before the banquet meal, Duo xie, duo xie (a thousand thanks, a thousand thanks), is merely the cultural evolution of worship chanted to the many food gods of Chinese antiquity: Chi Ming, Ching Ling Tzu, or Chung Tso. A witty and sophisticated saying in cultural circles that has the elegance of quoting poetry is (Ren Yi Shi Wei Tian), "People perceive food to be almost like God.''

Shinto is the old native religion of Japan that reveres ancestors and nature spirits. Derived from the Chinese Shen-Tao (way of the gods), Shinto's central belief is kami, God, the sacred power that infuses animate and inanimate things. Amaterasu is the most eminent of the Shinto deities. She is the beneficent sun goddess who taught mankind the cultivation of food. Inari is the grain god. Norito prayers petition the gods for good harvests. The Setsubun ceremony celebrates the start of a new season of seeds and planting. Its rites involve Neolithic rituals that survive today in technofuturist Japan. A cornucopia of rice, cakes, fish, and vegetables are sacred treasures placed on the altar expressing thanks for the bounty of the earth.

Buddhism's history is rich with reverence for food and thankfulness for its nourishment. The great prince Gautama Sakyamuni experienced full enlightenment while sipping a cup of milk-rice as he meditated the doctrine of nirvana under the Tree of Enlightenment, the Bodhi Tree. Buddhists have used prayers of blessing and offering in everything from the cultivation of crops to the dedication of each plate of food to the betterment of humanity. As exemplified by the Buddhist prayers, food can be truly blessed only when the one giving thanks has lived a life of service to both the universe that has given the food and those who suffer and are without food. Buddhism commands thankfulness for food by its "vow to live a life which is worthy to receive it''.

Native American Indian tribes share a common reverence for the earth and all that is given from its bounty. Animals, harvests and water must be accepted with thankfulness in rituals and prayers. Respect for the food gift is often expressed by asking a plant or animal that must be used for food for its forgiveness in taking its life and explaining why its death was necessary. In Native American thought, human beings are dependent upon the earth, not master over it.

Civilization is synonymous in every sense with the growth of agriculture. Cultivating crops predated the invention of the wheel and writing. The existence in the belief of the power of the first fruits or grains has provided the world with many rituals, beliefs and festivals. The festival calendars of antiquity are based on agriculture. Our modern calendar descends from ancient agricultural calendars.

The cultivation of plants for food, as opposed to the use of plants as they grow naturally in the environment, marked the evolution of humanity from a user of food to a producer of food. The three main Israelite feasts recorded in the Bible are in part, harvest festivals, in which multitudes of Jews brought fruits and vegetables to the Temple in Jerusalem: Pesach, a feast at the beginning of the barley harvest; Shavuot, a summer feast of the end of the wheat harvest; Sukkot, the autumn ingathering of grapes and cultivated fruits. Of the six major sections of the Mishnah, the first collection of Jewish law (elul, "to reap, harvest'') is the twelfth month in the Jewish year.

In the Old Testament the breaking of bread symbolized the immutable bond in relationships among all people. The Covenant was reaffirmed through deeply profound meals and feasts. The Hebrew word for covenant (b'rith) has etymological origins in the Hebrew notion "to eat.'' The ancient Jewish prayer has been intoned in Jewish homes over the centuries. It is a grace before the meal and is recited before eating the first morsel of bread.

The Jewish liturgy is full of the idea of divine grace interceding to aid humanity. Grace is Ahabah Rabbah and thanksgiving Shemoneh Esreh. The liturgy requires separate blessings (b'rachot) for various categories of food. The blessing over bread (the hamotzi) differs from that of cakes and cooked grains; fruits and vegetables have their own blessings, as does wine and fragrances. Inviting poor people to have food with you makes your table an altar and the meal an atonement. Martin Buber helps us realize that our very table is sacred: "One eats in holiness and the table becomes an altar.''

There are many ways to analyze and classify food prayers: by country, by culture, by language, by religion, by God, by food, by sacred imagery--to name a few. We have divided the prayers here into two broad classifications: food prayers honoring God or gods and food prayers extolling the bounty on earth. All civilizations and all religions through all ages associate food with God or gods; all primitives nonbelievers associate food with a supernatural power or spirits. All recognize the earth's bounty (crops and food) as a reflection of divine goodness.

Food prayers to the gods are created for many reasons: making one's wishes known, honoring the dead in order to show reverence for life, reconciling God(s) with humanity in order to bring good fortune on earth or to assure a place in the afterlife.

The recognition of the earth as sacred manifests itself in the ritual and religious life of communities as petitional prayers by the laborers, chants for seed planting and crop proliferation, ceremonials for laying out plots, transmittal of family tradition, and reflection on the concept of home and hearth. Central to all cultures and religions, food is a sacred gift that is the supreme and universal bond of all friendship.

The world's quest for happiness operates within a context of reverence for God through an inimitable link to food. In this uncertain age when ethnic differences divide people, we should strive to embrace our common humanity that is expressed so succinctly in food prayers. These prayers talk to us with the wisdom of the ages and teach us that we are all one family, all one mystical soul. Food prayers throughout history may be seen as evidence of our profound sense of awe in the face of the infinite.

http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/german/books/butash/bless/introduction.html







The Kama Sutra — Part 4

Continuation of Self Examination from October...

Self examination starts with the observation of one’s relation to the things and events of the world. Try to view all experiences as connected to one another and to oneself; notice the fine details and cultivate as inquisitive but detached attitude. Examine whatever comes to you and try to understand the causes behind each situation and your actions in it. A simple procedure for self-examination is to sit comfortably in front of a mirror, close your eyes, and empty your mind of all thoughts. then gradually begin to open your eyes, looking at the reflection in the mirror as if meeting that person for the first time. See what sort of impression you make on yourself. Notice how changes in your facial expressions are linked to thoughts and emotions. Gradually enter into rapport with your mirror image, gently relaxing your face while maintaining conscious control of breathing. If you notice negative qualities in your reflection, make a careful adjustment of attitude and emotion, using the breath to stabilize the psyche. Imagine that you are replacing a negative quality with a positive one, and try to feel the “new you” as real and lasting. Then gradually close your eyes and concentrate on assimilating the experience, imagining it as pervading your whole being.

By knowing yourself you can come to know others. Don’t criticize others before correcting faults in yourself. Only through self-examination can you develop real insight. Real insight requires courage and rigorous honesty. An attitude of constant self-examination will quickly overcome inner obstacles to growth and generate a marvelous potential for Tantric love. Self-examination is the most direct path to the experience of non-duality and mystic awareness. Only in that experience can a physical relationship take on lasting meaning.

From The Alchemy of Ecstasy by Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger