"Prayer of Gratitude" © Ruth Thunderhorse and ACQTC
JustGetThere -Letters from the Devic Realm
Chapter Seven: Gratitude
We’ve all heard the phrase, “You are what you eat.” You’ve probably also heard, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he” You’ve likely heard, “for where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also.” These are all connected to a common truth. Life feeds on itself and how you think and feel about what you eat has a great deal to do with its impact on you.
Life is a radiant ‘serpent power’. You’ve seen the mystical serpent with its tail in its mouth. It’s called ‘serpent power’ because when viewed in operation by those capable of seeing it, it behaves in a serpentine fashion. If you want to see an example of our mysterious origin and how the force that animates us behaves then close your fist and look at the spiral that it makes.
It is important to follow a proper diet. A proper diet functions on more levels that that which affects the stomach. We consume with our hearts and minds as well. It’s good to remember that both heart and mind are only different levels, or expressions of the same thing. It’s also good to remember that one does not live by bread alone.
Everything is composed of sunlight which is also radiant energy. The green in your vegetables is a chemical change that sunlight went through. We are light in extension. Think of your body as frozen sunlight that feeds on sunlight. Without the sun there is no life and no light. Of course, this sun is a physical expression of another sun and there may be more rarified examples deeper in or further up; depending on how you see it.
I’ve said at other locations and on many another occasion that I believe one of the most powerful emotions that a person can possess is ‘gratitude’. A key feature that you should possess when you eat is, ‘gratitude’. Eating with gratitude is a magical act of great power. Observe how people eat and you will learn a lot should you be open to the evidence. Observation of life and a willingness to see into it will reveal understandings and truths that are hidden from most.
I am not a religious person and I belong to no religion. This does not mean that religion is not, in part, based on real truth. It means that religion obscures as much as it reveals and it often and invariably interprets wrong. Religion tends to view God anthropomorphically. It makes God a bigger you with all of your prejudices and shortcomings. God becomes a big idiot who reflects your little idiot perspectives.
Those who have looked more deeply into spiritual things with a questioning mind often come to see that all spiritual things have a scientific basis and can be explained and understood in scientific terms. Of course, there are those elements that will always be beyond the conscious, reasoning mind but even they conform to rules of behavior.
So, I practice certain behaviors that you also see among religious people. I always say ‘grace’ and I am, as much as I can remember to be… grateful. Eating with gratitude will change your life. I do not pray in the conventional way but I do contemplate and aspire toward a higher ideal of myself. I not only profoundly believe in a divine agency, I ‘know’ it is there. I possess a capacity to be willful and rebellious against my own best interest too… but, I’m trying to quit (grin). As will be the pattern here, before we can talk about the best diets and the choices of diet it is necessary to talk about the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of eating. It is important to know that we are feeding on different levels all the time and that the physical act of eating is only the most widely recognized practice.
In these times gratitude has been bred out of the process the same way that whole and nutritious food has been replaced by unhealthy garbage. You don’t see people take a moment to bless their food these days. You see them pile in, talk with their mouths full, drink while eating so that the digestive process is interfered with, not bother to chew so that complete digestion doesn’t take place, etc. You see the litter of our fast food nation everywhere and you see the physical condition of those who exist off of it. If I can get any idea across to you, I would want it to be gratitude. Be grateful. Get in the habit of being grateful for everything and you will see that you have more and more reasons to be grateful.
You don’t have to believe in a white-bearded fascist on a far away throne. This god is no more real than the god that the atheists do not believe in. But there is a living conscious force in you and if you feed it, its presence will grow. My wife does not believe in this god and generally is not inclined in this direction; though she is more spiritual than she will admit. The key inducement to my marrying her was during the first dinner I prepared when I asked if she minded if I took a moment to be grateful for my food. “Not at all.” she said and she joined me and has since. She understood the principle.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because much of contemporary religion and the religion of any time may be filled with absurdities and priest centric machinations to part you from your money and your reason does not mean something is not there. It is what feeds you. Be smart. Be grateful. Grow into a better idea of yourself and let your suffering diminish. Eating smart is a way to turn down the flame. If, as the Buddha taught, “All life is pain caused by ignorant desire.” then the more erratic and impure your flame, the greater is your suffering. Passionate people suffer more than others, DEPENDING on the nature of their passion. Turn down the flame and consciously feed it. True enjoyment will come and you will be healthy and filled with life.
This book is about ‘spiritual survival’. It is necessary to constantly point out that everything we can see and perceive has an invisible source. Acknowledge it. Be grateful. For those who are sincere and possessed of genuine interest, you will find much to assist you in these pages. And it is important not to associate any of it with me. Take what is useful and place your gratitude where it belongs. I’m just another climber on the ‘spiral staircase’. Since we are all on this staircase and since it is a spiral, always remember, try to never piss over the railing.
Remember too that this is a book about being welcomed into a community that will form around you as you think and feel and eat your way into it. Gratitude will be the light source that allows you to see AND recognize your companions. We all want to live in this community and we can but we must journey there and it is a journey within as well as without. You don’t simply buy a bus ticket. Many a prosperous soul eats properly but misses the connection between the spirit, mind and body. Living on a trust fund and dressing in white; attending seminars and talking about high minded things doesn’t guarantee anything. We need to approach the thing itself with humility and awe and most of all, gratitude. Talking about it steals the energy to do it.
In the next chapter we will present various diets and the esoteric practices that complete them. We have different needs and no one diet will work for all. For the moment you can start feeling grateful. Let your heart soar in the contemplation of what awaits you. Be grateful that someone attends your every footstep and waits at every point along the way. You are never alone and all the forces of good will fly to your side once you have taken hold of the conviction to carry on… once this conviction has taken hold of you.
Prevail
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© 2008 Les Visible
SOURCE: http://justgetthere.us/blog/categories/Letters-from-the-Devic-Realm/146.htm
URL: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/05/12/spiritual_survival_in_a_temporal_world_1
