Abraham-Hicks tells us, “If all you did was just looked for things to appreciate, you would live a joyously spectacular life.” There is power in appreciation because it multiplies the good we’re aware of in each moment. There is power in the energy of gratitude because it improves our mind’s view of life as it’s created to be.

Our feeling and expressing appreciation and gratitude aligns us with our true Nature because it is the high, holy vibration of Love loving all that exists. We’ve been created by Love to love all that exists, beginning with our self and our life.

A day without appreciation and gratitude is a day in which our heart doesn’t shine. And, when our heart doesn’t shine we’re unable to see the good around us and within us. What better month for us to focus on the power of appreciation and gratitude than a month that includes a whole day set aside to encourage us to feel thankful. Though it won’t be officially Thanksgiving Day until the 23rd of this month, if we listen with a quiet mind and open heart, we can hear Thanksgiving calling to us right now, today, to begin giving thanks for the life within us and around us.

It’s not the things in life, but our ability to view life through thankful eyes that makes anything meaningful to us in the world. Thankful eyes enrich our experience of who we are and what we have in each moment. Eckhart Tolle wrote, “That feeling and the state of appreciation opens the door to receive more good in your life.”

We can start cultivating a more consistent attitude of gratitude right now just by feeling grateful we woke up this morning. We can piggy-back on that feeling by recognizing that this new day we’ve awakened to holds new possibilities for us to receive more good in our life—more energy and vitality in our body, more love and laughter with others, and more clarity in our decision making.

Today doesn’t depend on anything we thought about yesterday, unless we let it by thinking about the same things again today. If our thoughts yesterday made our vibrational output feel low, so that we felt unenthusiastic about our life, we’re free to let them go. They can’t follow us anywhere. We’ve got to carry them along with us if they are to join us today.

Yet, if certain thoughts yesterday caused us to feel uplifted and happy to be alive, the good feeling those thoughts caused will easily flow into today because that uplifted, happy to be alive feeling is powered by the Power that creates worlds and will not leave our awareness without effort on our part.

If we’re grateful for everything right now, both the obvious blessings as well as those that hangout as blessings in disguise that we’re sure someday we’ll recognize, we’ll discover that through the Law of Attraction more and more good comes to us, often from unexpected places—unexpected solutions and resolutions, unexpected happy encounters with friendly, helpful people, unexpected income, and unexpected opportunities to express our self more joyously in whatever we’re doing, even if what we’re doing seems like the same thing we’ve always done.

When we talk on Sundays about our experiencing a lack of something wanted or the appearance of something unwanted in our life, it’s not to suggest that anything has gone wrong with us or the Law of Attraction. We’re all doing just fine. We’re never lacking anything good spiritually.

But if we’re not focusing on thoughts within us, and things around us, that cause us to feel good, we’re not in a place in our mind and awareness where we’re able to perceive and experience our good in the world even though it follows us everywhere we go. Life is Good. It’s as simple as that. But if we’re not looking for It, we won’t see it even though It’s there.

In The Way of the Heart we read, “I have said to you many times that the world you see is nothing more than the effect of the thoughts you have held within the mind.” Everyone of us is unlimited in our ability to create a joyously spectacular life because we’ve been created from an overflow of our Creator’s unceasing Love and Joy that continues to Source us with unlimited possibilities for good thoughts and feelings with which to create.

The 23rd Psalm begins, “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.” We ask for it and we’ve got it! We don’t have to spend anytime at all wanting for anything. A Course in Miracles tells us that God’s Will is for us to have everything.

But we’ve got to be willing to put in the work, and that work is to feel happy and grateful we’re alive. That’s it! That feeling opens the door to our experiencing more and more good in our life. Imagine an ad that read, “Wanted: Someone who is willing to feel happy, grateful and appreciative. The pay is as much as you are willing to accept.”

Every good thing we could ever ask for is already present within us and around us, answered before we ask, given before we need, fulfilled before we want. All we need to do is feel the answer FIRST within us where it has been answered immediately with an unconditional “Yes,” and then remain happy that it has.

It’s that uplifting feeling of realizing health, happiness and abundant good are already ours that clears the way for them to appear physically. If allow our self to feel the joy and exhilaration of manifestation in gestation, i.e., to feel within us the uplifting Presence of what we want to experience in physical form even, and know it’s there before we see it around us, nothing could keep us from experiencing answered prayer everywhere in visible form—whether it’s healing of the body, more harmony in our relationships, positive change in our finances, or anything else we can imagine for our life.

If we’re not feeling fulfilled right now, it isn’t because the Source of our Creation doesn’t know our heart’s desire every moment. If we’re not seeing the good within us and around us wherever we are, it isn’t because it isn’t there to see. It’s just that we haven’t turned our focus away from the problem that caused us to pray, or ask for something better, in the first place. As the saying goes “The problem and the solution don’t appear in the same vibration.”

Nothing good can be missing vibrationally anywhere when Love’s answer to every prayer is already there. It’s our vibrational outputting that is vibrationally off-putting, which is to say, it’s the vibration we’re emitting caused by our attention to unwanted things in our self or another, and our focus on the absence of something wanted, that is repelling our good and keeping it out of our sight. Every moment is infused with the energy we give it, high or low, and we experience only what we are giving to the moment.

Abraham-Hicks tells us, “ We’ve got one question for you: How do you feel about where you are right now? Because that’s what the Universe is responding to. How you FEEL right NOW is the only thing on your resume that matters to the Universe.” It’s not even how we felt this morning, but how we’re feeling right now that is attracting or repelling our good. We don’t necessarily need to focus on the answer to a specific prayer to raise our vibration. Our feelings of appreciation and gratitude in the moment for anything will get us there, right in same vibrational vicinity of every answered prayer.

How often do we notice, or value, what we’re putting out vibrationally in the moment we’re in? It’s an essential awareness for us to maintain so that we can change our focus if needed to something, anything, that causes us to feel happy, grateful and appreciative right where we are, since how we feel in the Present Moment is the only thing that matters to the Universe and what It is responding to.

The output we emit with feelings of anger and frustration, and with thoughts of fear and vulnerability, are off-putting to feelings of peace and joy, and to the manifestations of good available to our perception within a higher vibrational view. We’ve got to be willing to put in the work, which is to feel happy, grateful and appreciative in general, and to love that we are and where we are in moments of our life. The pay for such work is unlimited!

I want to conclude this conversation on the power of gratitude with poem by Mary Oliver. She writes beautifully about simple, ordinary things that become extraordinary things through her thankful eyes. In her poem “Messenger” she writes:

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.

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