Volume 3, Issue 22

One rainy day I was driving a little too fast plus the cruise control was on. I got onto I-84 East and as I reached the highway itself I must have hit an oily patch for the next thing I knew I was going backwards Eastbound, staring straight at Eastbound traffic bearing down on me at high speed — a truck passing a car, both coming right at me with many cars and trucks behind them.

Reflexively I righted the car and pulled off on the grassy median just as the honking truck and cars rushed past, missing me. A car pulled off and drove up alongside to see if I was all right. He said he was a Navy fighter pilot and complimented me on my reflexes, then drove off while I sat for a minute breathing.

I bet you know what I was feeling because we have all felt it at one time or another — grateful for being alive. Life was suddenly so sweet. Every second was precious. The average workday that lay ahead was an exciting prospect filled with interesting possibilities. The rain hitting the windshield was beautiful and I could see rainbows in each drop. The air tasted delicious.

Authentic gratitude is a very healthy emotion that I am sure increases immune response and is conducive to Flow state. As I grow older and hopefully wiser I find myself more often being grateful simply for this life, for life itself and especially for the interesting and fun life I have had so far. But any life is better than the alternative of never having existed. Even a life of pain is more interesting than eternal unconsciousness, never having a sense of self, never having even one experience.

As long as one is alive, there is the chance to fix or accept anything that is disturbing. That’s what creativity is for. Troubles can be overcome in a flash of inspiration. Life is filled with endless possibilities.

Over time I’ve noted that during periods of gratitude my luck runs high. This in itself is not conclusive proof of a conscious universe nor that having a gratitudinous relationship with the Overconsciousness pays off in being given more, a basic tenet of Kabbalah, but it is suggestive evidence that the idea deserves more serious attention.

By luck I mean opportunities for feeling love, deeply personal good things happening involving other people. I doubt that a good experiment could be set up in Vegas where variations in gratitude attitude could be related to winning money. Recently I was playing games of chance with my granddaughter who was trouncing me game after game, getting fabulous hands while mine were terrible, yet all through it I was feeling very grateful for the time together. So luck and gratitude are not linked in the sphere of winning at games of chance, but I continue to observe that they are linked in winning at the game of life.

If you’re going on vacation soon, when you’re on a beach chair staring at the ocean or at a lake or sitting by a stream or at any quiet moment, it will be easy to get in touch with the gratitude you have within you. It’s always there, like a carrier wave on which there are overlays of more temporary modulations of feeling in reaction to the event stream. You’ll detect the experiential neural pathways that will make it possible for you to always contact your gratitude no matter what is happening, especially when you are angry or depressed — this refocus on basic gratitude for living gives you immense power to supervene over any negative emotion. Finding that switch inside that you can use at any moment will give you great strength. Use it well and enjoy yourself. Joy is the most likely reason The One Consciousness is doing all this and expressing itself as you and me.

Best to all 

Bill

Follow my regular blog contribution at Jack Myers Media Network: In Terms of ROI. It is in the free section of the website at  Bill Harvey at MediaBizBloggers.com.