Our lives are full of these two amazing gifts, though sometimes we just let ourselves be driven by the marketing around them. They're so much more than that! They're keys to your soul, they are connection to your higher power. They're your inner healers that become ignited when you surrender to your highest power which is within you!
We have been given superpowers that we are not many times conscious that we have them, but when we ground ourselves in them we really awaken the power that they carry with all its amazing consequences!
Take for instance love, have you ever truly let love fill your life? When you remember those moments that you're full with love, don't you seem to be full as well in gratitude for that moment? Don't you feel that the sensation of love is enough to repair, amend, construct and heal whatever you have inside of you that is hurting you?
Science is catching up with this powerful force emanated through love, now it is a lot more common to find research that proves that this connection of love is the most powerful one and it comes from you! It can never come from outside or external sources although we can feel it when someone loves us! but if we are not loving ourselves then the effect is just superficial and it dissipates in just some time!
On the other hand when you have the courage to go within, when you have the courage to simply let go the burden, to forgive anyone that might hurt you then you are beginning to walk the path of freedom.
How can start that path? How can you forgive when real pain and hurt is still within you?
Well, I once listened a very powerful message from a woman (Maya Angelou) that said .."Witness your own actions and how you also have inflicted pain or hurt to someone ...and then you'll be able to forgive". In my humble opinion we have all walk that path of hurting someone in our lives and I bet that all of the times it was not because you wanted to do it really, it was just the action of toxic emotions that are within you!
Emotions that have been there boiling, that have been there producing little by little more neurochemicals and hormones that without you noticing they are just spreading and raising your threshold of patience, of empathy, of compassion and are lowering your threshold of reacting, hurting, bursting into a more aggressive way to release all the tension that is just generating inside of you!
Think of a simple analogy of a balloon that is inflating inside of you slowly building up all of those chemical substances, that is rewiring all of those patterns of thought, that is reinforcing toxic cycles, until it is just too much "toxic air" and it just has to burst into many times sadly an aggression, sadly a personality of being triggered, a permanent mood that just raises your inability to control those emotions and drives you into states of frustration, anger, despair, anxiety, sadness, depression, and so on ...
Nevertheless, if you are already there, if your balloon of emotions is already full and you can certainly feel it, the mindful and more conscious solution is to let it deflate little by little with constant steps, with small solutions that help you take out that toxicity within you and start cleaning the air to inflate a new balloon with positive and healing emotions!
One of the first step that you can start giving, and that is already a winning situation is for you to be able to catch the thought of anger, of frustration, to grab it, stop it and ask yourself Why or What is producing that?. Don't mind finding the answer at that moment, just let the question pose within you, navigate and just by dropping the question and let it sink within you, I can assure you that it will help you to rewind and don't act on that thought.
If we are objective, that action of becoming aware, of questioning yourself, of allowing space is already a huge step, though it may seem so simple, it will allow you to produce a gratitude feeling just for the simple fact that you didn't let it go through! Hence that gratitude will generate a loving feeling towards yourself! Towards the fact that you didn't fall in the trap of reacting, that you did something different and that it worked!
All of these winning steps, will constantly help you move forward and internally what you're doing with that questioning attitude is producing a different set of neurotransmitters, you're lowering adrenaline and cortisol that produce the fight/flight response. You're enhancing oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin that act together to produce a stable, peaceful, and loving feeling that has a sedative power to ease your way towards recovering your divine state which love and gratitude!
All of us are made of these powerful divine healers, however we have let ourselves being poison with the negative feelings, we probably were raised under toxic environments, probably you suffered a lot of pain and it just seems hard to find your way back to your core essence!
Don't you worry, you'll get there, is not a time race, is more and endurance journey, where what matters is the pace that you are able to sustain! Where what will count is the ability you have to become aware of the things that you want to start noticing more, the negative and toxic thoughts that you say to yourself very often or the “small things” that probably you let pass or you give in with others and that if you would start saying them in a frequent kind way, people would start to see your real self easier, know you more and learn your likes or dislikes, instead of being a prisoner of those thoughts and emotions that are just building up and boiling to produce a burst of anger or a display of resentment.
Love and gratitude have to become from you, have to be produced within you so that you can be able to heal those inner and past wounds, if you’re externally looking for a solution, a soothing provisional quick solution or even worse you start becoming addicted to relationships, substances, gadgets or any other external asset then you’ll easily be trapped in a cycle of codependence from that external aid, that in the moment feels good, that for some time it has worked, but sadly if the respomnsibility of healing is left to someone else things won’t change, they’ll just be disguised or anesthetized and when you leave the addiction things will come out again to the surface.
That doesn’t mean at all that looking for guidance or help won’t work or is not an option¡, it just means that you will need to dive deep within you to let all of those layers of pain to start dissolving, you should let that toxic air come out easily, slowly but constantly until you’ll find your new upgraded version of yourself that will be able to tolerate more, will be more patient but guess what? You’ll also be authentic, real and therefore it will be easier to move along in your social, family and intimate settings.
Releasing those emotions that were held back hostages will liberate your burden, all that extra weight that you've been carrying all the pain within you, resentment, shame or grief will be able to finally be out of your system if you just use your two divine assets, love and gratitude.
Gratitude is fundamentally a way of seeing that alters our gaze. Like Zen Buddhism’s “beginner’s mind”, gratitude begins with a simple recognition that nothing at all can be taken for granted. And if that is so, this life that we have, in all of its ephemeral particularities, is a precious gift. To recognize this gift is the beginning of gratitude (1).
Gratitude immediately shifts one’s attention away from the negative, away from the seemingly ordinary, and into the new, the good, and the beautiful (1).
The practice of gratitude can have dramatic and lasting positive effects in a person’s life. It can lower blood pressure, improve immune function, promote happiness and well-being, and spur acts of helpfulness, generosity, and cooperation. Additionally, gratitude reduces lifetime risk for depression, anxiety, and substance abuse disorders. Whether it stems from the acceptance of another’s kindness, an appreciation for the majesty of nature, or a recognition of the gifts in one’s own life, gratitude enhances nearly all spheres of human experience (2).
As mentioned above and using those powerful aspects of gratitude in terms of the healing energy, many of those aspects will combine with the powerful ability of sensing love, of synchronizing our heart with the rational setting and discover the power of that connection that will create a magnetic healing field.
It is not surprise that the divine assets that we entitle this article gratitude and love will work together plenty of the time within us every time we would like to enable that pathway. Which, ironically it can easily be replicated, programmed and ingrained inside of us through one of our main components that covers more than 70% of our body..Water!
Water is the "missing" link that will enable the healing process, in the end as you can witness we are a complex mixture of chemical components embodied in a core spiritual essence that we have been led to believe that we're experiencing just a physical realm when in fact everything that we are seeing, smelling, tasting, listening and touching is within us, starts with an energy trigger, starts with a quantum leap, and is ignited by a divine energy!
Nevertheless that divine energy starts being polluted since the first moments we arrive here to this earth, that we unconsciously are misguided through a different kind of world, to the world that our parents, caregivers and people around us when we are children are programming in us.
And of course, they are not even aware that they're doing any harm, as they were raised exactly the same, as they also have been carrying a lot of wounds and pain that they have numbed throughout their lives as well.
In addition to that back in their days, many of this information was not available, or if it was it was judged and labeled as esoteric, dangerous and against many religious beliefs, therefore many people preferred to live in ignorance of what they were feeling and the easiest solution to every kind of problem was to swallow the pain, be strong and show that you were fine to deal with the "real" problems of life, such as perpetuating a culture of survival were plenty of individuals "live" the day and continue with their busy work, neglecting that something is really happening within them.
In summary, we all have experienced and still will experience a whole range of emotional experiences, events, some of them will probably be a little a trigger and is completely normal to migrate to a new state of mind where you are able now to encounter many of the obstacles, struggles and people that some time ago where supposed to have an effect on you and now they don't.
That will be the price that you'll receive if you engage in a more profound practice of gratitude and love, each day it will be easier, each day you'll have a winning step, and the best of all that each day you'll be upgrading and improving your true self version towards a lighter, enlightened and more compassionate individual than the one that you are and of course that you were.
In fact these two divine assets (love and gratitude) will also allow you to enter a new realm of presence, of living the now and experiencing your life more fully and as if you were now given a pair of glasses that allows you to see things a lot clearer and easier than you ever imagine.
Therefore, engage yourself in the practice, is pretty much like trying to lift a heavy weight at the gym, you have to start with the lighter dumbbells until you have the strength to lift what you once envision in your mind! Have an amazing journey and enjoy the ride!
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References.
1. McClintock, C. H. (2015). Opening the heart: A spirituality of gratitude.
2. Emmons, R. A., & Stern, R. (2013). Gratitude as a psychotherapeutic intervention. Journal of clinical psychology, 69(8), 846-855.