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Why Gratitude?

by Lynn Andrews

Why do we need or even want gratitude in our lives? Yes, it is good to appreciate all of the wonderful things that there are in this world. How dreary life becomes when you stop looking for the beauty that surrounds you.

We are taught as young children to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to other people, and we have all experienced the feelings of great personal discomfort that accompany rudeness, our own as well as the rudeness of others. We learn quite young that if we don’t observe the social niceties, then even when success is merited, it may well go to others if we can’t be courteous.

But what about all of the things that are not right in our world? What about all of the cheating and corruption, the lying and stealing, warfare, violence, the studied ignorance and intentional meanness of others that so often seem to get rewarded, sometimes at our expense? You work hard for the things you have around you. You’ve probably worked even harder for many of the things you’ve lost. Don’t you deserve at least some credit for all of the hard work that you do just to stay in place in today’s world? Isn’t it time for someone to appreciate you, for a change?

Consider this. It is through our feelings of gratitude that we actually become aware of God in our lives, aware of the presence of the Great Spirit. No matter how much time you spend on religious or spiritual study, without gratitude you still feel hollow and unfulfilled.

It is when you express your gratitude that you actually become aware of moving up a path of enlightenment. This is when the alchemy of transformation begins to occur and all of the negatives in your life lose their meaning. You become aware of the presence of God in your life. You realize that you are moving towards enlightenment and that you have all of possibility at your fingertips, including the ability to move beyond whatever it is that has you feeling shackled at the moment. It is a beautiful and powerful circle, this circle of life that begins when you acknowledge the presence of God in your life.

The truth is that this magnificent life has been given to us. It is not something we could ever create by ourselves. Your life, the miracle of existence, has been given to you by the Great Spirit, and your acts of gratefulness are your way of saying, “Thank you.”

We can never repay these gifts, but we can be thankful for them. It is when you are thankful that you discover the full blessings of love. Love is the art of giving, and it is the strongest force in the entire universe because love is of the Great Spirit. For humans, gratitude is the purest act of love that we can ever give – gratitude, saying thank you to the Great Spirit for the miracle of your existence.

This earth is a great schoolhouse. As spiritual beings, we come here to Mother Earth to learn lessons on our pathway towards enlightenment that can only be learned on the physical plane. A shaman, a seeker of wisdom, always feels grateful to whatever he or she encounters on the way: grateful to family, even when our families are difficult; grateful for things which we so take for granted that we forget that they are actually gifts; grateful especially for the opportunities to learn and to grow that come only through hardship. It is when you open yourself to gratitude that you find the life force in any situation you will ever face in life, no matter how difficult – life force, the unseen mystery that enables life to prevail regardless of the circumstances.

Yes, life can be difficult for everybody. When I need the greatest solace, I go to the animals for support. All animals are sacred. They live in a state of purity. A donkey cannot be other than a donkey. A winged-one cannot be other than a bird. And some might say that a human cannot be other than a human, but to me, that is not exactly so. We humans have a kind of choice in our lives that animals do not have. Because of that, the animals’ kind of ignorance is bliss. They have a wisdom in their eyes, if we would only sit within the circle of our own truth and listen from our hearts.

We owe an extraordinary debt to the animals. We use and we eat them without any understanding of the sacred give-away. The animals, the winged-ones and the fish and the four-leggeds who walk this earth, give away daily so that we may live. In our own kind of ignorance, we have lost the understanding of what sacred give-away is all about. Give- away is the process of give and take. Sacred give-away is when you, as a being of truth, are aware of the life force that you take from the universe and you give back that energy in like kind. It is through our sacred give-away that we humans find bliss.

Sacred give-away is always found in prayers of gratitude. When you lose your gratitude for the many gifts of life, you lose your connection with the life force. Then, even though you may intentionally do no harm, you have withdrawn from a great energy dynamic that needs all of us at this particular point in time. If you want to know what happens when human beings lose our connection with and our conscious awareness of the life force, just look at all of the devastation that Mother Earth and all of the creatures that exist upon her are facing today. This has happened because we have turned our backs on the sacred give-away.

Believe it or not, as ineffectual as it may seem in the face of the tremendous forces of mass destruction we have created, prayer is the one thing that can turn this all around. Specifically, it is our prayers of gratitude for all of the wonders of life, even when life seems the bleakest, that can make all of the difference.

Why? Because when you give prayers of gratitude, you connect with the life force of the Great Spirit that flows throughout the entire universe. This life force is the greatest force of all. It can energize you and bring vitality to your endeavors that you will never get from a pill or a new car or any tangible object, even from the congratulations and embrace of your friends and family. Yes, of course you deserve recognition. Recognize yourself and move into prayer. Become aware of the presence of God within you, regardless of whether you receive recognition from anyone else. You will gain so much more than accolades.

And remember, prayers without action are meaningful, but they are nothing compared to the life force you tap into through your prayers of gratitude. This life force is what enables you to change even the most difficult circumstances in your life. When you make prayers of gratitude as you go through life, they create a bond between you and the Great Spirit and the sacredness of whatever task is before you, and in this bond you will find everything you need to succeed.

To the shaman, gratitude is prayer. Prayer as we in the Sisterhood of the Shields practice it always entails an opening of the heart. Prayer arises from a sense of gratitude for all that is, gratitude for the magnificence and the miracle of life. Prayer can be sitting on top of a mountain, in a sacred circle somewhere in the wilderness, or sitting silently in your home in a state of introspection and serenity and simply experiencing the bliss and the power of the universe in harmony all around you.

You open your heart and mind and your consciousness as you say, ‘Thank you’ to Mother Earth, to Grandfather Sun, to the Great Spirit, the winds and the plants and the animals, ‘Thank you’ to all of the beings of light that surround you. Say, ‘Thank you’ for the warmth you feel in your heart when you have been in grief and pain, or when you have misunderstood the actions of others. ‘Thank you’ for giving you strength when you lose your will and the courage to go on. ‘Thank you’ for those beautiful moments when you look into a still pond and see the beauty of nature reflected back to you, the beautiful face of the Great Spirit instead of your own face. It is in these moments that you realize that, in spite of all of the trials of separation and duality that we experience, we are in fact all one in the Great Spirit, who guides our feet on the path of life with every step we take, if only we would give ourselves the chance to listen.

It is when you give prayers of gratitude that all of possibility is at your fingertips.

Lynn Andrews is the author of the New York Times and internationally best-selling Medicine Woman series. She is a shaman and mystic recognized worldwide as a leader in spiritual healing and personal development. Learn more at www.lynnandrews.com