The authorities took my son away. Everyone knows a man cannot raise a child. So they took him, dragged him off kicking and screaming. We met fleetingly in the woods. He was in terrible shape, covered in self-inflicted cuts to protest his situation.
One night I was sobbing out loud with the horror of it all, begging Providence to change our situation, raging against what had happened, when a very still quiet voice spoke inside me saying…
”your anguish is a measure of your love is it not?”
Er, yes.
‘Would you wish your love to be less?”
Er, no.
”Then be grateful for how much love you have…’
and so I was.
within weeks he was returned.
The secret of Abundance is Gratitude. It is Gratitude that recognises the wealth which already exists. The rule of attraction manifests further abundance and soon..
a virtuous circle is created.
Wanting it badly enough doesn’t work. It doesn’t take determination. More a kind of melting into how blessed you are already and not even for one thing or another but for breathing, the rain, that night follows day.
Sometimes we may feel that because there is so much suffering in our lives we cannot be grateful and start the circle of abundance turning. So then we have to be grateful for that…
for surviving the dark place..
for the resiliance that bought you through..
for the strength that sustains you during your travail.
Wounds give perspective without which we do not grow.
”To live and love only where one can trust, where there is security and containment, where one cannot be hurt or let down, where what is pledged in words is forever binding, means really to be out of harm’s way and so out of real life.” James Hillman
Wounds are necessary. There are several different types to be grateful for. Firstly there are the wounds inflicted upon us by others…
‘that which does not kill us makes us stronger..’ anon
then there is gratitude for one’s own folly..
‘Non, je ne regrette rien..’ E. Piaf
then the challenge to be unconditionaly alive to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune..
”to survive is to find meaning in suffering”. F. Nietzsche.
and finally there is the gratitude for the discovery of your own moist depths in the process of it all.
”In the depths of winter I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer.” A. Camus.
Most of us think of prayer as being one form or another of asking for stuff. It doesn’t work because of the tautology involved in evoking a God about whom you have already decided you know better. Wanting life to be different is petulant, a rejection of one’s situation which is bound to increase suffering rather than alleviating it.
‘What we resist, persists.’ S. Freud.
In ancient times they seemed to understand better about the power of gratitude. Prayer and Gratitude were synonymous. There are still some examples especially in Psalms, but a good way of guaging how things have changed from a culture of abundance to one of relative inner poverty can be ascertained by looking at how the structure of our most evocative prayer, the lord’s prayer, has been changed over the years from its original Aramaic.
here is the whole thing.
Abwûn
“Oh Thou, from whom the breath of life comes,
d’bwaschmâja
who fills all realms of sound, light and vibration.
Nethkâdasch schmach
May Your light be experienced in my utmost holiest.
Têtê malkuthach.
Your Heavenly Domain approaches.
Nehwê tzevjânach aikâna d’bwaschmâja af b’arha.
Let Your will come true – in the universe (all that vibrates)
just as on earth (that is material and dense).
Hawvlân lachma d’sûnkanân jaomâna.
Give us wisdom (understanding, assistance) for our daily need,
Waschboklân chaubên wachtahên aikâna
daf chnân schwoken l’chaijabên.
detach the fetters of faults that bind us, (karma)
like we let go the guilt of others.
Wela tachlân l’nesjuna
Let us not be lost in superficial things (materialism, common temptations),
ela patzân min bischa.
but let us be freed from that what keeps us off from our true purpose.
Metol dilachie malkutha wahaila wateschbuchta l’ahlâm almîn.
From You comes the all-working will, the lively strength to act,
the song that beautifies all and renews itself from age to age.
Amên.
Sealed in trust, faith and truth.
(I confirm with my entire being)
You can see for yourself that its been altered quite dramatically. Not just a word here or there, the whole meaning is different. I will comment only on the feeling of gratitude which runs through the original from beginning to end like a dancing brook.
