In my life I have not often felt gratitude. I am more aware of the things that annoy me than of the things that I appreciate. Partly that is due to the nature of being alive: we notice the things that make us uncomfortable so that we can avoid danger or death. Because we are immersed in life we forget that life is a gift – all of it. To be grateful for life, for our very own lives and the lives of others is what makes life worth living, in the end. For by the end, we don’t usually remember the annoyances, we remember the loves and the joys. Working with dying people, I have seen this over and over. But what a waste to wait until we’re on our last legs to appreciate it all.
As far as we know, we are the only animal that has the capacity, the gift of awareness of this gift and to experience the joy of our awareness, our consciousness and of everything that life offers us. Human beings are unique so – as far as we know. I have not noticed that we are grateful for the capacity of awareness. Generally we seem to be arrogant about it, like we earned it but we did not. Consciousness is a gift that we received through the process of evolution. This gift of consciousness can be used to create higher more sophisticated awareness that would truly create a better self, better relationships, a world but we have squandered that gift for the most part by using our consciousness to exploit that which has less sophisticated awareness. It’s too large and complex a topic to go into here.
I believe that each of us has a core part of us that is grateful and that that is what keeps us alive and creative, joyful and related. It seems like the air we breathe. If we take the time to realize what we have been given to give thanks for it, I am convinced that we assist in the evolution/ creation of the world.
PEACE and LOVEYA,
RON
Camel Through the Eye 