The more time I spend in gratitude, the less I have to say. After a while it is the state of being in gratitude that becomes the norm and words seem to pale in comparison.
The holiday season is in full swing now and my journey with gratitude has changed how I feel about this time of year and how I plan to celebrate it. This year I hold a deeper send of joy and peace within myself than in years past. It is a peace and joy that no longer needs the frenzy of shopping or trying to find just the right gift for someone to make their Christmas special.
That is an old trap that keeps me focused on being perfect and feeds the erroneous belief that I am personally responsible for the joy of the season. And that is a path that robs me of the joy, peace and magic that is meant to be part of this year.
This year, using the state of gratitude, I am opening the doors to expect and experience magic and miracles to show up in my life in wonderful new ways. My focus for this season is different. I will be spending more time in joy-filled activities with those I love and very little time out in the crazy chaos of shopping.
Instead, I will take pleasure in making gifts for loved ones as I used to do many years ago. To create, bake, simmer, sew and knit for others has always brought me great pleasure. Thinking of the person as I create something just for them keeps me in that state of gratitude; I can pour my love and best wishes into everything I make.
This time in gratitude has rearranged my priorities and shown me what is truly important in my life--and 'things' aren't it. Spending time with those I love, creating new memories and new traditions and engaging in activities that make us laugh and appreciate life more--that is where the magic of the season is.
In each other.
As my 30 day journey of gratitude draws to a close this week, I feel the shift from "I" more and more into 'we' and 'us'. My sense of 'I' is so filled with gratitude as a way of living that it can't help but spill over to others. This journey really is not just about me; it is about 'all'.
As I prepare to re-enter my life differently, I am grateful for each new understanding and each new event that comes my way.
In gratitude for all,
Bonnie
The remains of yesterday's turkey simmering on the stove on its way to becoming tomorrow's soup, I allowed that delicious aroma to take me deeper into my state of gratitude this morning. Thoughts of yesterday's time with family floated across my mind until I had given thanks for each person, each bite of food and each memory.
Then a deep sense of inner peace flowed through me, and there I stayed, floating in peace and feeling at one with the world.
When I finally opened my eyes, 20 minutes had flown by! I realized that while life has its ups and downs, it also has its times of peaceful plateaus.
Today I am grateful for my plateau where I can simply relax in peace and love for the day.
All is well--and for that I am most grateful.
Please feel free to share your experiences! I welcome knowing how you experience gratitude and all that you are grateful for in your life.
In gratitude,
Bonnie
Today is Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S. and we are spending today with family. Any day I spend with my children and grandchildren is a day to be grateful, but this day most of all.
I began my meditation with an open heart filling with thoughts of each family member. There is a new grandbaby on her way, so extra special gratitude for a new life among us. One daughter has found 'the one' and he is being introduced to the whole clan today. I am grateful for her newfound happiness and also that this family so easily opens its arms and heart to embrace new life and new love as we continue to grow.
As I continued to sit in my state of gratitude, allowing my mind to take me to new places, my physical body responded to me. Not in the warm glow of gratitude way that I normally experience, but something different. It immediately got my attention.
There was a response to the gratitude--a living response as my body flowed it back to me. It was like standing at a top of a canyon yelling "Hello. I love you' and expecting those words to be echoed back. Instead I heard "I love you too." A surprise as I realized for the first time that gratitude is a 2-way communication!
All this time I've sent thanks and love to my body for all it does for me, yet had never considered the possibility that my body would respond in kind.
As a medical intuitive who works with the physical body and health all the time you'd think I wouldn't have been surprised, but there I sat in amazement as this deeper communication between us continued--as equals and co-creators of my life.
My body does more than just reflect my thoughts; it responds with its own as well. And isn't that really how it should be--my body as more than a reflection of me, but an active co-creator? Isn't that how it is supposed to be for each of us?
After all, doesn't my body house my Essence? Why wouldn't we consciously co-create not only my health, but my life? Why wouldn't we work in cooperation and harmony with each other?
This morning the meaning of being 'present in my body' took on a whole new depth of understanding and experience. Gratitude is not just a feeling, not just a state of being--it is also a 2-way communication. Whether that be between body-mind or two people, gratitude is a divine method of communication.
I am grateful today for the body I live in and it is grateful for my presence and my acknowledgement.
New doors have just opened.
I welcome your comments and experiences!
In gratitude,
Bonnie
"Woman thou art loosed." That is the title of a movie that I have never seen, yet those were the first words I heard this morning as I slipped into gratitude.
Powerful words within this state of gratitude. An opening, a shift of something intangible but very real happened. A strong sense of personal power flowed through me, very different than the personal power I carried within me before. Something deeper, broader, higher.
And a new fire was born within me.
Not the 'fire in the belly' masculine power nor the gentle internal knowing of feminine power, but something very different. As if the two came together and created something new.
This experience did not flow from the feeling of gratitude; this new sense of personal power flowed into the space that being in a state of gratitude opened up.
I began this journey 22 days ago as an experiment to experience the feeling of gratitude and how that would change me. What I quickly realized is that while gratitude is a feeling--it is also so much more; it is a state of being as well.
In this state of being called gratitude doors open, healing takes place and your greater self steps in to play a much grander role than before.
And that is what I experienced this morning. My ego self felt loved enough to give way to my soul self. While my wonderful ego self has definite ideas about what I want and how I should have it, my soul self has even higher, grander ideas about what is possible for me. This morning that door opened and my conscious connection to my soul flowed through.
How do I describe the delicious feeling of my divine self stepping into my life and essentially saying "I'll take it from here" while my ego agrees?
The only words I have right now are "Woman--thou are loosed."
Today I am grateful for this feeling of wholeness and excited about the new beginnings this means for me.
In gratitude,
Bonnie
Gratitude leads to inner peace and that is how I awoke this morning, with this deepest sense of inner peace as my first awareness. So instead of getting up to do my 10 minutes of gratitude meditation in my usual spot, I allowed myself to shift into gratitude right there, lying in bed all snuggled under the blankets on a dark, cold morning and had a very different experience of gratitude.
Usually it is my mind that guides me through the meditation; my mind that consciously takes me into gratitude. This time, maybe because I was so relaxed, it was my physical body that took over the reins, guiding me ever deeper into what happens to me physically when I am in a state of gratitude. An odd experience certainly and I'm not quite sure if I can describe the difference.
Always before my mind told me what my body was feeling; whether it was about gratitude or anything else, the understanding came through my mind. This morning, however, the knowing came directly from my body--and I understood it. Instead of gratitude flowing from my thoughts down into my physical being, it was my body that flowed gratitude to my thoughts. My body was reflecting back to me its new state of being now--a state of physical being that carried, held and flowed gratitude. No longer was my body being fed gratitude, it had become the state of gratitude. Something had shifted within the physical and it all feels different.
Curious now to see what was next, I relaxed into this new experience and allowed it to unfold. At first I thought my mind was wandering and I'd try to bring it back to the present. But then I realized that my mind wasn't wandering because my mind was not controlling this experience--my body was. Old memories would pop up--what use to be very painful memories from childhood. Instead of the feeling of pain and woundedness that always accompanied these memories, a feeling of warmth--that new state of gratitude I have--flowed through each memory, dissolving it.
It took a few minutes to realize that the intelligence of my body--and make no mistake our bodies have an intelligence of their own--was using gratitude to heal the pain in my past. So I lay there, open and allowing this process to unfold as memory after memory was released from my cells and healed. Past memories and future worries, all healed in the same way--with gratitude.
As a medical intuitive I am use to entering the body and taking a look around, but that is my mind controlling the process. This experience was entirely different. I could actually feel my body healing itself and it was doing it consciously, wanting me to know and understand what was happening. Gratitude has become so much more than a feeling I flow through my body 10 minutes a day. It is now a state of being that I live in and that my body responds to.
As the body is a reflection of the mind, I saw a new reflection of myself this morning. And I am grateful for who I am and who I am becoming.
In gratitude,
Bonnie
The more time I spend in this state of gratitude, the more I learn about who I am and who I am becoming and that leads to feeling even more gratitude. And I continue to fall in love with myself more every day in new ways. What an incredible Being I really am--amazing how I never saw that before. Amazing how we forget to remember how amazing we each are.
As I keep my focus on gratitude, I notice subtle shifts within. Increasingly I am more open to seeing life as a journey and less needing to try to control my outcomes. What a relief that is! To begin giving up controlling my life and how it turns out and relax into the moment as it is--priceless.
I already know my eventual destination, so why not be open to the journey itself and enjoying the outcomes rather than fearing them. That is a huge shift for me. I've always been a destination kinda gal--focusing more on getting to the finish line and forgetting to notice the cool things along the way.
Other changes are beginning to show up in my life as well--physical changes. As I physically relax into this journey of gratitude I am sleeping more. Never realized how wound up and constricted I had become the past couple of years with trying to do things the 'right' way and control the outcomes. The more I relax, the slower my pace the more I actually accomplish. Seems counter-intuitive I know--but it's real.
And I am physically detoxing a bit as the energy of gratitude floods my body, flushing out the old 'not enoughness' that was trapped. A bit uncomfortable certainly, but also refreshing as my body continues to let go of what it no longer needs to hold.
My outlook on life is definitely brighter--this attitude of gratitude is becoming a constant presence in my life. More and more when an old habitual thought of worry or fear arises, I am flooded with feelings, images and thoughts of all I have to be grateful for. A new habit of gratitude as my natural state of being is arising.
I find that I'm walking around in love with people and with the world instead of shrinking away from the chaos and pain. All good and all bad still exist out there. We do live in a world of polarity, but the difference for me is where I now place my focus. Gratitude is not only a state of being, it is also a choice. A choice that I make every moment in my life. To choose gratitude over fear. To choose to focus on all that is good in life and allow my experience of life to be simpler, happier.
I no longer feel the need to save the world. Did I really believe that I could? Loving myself and my life one day at a time is enough. If we each do that, the world won't need saving.
In the meantime, life is meant to be an adventure and we are meant to enjoy the journey--living full out to the best we can.
Cue the Hawaii 5-0 theme song and my Inner Chicken riding the waves of life!
In gratitude, Bonnie
It seems that the more time I spend in gratitude, the less I have to say. There comes this tipping point where the experience becomes so deep that words cannot capture the essence of what is felt. And I believe I may have reached that tipping point.
Normally it would take me a few minutes to settle my mind enough so that I could step into the state of gratitude. Today, however, I gently slipped into it and was feeling it before I was even aware of being there. That was an interesting experience in itself!
I sat in the new experience of thankfulness, a gentle warmth glowing through me and felt my outer world swirling around me-forming, dissolving and reforming itself over and over again. It was like sitting safely by a warm fire with a storm raging outside. My inner self is calm, peaceful and safe while my outer life is changing into something not yet seen.
When I look around my life everything looks the same, but my internal experience is so different that nothing feels the same. Normally that would make me nervous and scrambling for some stability, but instead today I am feeling calm, peaceful and trusting. There is deep within me a knowing that all is well.
Today I am grateful for what is and curious about what will be.
In gratitude,
Bonnie
I want to first thank a good friend of mine for helping me yesterday to clear some of the old stuff that has arisen during this journey of mine. Whenever you make a shift of any kind your frequency changes and whatever you've been holding that no longer resonates with that new 'you' shakes loose and needs to be released. That is what healing is all about--letting go of what no longer fits. So yesterday my friend Sue helped me let go of all that had shaken loose and I feel so much more freedom. For that I am grateful.
So this morning, feeling more freedom within and without, I sat down to practice my 10 minutes of gratitude. It was easier to get into that state of gratitude this morning because most of the chatter that I normally have to move through was gone. A big WooHoo! on that score!
What is left behind is a deeper warmth, like glowing embers after the logs have burned themselves down. A calm, steady warmth that spread through me, deep into my bones.
Not the high that I've always felt before; you know that mountain top experience we often get. But with every high must come a leveling out because we are not called to live at the top of the mountain all the time--or at least I'm not. I am called to live amongst people and be of service from within the community, not separate from them.
And so a new sense of gratitude was born within me today. It feels like I found myself again and, even better, I fell in love with myself all over again.
Today I am grateful for the slow, steady glow of gratitude that warms me and tells me that I am 'home' at last.
In gratitude,
Bonnie
Before I begin talking about my experience this morning with gratitude I'd like to answer a couple of questions that I've received from people following my journey.
How do I get started and what do I do once I've started?
I always start my 10 minute mediation by closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths. Then I begin with my gratitude prayers--thank you for my life, thank you for my ability to breathe, and then I move through gratefulness for my husband, children, grandchildren, friends and opportunities. After that I take another deep breath and quiet my mind and allow myself to feel the gratitude for all those things. Some days it flows smoothly and other days it's more challenging.
Just like today--I had a few false starts and had to start over again. It's a journey, not a destination I have to remind myself. Simply a journey.
OK. On to my experience this morning. And an interesting one it was as I mark the mid-way point of this 30 day journey. A bit of a challenge to settle down into gratitude. My conscious mind was running wild with thoughts of today's 'to do' list and I even found myself worrying about getting my Christmas shopping done. Lots of resistance for some reason.
At first I tried reining the thoughts in, which of course did not work. So I allowed them to scurry across my inner vision unhindered, like clouds being blown across the sky by a strong wind.
Then it happened--I felt a sudden, subtle shift and my mind went completely still and time seemed to stop. All sounds silenced and my outer world ceased to exist.
I sat in this profound silence and felt myself floating in what felt like a primordial soup of everything and nothing. Of course, the moment I was aware I popped out of it, but then would fall right back into it again. So there I sate, blinking in and out from what felt like existence to non-existence, from particle to wave to particle again. Back and forth, in and out, feeling gratitude in both states of being. But gratitude in a very different way that is difficult to describe.
I've had this experience before when in deep meditation, but this was the first time I blinked back and forth, bringing gratitude with me.
Instead of experiencing the feeling of gratitude, I believe I experienced the knowing of it--the true state of it. I believe I tapped into that place where all things manifest--the unified field that exists all around us and I felt a presence of something very wonderful.
And for that I am most grateful today.
In gratitude,
Bonnie
A funny thing about opening to feelings--you can't just pick and choose which feelings you allow. It's not possible to say "I will only feel the 'good' feelings today." That's because feelings are neither good nor bad, right nor wrong. They are just feelings brought on by your thoughts.
So the other day when the dam burst open and everything that was backed up came pouring forth, I understood that would mean that all my feelings were free to express themselves. And they certainly have!
Yesterday was my impatience and today my sadness made its appearance. Not the profound sadness of years past, but the sadness of unanswered prayers, missed opportunities and things I have done or left undone.
Earlier this morning I read a passage that fit perfectly for this moment. "Bask in the luxury of feeling fully understood and unconditionally loved." So I did. As I stepped more fully into that state of gratitude feeling fully understood and unconditionally loved, I allowed the sadness to flow through me, freeing it from the prison of my body. A sweet gentleness flowed in to fill the empty spaces where sadness had previously lived.
The more I let go of what no longer serves me and what I have imprisoned in my body, the more free I am to fully live the life I love. I begin my day in a place of serenity and knowingness.
Today I am grateful for my ability to fully experience all my emotions and to bask in the luxury of being fully understood and unconditionally loved.
In gratitude,
Bonnie
Gratitude was a bit harder to come by this morning. Lack of patience though showed up in abundance. That great yummy feeling that I normally slip into, that fullness of the heart, was a no show today. I stuck with it though because this is, after all, a journey not a destination. Just because I'm not feeling the gratitude in any given moment doesn't mean that I'm not grateful, just that I'm not in the feeling of it.
I'm imperfect. Oh no--was that my outdoor voice!? Parts of me were horrified at that admission while other parts relieved that I finally got it. It really shouldn't have been such a big surprise--because we all know that no one is perfect. But it was that sudden 'knowing' that took me by surprise. You know that moment when you really get it--and once you truly know something you can never again unknow it. Obviously some part of me thought my imperfections were a well kept secret, though I'm sure if you ask my husband or my kids they'd just roll their eyes and snort.
So I sat in gratitude with my imperfect self. I sat with the shame that came bursting forth from that admission and continued to give thanks for this journey of getting to know myself in deeper ways. I was really clueless that parts of me were still trying to be perfect--and successfully failing. Trying to be perfect is just an old survival strategy from childhood that was waiting for an opportunity to be healed.
And like a dam bursting as the seams, the shame, blame and guilt bottled up inside came flooding out in a torrent. Instead of being met with resistance or denial though, I allowed those feelings to flow up and out in a state of gratitude. Because, really--who needs to keep those 3 feelings as a constant companion?
To be honest--today was really uncomfortable for me; not the happy love-fest I experienced at the beginning. But it was real, it was honest and it quickly passed, because I stayed in gratitude for the experience.
Every journey has its wonders and its trials. There are days of ease and days of effort. Yet with each step on this journey I move forward and each day holds something to be grateful for. That is what I hold on to when gratitude is not so easy to find.
I am grateful for the gift of my imperfections for they remind me to love myself even more and they remind me that we are all just doing the best we can with what we've got. Embracing my imperfections allows me to let go of who I think I'm suppose to be and appreciate the fullness of who I actually am.
And that, my friends, was worth the 10 minutes of uncomfortable gratitude this morning.
In gratitude,
Bonnie
I am so grateful for early mornings! My husband is still asleep, the house is quiet and it feels like I have the world all to myself. It's my favorite time of day because every morning I get to choose anew who I am and how I want to live my life. Every morning is a 'do over' when, no matter what happened the day before, THIS day I get to be grateful for once again.
This morning my time in gratitude was met with a fair amount of fear at first. Fear that I was expanding and changing too fast. Like instead of driving my nice, dependable sedan, I had suddenly jumped behind the wheel of an expensive race car and took off at the speed of light.
"Who will you be if you keep going at this pace? What will become of me?" I heard in my mind. My inner child was worried that trouble lay ahead, because as a child whenever I spoke up, asked for what I wanted or did anything 'different', trouble ensured for someone. So early on I learned to keep a low profile, to stay contracted and off the radar.
But here I am now--on everybody's radar! Stepping up and stepping out in gratitude--and telling people about it.
So I took a deep breath and sat with my inner child and her fears, thanking them for being there, feeling gratitude for their presence. And there we sat, the 3 of us in a state of gratitude until the fear dissolved and love flowed in.
An old Billy Joel song began drifting through my mind--just parts of it. "Don't go changing to try and please me. I love you just the way you are." And I drifted deeper into the meaning of those words. I don't have to change anything about myself in order to be loved or in order to have what I want in life. Living in a state of gratitude changes everything without me having to force a change or trying to be perfect, whatever 'perfect' means.
Transformation is a natural outcome from gratitude and a spirit of thankfulness. With a deep sigh my body relaxed into a gentle easiness and lightness.
Today is a play date with 2 of my grandkids, ages 7 and almost 4. We're making pumpkin pies from real pumpkins. As a child I learned to bake from my grandmother. She wanted me to know that not everything comes from a can, and that's a tradition I carry on with my own grandkids. So today we will cut up the pumpkins, bake them and the seeds, then turn them into delicious pies.
Afterwards is our special movie night complete with pizza and root beer floats before being tucked into bed with kisses from their Mimi (that's me!)
My inner child is invited to join the fun.
I am grateful for this day and for my life. Every day is a gift that I treasure.
In gratitude,
Bonnie
Ten days into my 10 minutes of gratitude and my mind is telling me how bored it is already. Because of my commitment to these 30 days, I decide to sit in gratitude for the boredom--and so I do. I'm just so grateful to be alive that 10 minutes of boredom doesn't seem so bad. And I was curious as to why today my mind was bored. Why not yesterday or why not next week. What was it about today in particular that I was bored.
Wasn't very long before I had the answer. My mind began running funny images through my mind to distract me from thinking. Images of the Stay Puff marshmallow man from the movie Ghostbuster, images from other funny movies that I love, and then drifting into childhood memories of fun and playfulness. Playing 'kick the can' with all the neighborhood kids in the summer just as the sun was going down. Softball in our backyard, catching minnows in the creek that ran behind our property--many times of laughter and fun.
I realized my mind was showing me that there is more to Life than just sitting in my head--that living in gratitude means LIVING--as in being outside of myself and actually living in the world, not just my head. So as each image, each memory flashed through my vision I felt something heal within me and replaced with something new and fresh within. It was like each happy thought opened a door to more freedom and my desire to allow my inner life and outer life to be the same increased.
For those of you who know me, you know that I tend to be on the serious side and don't 'let my hair down' very often. Not that I'm a stick-in-the-mud or anything, but I guess I had separated parts of my life from other parts and kept the playfulness and fun for only certain times. That all changed as I saw the dam that separated my inner and outer worlds burst open and, once again, my Inner Chicken surfed the waves with the theme song to Hawaii 5-0 blaring in my head.
The only appropriate response was to laugh out loud and be thankful for my life because--really--how many of you have an Inner Chicken?
So today my Inner Chicken and I are grateful for Life. And I think we just might spend the day surfing the waves of gratitude and seeing where it takes us.
In gratitude, Bonnie
My vulnerability is my strength and I am grateful for that realization.
A couple of things I want to talk about today. For years I've been meditating and all those years I always needed to hold a pillow or cover my solar plexus up in someway. Couldn't meditate without that. This morning during my 10 minutes of gratitude I noticed that I was not covering myself up and hadn't for the past couple of days. That is a huge shift for me. To be open and vulnerable with no need to protect parts of me. It became so natural to not put a pillow or blanket in front of me that I didn't notice it for 3 days. For this new openness I am grateful.
Until yesterday I didn't realize how vulnerable being in gratitude makes you. In fact I hadn't even thought of myself as being more vulnerable until an experience yesterday with a person who made a few mean-spirited remarks to me for reasons of her own. My first reaction was to feel hurt and shut down, but that is now such a foreign feeling that I was immediately aware of the shift from open gratitude to fear.
You see to me being vulnerable use to mean being weak, helpless and open for hurt. It meant that I was allowing anyone to come along and behave badly towards me, so no way was I going to be vulnerable!
My experience with gratitude this morning showed me the true meaning of vulnerability--being fully present in my life, in my body and in the moment. Fully present with myself and for others. My vulnerability is my strength, my gift to myself and to others. For only in the present and in my presence do I allow myself to be known.
Being vulnerable is my strength. It is what makes me the healer and teacher that I am. This journey of gratitude has shown me how I have closed myself off in the past and how much more Life and Light I have when I am open, vulnerable and present.
There will certainly be times when I run into people who behave in unkind ways; we are all doing the best we can with what we have and so many people still live from their pain rather than their true nature. And I accept that people just do what people do and it is never personal really. There will be those times, but the difference today is that I know and understand that in any moment that I lose my presence, I will remember that I now have a higher value on living from a state of gratitude and can return to being present with a simple decision.
So to the person who was so unkind--I am grateful for your presence in my life and the gift of understanding that I received through your action. And to my friends that I turned to when I felt misunderstood, I am most grateful for the mirror you always hold up so that I can see my true reflection of who I am as a woman, a friend, a healer, a teacher.
My vulnerability is my strength and for that I am grateful today.
In gratitude,
Bonnie
My mind gets so impatient when it feels I'm not moving forward fast enough. It is always wanting more, more, more and faster. This impatience stems from an old belief that there is not enough, so better get it right now. And that was my experience this morning.
Impatience when nothing 'grand' seemed to be happening. I love those mountain top experiences. You know the ones where you feel on top of the world and everything is laid at your feet. Your energy is high and you are in the zone. I love that and truth is that there are many other ways to experience transformation as well.
Those gentle moments of gratitude are just as powerful--when I am open to noticing them. Like a warm gentle breeze blowing freshness into my home, so is that gentle, easy flow of gratitude bringing freshness into my life--and I am transforming.
This journey with gratitude is building a new foundation from which to live my life. My old foundation which was based on past pain was like a huge dam filled with thousands of leaks and threatening to overwhelm me should I not contain it all. What an exhausting way to live!
Today I have a new image. The dam has broken and I'm riding the waves using the energy released to fuel my new foundation, my new way of living in this world.
No longer afraid of being overwhelmed, I am now free to build anew. And I hear myself on that surfboard yelling "Ride the waves baby. Ride the waves."
Wow--a week has gone by already? I guess that's what happens when you can step outside of time for a while. In some ways it feels like just yesterday I began this journey and in other ways--by the changes I'm experiencing--it feels like ages ago. When you step outside of time and into that state of Gratitude, you open to so much more than your conscious mind can imagine.
And speaking of conscious mind--that is what came up for me this morning in my gratitude time. I slipped into gratitude gentle and easy this morning. No resistance, just thankfulness. Yet as I sat there breathing in, breathing out and focusing on all that I'm grateful for, I felt something missing. A part of me not there. So I waited--in gratitude.
And who shows up but my ego mind. Also known as beta mind, conscious mind, personality self and a myriad of other names. Letting me know that I have left this very important part of who I am out of the equation of my life way too long.
You see, as a medical intuitive and teacher I work with the subconscious mind because that's where the belief systems are held. But I have ignored a part of me that also plays an essential role in who I am and what I do. My ego.
Ego has been given a bad rap for a long time, being treated like an unwanted, troublesome, and annoying child. And it is anything but. While the ego/conscious mind is only 15% of our reality, 15% is a very big deal and I have spent years pushing it aside, even trying to defeat it as if it was bad.
So we sat together, my ego and I, as I listened to what it needed from me. Acknowledgement, acceptance, love and...wait for it....gratitude. It is that part of me that discerns, makes quick decisions, makes sure I pay my bills on time and even gets me out of bed every morning. And she is the 'gatekeeper' to my subconscious mind. Everything that comes my way that doesn't already fit with my subconsciously held belief systems gets deleted or blocked. The positive intention--and our ego/conscious mind always works from a positive intention, no matter how weird that might seem.
So why is this important? Because the changes I've made internally--in my subconscious belief patterns no longer match what my ego/conscious mind believes. For decades I have believed that struggle, strain, suffering and lack was the only way to live--that's neither good nor bad, that's just what I was trained as a child to believe about life. My life reflected that core belief and I can look back at every situation in my life and see how it played out exactly that way.
Now here I go changing everything subconsciously, but not updating my conscious mind. It's like changing someone's job description after years of doing the same tasks every day, then being being angry because they aren't doing their job!
No wonder I have been experiencing conflict in both my inner and outer world. I now believe something new, but my ego mind is still functioning from old programming. That explains why when I get close to a goal, something happens and it falls short of my desired outcome. Not because anything is wrong with me or not because I can't get what I want. But because I have not let my ego mind in on this new gratitude 'thing' where everything is ease and flow.
I sat there listening to this conversation in my head and my only response finally was....oh...duh.
So I sat in gratitude of my ego/conscious mind, thanking her for all the wonderful, amazing things she has done for me over my lifetime. And I brought her up to speed with my new belief systems. She's on board now--in fact she's REALLY on board. The vision I received was a baby chick riding the waves on a surf board yelling "Ride the waves baby. Ride the waves."
In gratitude,
Bonnie
Resistance--what a great teacher! It was inevitable this resistance. The conscious mind doesn't think much of change after all and loves the status quo. To spend time in the state of gratitude--and gratitude IS a state of being--opens you up to change. And resistance arises, like an old pair of slippers.
I embraced my resistance and expressed gratitude for it. 'Thank you resistance! How wonderful to see you again old friend. I acknowledge and honor you as being part of who I am. Welcome.' It seemed insane at first to embrace my resistance because, after all, we resist feeling it don't we? But what we resist persists. And so we sat together--my resistance and me. Just sat in gratitude that I actually had resistance--realizing that resistance has a positive intention, which is to keep my safe.
And in that moment of safety I felt the shift. How precious is life! My life, regardless of what I do or don't have, despite the situations I find myself in--my life IS precious. Your life is precious. The very act of living is precious.
Last night my husband & I attended a charity gala. I got all 'gussied up' as my mother called it and Jim wore his tux. We've always had a great time before at this annual gala, but this year was a very different experience. The room was noisy & chaotic and several of the people at our table spent the evening drinking and texting rather than talking.
So we left early and came home. I quickly shed the fancy clothes and slipped into my favorite pair of flannel pajamas. Just the man I love and myself--together and grateful.
That experience last night showed me what I value most--a life of simplicity with people I love and who love me right back. Being myself in every moment. Being grateful for all my experiences--whether I like them or not.
So there I sat in my flannel pajamas filled with happy smiling frogs. Nothing to prove, nothing to do, nothing to be--just me in the moment. Content, happy and grateful for everything.
Enjoying the essence of my life now.
In gratitude,
Bonnie
Here's what I experienced from my 10 minutes in gratitude this morning.
Being grateful for your life in this moment, no matter what your current circumstances, does not mean that you are content or ok with where you are. By saying thank you for what is now is not the same as being satisfied for what is. You are not saying "I'm grateful for this debt. I'm grateful for this illness." Or whatever is happening in your life now. That is a common misunderstanding--or fear we often have about saying thank you for what is.
By saying thank you for the money that I DO have expands you beyond the fear of not enough. Thank you for the love I DO have in my life opens you to even more.
Everything is energy. What you think, feel and do is energy. And energy either expands or contracts. Gratitude is an expansive energy and when you take the time to be grateful for even one thing in your life--your energy expands and flows in ways you may not notice. But it does.
Gratitude is more than a feeling. It is a state of being. The more time you spend in this state of being, the more it becomes part of your true nature.
Gratitude is the energy of 'even more'. And you can certainly add that in your thank yous.
Thank you for the business I DO have. I am so grateful. And I open to having even more. Thank you.
My 10 minutes of gratitude was very different this morning. After my mind blowing experiences of Day 1 & 2, I met the resistance to change that seems to be pop up when change is threatening to occur. While we often say we want change and even work towards change, when it comes right down to it there is a part that resists the change out of fear.
And that's what I met this morning--my fear of changing! I sat with the fear and listened to its message. What if you get what you want? What will happen to 'me'? ME? Who is the 'me' that was speaking and what is the fear?
Sitting in the energy of gratitude is so powerful because I didn't have to do anything about the fear but witness it. Being in the freedom of gratitude opens me up to more Light and with more Light comes understanding. No judging, no arguing, no wishing anything away. Just more Light.
So in this expansion of gratitude what I realized was that a part of me has been so identified with scarcity, lack and struggle that the very thought of living differently meant annihilation of self. Powerful understanding!
In gratitude I looked at my patterns of struggle and lack--beginning with my parents and how they lived. Reviewing my childhood programming growing up very poor and how I lived what I believed to be real in my first marriage and even now in my relationship with my husband. My unconscious EXPECTATION was that life & marriage IS about struggle, lack and scarcity. What else would I expect because that was what I was trained to believe and trained to do--always worry about money, regardless of how much or little I had.
It explained that no matter how wonderful my life was going I had an unconscious limit to how amazing I could let it be. When I tapped the 'fun meter' as my husband puts it, then my old anxiety and fears were triggered. Once triggered I made decisions and took actions that brought me back to my
old expectations of what was real for me.
Fascinating experience! As I witnessed this all playing out in the Light of gratitude, the old patterns dissolved on their own. And in their place was born something new and fresh and without words--feelings of being more than just OK. An openness to experience a new reality.
That's my thought for today! I would love to hear about your experiences with the Freedom of Gratitude.
In gratitude and thankfullness,
Bonnie
A beautiful video that speaks to the Brave Woman message. We are all One. We are all Divine. We are all Love. We can all stand sister to sister-shoulder to shoulder in our Greatness.
