Celebrate Thanksgiving All Year

November boasts one of my favorite holidays -- the one tucked between Halloween and the launch of frenzied holiday shopping in the early morning hours the next day -- Thanksgiving. A heartwarming feature of this celebration is that Thanksgiving demands nothing of us but to gather together with loved ones, share a meal and be grateful. We are asked to be appreciative without having to do anything. Gratitude warms our hearts and allows us to feel at one with our lives and those around us. What a perfect backdrop for a perfectly wonderful holiday.

Lest we limit its influence to just one day, however, let’s take a moment to sing the praises and powers of Gratitude, and challenge ourselves to move from one day of Thanksgiving to a lifetime of Thanks-Living!

“Gratitude, like Love, is God expressing Itself through man as man.” Love, Gratitude, by Joel S. Goldsmith

GRATITUDE is the Prayer of the Heart. When we truly express appreciation for someone or something, there is a feeling that emanates from us that originates in our heart. The phrase “heart-felt thanks” best describes the energy associated with an authentic act of gratitude as opposed to platitudes of “thanks” tossed to a waiter, sales person or parking lot attendant. Affairs of the heart - unlike those of the logical mind - are based in our spiritual center, and thus true thanksgiving can be considered an uttered prayer. In 5 GIFTS for an Abundant Life I wrote: “In living an abundant life, giving this GIFT [of Gratitude] becomes the prayer of the heart that opens your life to the riches contained in it. GRATITUDE is the door to the abundance of God and all of creation.” Thanksgiving is a doorway to the wealth of Spirit found within us and all around us. It reveals the presence of God in all. We become the instruments through which Love and Gratitude are expressed by that God Presence. And, giving out appreciation brings even more gifts.

“Praise and thanksgiving impart the quickening spiritual power that produces growth and increase in all things.” Prosperity, by Charles Fillmore

GRATITUDE is a great multiplier. Giving thanks and appreciating all that we have opens the door for us to have more. Jesus, the Christ, demonstrated this truth over and over in his ministry. It was after giving thanks that he was able to feed 5,000 from a few loaves and fishes and still have much to spare. If you want more of something in your life, be grateful for what you have. The new age/ancient wisdom axiom is true: What you put your attention on grows. When you attend to something in GRATITUDE, that metaphysical law is activated, and you will experience more of it.

A powerful practice of Gratitude as a multiplier is tithing. I believe that tithing is a prayer of thanksgiving for what we have received from our Source -- God. In our work teaching the 5 GIFTS for an Abundant Life course, innumerable stories of “miracle manifestations of increase” have been shared from readers and students who have engaged in giving 10% of all they have received by God’s grace to the person or place where they are nourished spiritually with a grateful heart. “…it is for this reason that those who spontaneously come to tithe are always generously and abundantly provided for,” writes Joel Goldsmith in Consciousness Transformed.

“If the only prayer you say in your whole life is ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.” Meister Eckhart, 14th Century theologian and mystic

GRATITUDE is a powerful spiritual vehicle. Gratitude is a love vibration. Its powers cannot be underestimated, and cannot be overused. Its attributes cannot be contained in one national holiday. When we are grateful we exude a feeling of acceptance and appreciation. Thanksgiving allows us to connect to what we are experiencing in our hearts. It is when we move from our heads to our hearts that we open up to the sacred in all things and allow ourselves to feel the oneness with all of life. And so in giving thanks, we become aware of the presence of God in all.

HAPPY THANKS-LIVING and to all a good Life!