Appreciation

I'm baaack! After a long weekend, it's nice to be back pondering things LOA and beyond. It's a beautiful sunny day here and we're slowly acclimatizing to the warmer temperatures. At this time of the year, it's usually much, much easier to be positive and appreciative at night, when it cools down and the breeze can really be felt. Appreciation is such an interesting thing. A habit of appreciation is quite rare in my experience.

When people talk about being thankful or grateful, they are usually operating from having just experienced something very difficult or uncomfortable. Therefore, they are feeling the gratitude from the contrast of "bad" to "not bad" rather than just being here in this moment and feeling the good feeling of noticing it for what it is now, without comparing it to anything else. That is the only way that I used to be able to really feel that kind of feeling.

Now, Andries and I have been habitually practicing appreciation so much that I am able to use that as a tool to leverage myself out of dissatisfaction or even sadness. At first, appreciation can be difficult to feel when we are not used to finding things to appreciate. I used to have to pick small things like the weather or my coffee or the chair I was sitting in to start with. And my appreciation was rather grudging. I was afraid that if I appreciated my surroundings too much, the universe would say, "Oh, she's happy. We'll just leave her there." It took me a while to understand that nothing like that is true. Now I know that you can only progress in a positive way from appreciation.

Now I can appreciate the perfect workings of a perfect universe. I can appreciate the intricate timing and contrivance that brings me exactly what I need when I allow it. I do appreciate almost everything I've lived and am playing with bringing the rest into that lovely feeling of contentment. I look forward to many more things to appreciate, and I supremely appreciate my imagination, which allows me to expand into new ideas and experiences and line up with them in a powerful way.

I appreciate everyone who reads this and everyone who doesn't...

Renae