Being Thankful of Life

Written by Mathew Naismith

Humanly it’s impossible to be thankful of life when life is dealing us hard blows, at times we can be thankful after such blows but while we are experiencing such blows it’s utterly impossible to be thankful of life. This isn’t however a problem for some people, because of their connectedness they are able to keep their disposition at a similar state as if they were in meditation.  

I’m not one of these people however I do experience bouts of this kind of consciousness at times as I did last night.  I entered this states of consciousness that I was thankful of all of what I experienced and all of what I am experiencing.  When you can enter into an extreme negative situation & still feel thankful you know you are connected even if it’s only for a short period of time. This isn’t about avoiding or ignoring a negative situation, this is about becoming a part of this negative and still being able to be thankful of life and life’s experiences.  

We can’t always avoid a negative or unbecoming situation and at times when we try to avoid such experiences we can inadvertently enhance such effects especially if a lesson is to be learnt. 

“Lessons learnt are lessons learnt while facing such lessons not while one is running from such lessons.”

What lessons can one learn from negative and unbecoming situations?  Insurmountable lessons can be learnt from such occurrences but this post is focused on how we react and feel during and immediately after such lessons.

It’s good to practice feeling thankful of life while experiencing negatives and unbecoming situations and the more you do this the more spiritually connected I feel you will become.  Once you practice this on a regular basis, you will find you will no longer react unbecomingly yourself or feel threatened by such negativity. The negatives within these situations seem to just dissipate even when we are not humanly conscious to it. You will get to a stage that you can no longer see a negative or feel threatened in these situations you once allowed affect you.  

What about extreme negative situations like being bashed or molested in some way, surly at the human level it’s impossible to be thankful of life during and after such experiences?  There are people that connected, myself not being one of them, that they are able to be thankful of life through the most gruelling circumstances. We are all capable of this believe it or not, the main obstacle to actually acting this out is the ego, our ego just doesn’t want to let go but what isn’t it letting go of?  Every time we feel negative we are feeling threatened to being seen as wrong in some way or we feel anger at others who have touched our feelings in an inappropriate way.   Next time you feel threatened in some way, look at yourself to why you are feeling this way not at what is making you feel this way.  

Let’s say I was walking down a street and could see myself being bashed by some hoodlums further down the street, I immediately feel threatened because of my ego, I don’t want to be hurt so I avoid such a situation. You would have to be a nut if you didn’t!! Would a well-connected spiritually aware person walk on or would they avoid such a situation? A well connected spiritually aware person would walk on if a lesson needed to be learnt and not necessarily for themselves either.  This person would feel the hoodlums need to also learn a lesson however by putting themselves in such a conscious state they might avoid any heavy handed confrontation by facing such circumstances rather than avoiding such occurrences.

Has anyone here put themselves in a connected conscious state, that when they entered into a situation that wasn’t altogether pleasant, they changed the atmosphere into a more pleasant atmosphere.  I’m not saying one should try this with a group of hoodlums unless you feel you are this connected. I would personally avoid such contact because my ego is telling me I don’t want to be hurt however I don’t avoid or run from all the negative circumstances that come my way either because I know I have lessons to be learnt.  

Unless you can stop the controlling ego controlling you and feel thankful of life even in the most unbecoming threatening circumstances, you are not truly connected. Negative and unbecoming circumstances can help teach us this connectedness, however if we keep avoiding these circumstances to feed our ego we won’t be connected past the point of our ego controlled attachments. Avoiding all negatives when possible is a good sign in how disconnected one is, this is our ego wanting us to feel good all the times at the expense of furthering our awareness.

Like I said, once you learn to be thankful of life, even at the most gruelling times, you will notice there were no negatives to feel bad about and avoid in the first place, they were just our egos protecting itself.  You then look at a group of hoodlums as being a lesson to be learnt, if not for you, for someone else or for the hoodlums themselves. You learn…..Nothing is without purpose!!