Okay, welcome to our next section, and I hope you've forgiven yourself and everyone else who needs to forgive, you're raising your vibration and we're on the path more fully to a spiritual awakening. What is the name of this section and this one, we're going to talk about gratitude and how gratitude raises our vibration. So I have to be quite honest with you on this one. This was a difficult one for me to put a lecture together for because to me, gratitude is so basic and so simple. So I added some fluff on here, so I hope you enjoy it. What is gratitude?

Gratitude is the quality of being thankful. It's a readiness to show appreciation. So that's the definition of it. So I think from all the virtues that we talked about, gratitude is probably the highest pure vibration. There is this Just simple and it's come straight from the heart. It's just simply being thankful for whomever or whatever you have experienced, you know, be yourself, someone else, an event, the weather, whatever.

And you can't fake it. So genuine gratitude comes straight from the heart. You know. So there's a lot of gratitude out there these days, you know, says, Think positive and be grateful for everything. But genuine gratitude is a real miracle maker and it comes straight from the heart without any pretense. So that's the pure vibration of it.

So we all want to be gratitude, but you really can't fake it's got to be the real deal. And even I must admit, sometimes I try and be grateful when I don't feel great. So because you described gratitude as simple does that mean it's easy? No, it's not very difficult, in fact, in fact, gratitude gratitude can be very difficult if you're depressed If you're struggling financially, or if you're struggling with your health or whatever, gratitude can be a real challenge. And so and it's a, it's, you know, you can train yourself to be more and more gracious, but in my greatest moments of gratitude, they came without effort and without trying and quite honestly without thinking about it, and I've had, I'll tell you a story in a little bit about a pure moment of gratitude that I had. So stay tuned.

What are some benefits of gratitude? Okay, so, these are, these are benefits that I actually looked up on the internet. So these were these have been like researched and saying our research people who have positive attitudes or who are grateful on a regular basis, some of the things that they experienced, the first one is well being, so they tend to be more they there, their quality of life is higher because they tend to be more agreeable and open. And engaged and living. And so all that stuff creates a positive cycle that extends outward and brings it back to them, they tend to be less depressed, and they tend to be satisfied with their own lives. Also, people who are gracious or in a state of gratitude, tend to have better relationships, because they're more easily they can more easily forgive people.

And we talked about forgiveness in our last section. They don't hold grudges, and so they're not as bound by the past negative relationships from the past. And they tend to honor those who have helped them. And so what that does, and sounds kind of basic, but when you honor people that have helped you, it creates a positive relationship with those people. And then in turn, it makes you more willing to help someone who's coming up underneath you also. So it kind of creates this positive cycle of interaction.

Also, people who have who experience gratitude on a regular basis have unapproved level of their own psychology, or better or at you know about that they can To feel good about themselves, or at least better about themselves and most people, and they have a greater tendency to experience positive emotions such as joy, pleasure and happiness. And they also tend to participate fully in their lives, they tend to make their lives happen instead of waiting passively to let life happen to them. And they also have higher levels of self esteem on the average, and they tend to be more outgoing, which makes them less lonely and less isolated. So those are a few things that people do experience that engage in gratitude on a regular basis. Do you have any experience with gratitude that you'd like to share? I do.

I'd like to share a story if you don't mind. So this was about 10 years ago. And so 10 years ago, I just gone through a divorce. And it was a divorce that I did not want to go through and so I had lots of emotions to process. And so one of the things I did on a regular basis, I would go to this river that I kayaked in. And when I was feeling bad or depressed or you know, had emotions that I didn't know how to deal with, I'd walked down to this river, which is a pristine glacial river that came off was in Mount Baker in northeastern Northwestern Washington.

And I put my feet in the river. And the frigid cold water would take the emotions from my body, and they would just float downstream. It was amazing. It was incredible. And it worked every time. So I was during this process about two years, I was going to the river, not only to kayak, but also to stick my feet in the river to help me process of grieving emotions essentially.

And then, so then life goes on, you know, data die moved away from Bellingham, and I went back to visit and it's the first year I went back to visit this little town called glacier at the base of Mount Baker, which is where I went all the time. I went back to this trail that I went on all the time, you know, and and as I was visiting This trail that I'd walked on frequently that helped me through these healing experiences. As I walk down the trailer, that walk down the trail, I was overcome. I was overcome, literally, by these feelings of gratitude. So I was grateful for the trail. I was grateful to the trees that have helped me I was grateful to the creek.

I was grateful for everything. And it was it was a surreal moment that I couldn't really I couldn't explain it. It was like a, it was a spiritual moment. It's like I've had I've overcome with this feeling of gratitude. And then, as I was walking down this trail, I heard someone coming up in the other direction, and I have walked on this trail 400 times that I've never seen anybody on the trail because it's an unmarked trail that only the locals know. And as I'm walking down the trail, this person is coming the other way.

As a young woman. She's probably maybe 30 years old or so. She was carrying this kid on her hip, you know, like three or four year old kid. And so as we walked by each other, we exchange pleasantries, you know, like, Hey, how you doing. And then I walked down to the creek. And that's where the trail stop there was a big gravel bar before the river.

And as I came to the end of the trail, look down at the gravel bar, and there was this rock, and this rock was split open. right down the middle. It was like an ostrich egg about that big. And I'm, I'm a geologist, I'm banged on rocks and stuff. I've broken a lot of rocks. But this one was cracked right down the middle.

I've never seen a rock broken like that. And so I reached out, I picked it up, and I opened the rock and on the rock, were to mirror images of what to me look like the Madonna with the child teases, you know, so it's like the Madonna. And I just realized in that moment that I had just had a visitation from The Madonna walking down the trail and so you know, it's like I was like just stunned you know. And so I ran back up the trail to find this woman cuz I wanted to say thank you to her just for just it would have been stupid you know but so I wanted to because it's such a meaningful moment and so so I went back up the trail to go to this little village, this little town that had like one street and like several businesses in it.

And the way where they were going there was no car there so there was no way they could just drive off. I ran up the trail she was carrying a kid there's no way they could have beat me to the trailhead is just could. It's not physically possible. And so I run up the trail. They're not there on the trail anywhere. I look up and down the street.

They're not anywhere I go into every business in town, and they're not anywhere. It's like they disappeared. Yeah, so it was like, it was like, and so that whole experience was born out of a feeling of gratitude. very genuine. and hang on just a second, I'll show you the rock. Okay, just for all you viewers at home.

So here's here's the rock, I don't know if you can see that. So there is the Madonna with child in the middle of Iraq that I found that was a direct result from feelings of gratitude. So that's pretty cool. So meditation, this meditation is going to be pretty basic. So what we're going to do is we're going to go into a deeply relaxed state. And then, as I recall, I made the meditations already, I'm just going to go into this experience of gratitude.

So it's going to be a very high vibrational experience that we're going to run throughout your whole body. And so it'll be based. I think, I base it on experience that you've had in the past so you can go back and experience that pleasant sensation from joy or whatever. And then we're just going to kind of wrap it up there, your energy field should be really great. So, see it the next meditation