Love and Gratitude

For quite a few years my body has been a mystery to me. I'm not sure what it is but, it seems like I have to be very disciplined to stay healthy while other women seem to just mindlessly float through their 40's and 50's with radiant health and more than enough energy to burn. What really intrigues me are the people I've met who smoke, drink and eat weird food stuffs and yet they can still dance me under the table! It just boggles my mind!... I don't get it!! Conventional medicine, while life saving in emergencies, has not been the answer long term for me and so I've always had this sort of underlying voice somewhere inside that says something is wrong with me. I know now that not "fitting in" is a blessing and so I'm ok with it and I know I'm certainly not alone. Still, there is much that remains a mystery.

A common theme I've heard throughout the years is that the most healing tool is Love. To love all of our parts whether they work well or not.

A short time ago I began doing a Taoist meditation every morning. It's called The Inner Smile Meditation. It's lovely and it seems to be a way to bask all of the parts of me with love. Mantak Chia, in his book "Transform stress into vitality", suggests also adding a silent "thank-you" to each organ. What I experience is that the parts of me that don't work so well, soak up this meditation like a sponge! That seems important.

I also found myself remembering a book called "Messages from Water" by Dr. Emoto. He placed tap water in several containers, labeled them with words like "love", gratitude", "you fool" etc, froze the samples until they formed crystals and then photographed them. The results were amazing. They were very convincing that our messages to ourselves make a difference.

And according to Dr Emoto, the most beautiful crystals were formed from water labeled "love and gratitude." The photo at the top of this blog shows the results.

"These two words together create the most important vibration. We know that water is described as H2O. If we were to look at love and gratitude as a pair, gratitude is the H and love is the O. Water is the basis that not only supports but also allows the existence of life. In my understanding of the concept of yin and yang, in the same way that there is one O and two Hs, we also need one part yang/love to two parts yin/gratitude, in order to come to a place of balance in the equation. Love is an active word and gratitude is passive. When you think of gratitude -- a combination of appreciation and thankfulness -- there is an apologetic quality. The Japanese word for gratitude is kan-sha, consisting of two Chinese characters: kan, which means feeling, and sha, apology. It's coming from a reverential space, taking a step or two back. I believe that love coming from this space is optimal love, and may even lead to an end to the wars and conflicts in the world. Kan-sha is inherent in the substance H2O -- an essential element for life. "

It occured to me that my smile meditation (smile and thankyou) equals love and gratitude. No wonder it feels so good!