Being Grateful

You can come into full harmony with Formless Substance by entertaining a lively and sincere sense of gratitude. Gratitude unifies your mind with the thinking mind, so your thoughts are received by the Formless Substance. You can remain on the creative plane only by uniting yourself with the Formless Intelligence through a deep and continuing feeling of gratitude.

                                        The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles

This coming Sunday, I will be taping a show for DC Public TV. The hostess, Alice ‘Doll” Tyson, will interview several inspirational speakers to discuss how positive thinking can help those who are experiencing life challenges.  Each of us will discuss one aspect of positive thinking that can change a person’s life around. I chose-gratitude.  

Gratitude from the Latin word gratis means the state of being grateful or thankful.  As a child growing up, my siblings and I were taught by our parents, grandparents, teachers and minister to give thanks before eating, after someone gave you something or did something nice for you. We were also taught to be grateful for our lives. By the times I was in my twenties, I was attending Unity and Science of Minds, New Thought churches that reinforced my basic teaching of gratefulness. I was also heavily involved with metaphysical principles such as the statement above by Wallace Wattles.  

I wanted to give you a little background of my philosophical beliefs so that you can understand why I approach my life with gratitude when I am confronted with major life challenges. Some of you may have read in my book, Path to Truth, that in 1984, my son, Antoine Aparicio, was born with multiple-disabilities. He had a deformed skull from severe hydrocephalus and small tumors, Neurofibromatosis. The doctors gave him 3 months to live and told me he would be a vegetable. Antoine lived to be 16 years old.

What got me over a lot of bumps in the road was being grateful for my son’s life and his accomplishments. His physical therapist told me he wouldn’t crawl, but he did when he was almost two years old. I pulled out my gratitude book and wrote, Thank you God for the perfect healing of Antoine Aparicio. We are grateful for him crawling. I had books full of those types of gratitude statements. I started writing gratitude statements even before he actually could  accomplished a developmental goal. By the time he had walked at the age of 12, I had already given thanks a million times.

 I believe that the act of gratitude has a strong energy vibration. Being grateful and acknowledging it sends out strong wavelengths of goodness that attract only goodness back to you. This is the law of reciprocity—what you give comes back to you, whether it is positive or negative.

Writing those gratitude statements also helped to keep my mind focused and not let it run away with negative thinking. And if I did get in a slump, I would pull out my gratitude book and read the statements aloud, soon my spirits were up, and I knew based on the law only good would come out of feeling grateful.

 For those of you going through life challenges, Antoine’s story is for you. If you’re reading these words, I am grateful for your life.