By Catherine Viel, September 27, 2021
(Golden Age of Gaia)
September 26, 2021
Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks…
You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe
That you have something impossible up your sleeve,
The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak…
The will to do whatever must be done…
~A.E. Stallings, Fairy-tale Logic
It’s amazing how stating my gratitude aloud makes it real and solid and dense.
Something I can chew on, something to embrace.
There is a different flavor to it today. I am realizing that rather than merely being grateful that things aren’t worse, I am actively appreciative of my own self, my bodily coherence and autonomy, my ability to move physically, and to think and feel and express.
In other words, I’m grateful to be this human being, here and now.
I acknowledge from a depth I don’t usually access that I’m extraordinarily fortunate and blessed to have a close connection with family and friends. Never mind missing the family and friends who are gone, dropped away through circumstance or death.
I feel like a deep-sea diver in a pressure suit, coming slowly up and bursting through the surface. Taking off the helmet. Goodness! How wonderful to breathe actual air.
Goodness! How wonderful to appreciate what is actually there.
*****
I created a brief video for a friend back east and stated specific things for which I’m grateful on this day.
Somehow, creating that short video, staring into my own face as the device recorded me, an infinitesimal alchemical shift occurred. The truth of my words was made manifest through this formalized process, almost like a religious ritual, but more organic.
I acknowledge, with some chagrin, that most of the time, when I say I’m grateful for such and such, I’m fudging a little.
I say I’m thankful because I know it’s how I should feel.
And also because I believe what many have said, that gratitude is an immensely high vibrational state, profoundly beneficial for us to embody and express. Not just for my own sake, but to infuse into this chaotic tumble of the current world the pure joyful emanation that gratitude can be.
I don’t know if a dutiful expression of gratitude does much for raising the vibration. I hope it does, because most of the time, that’s all I’ve got.
This brief experience today, however, has shown me that unprompted gratitude—genuine, profound thankfulness simply for what is—shines like a diamond compared to the rote lip service I frequently offer.
*****
The outer world pushes hard to promote states of being and emotions that are very far from what I (and probably most people) desire.
Yesterday I read that the Italian government has directed all Italian employers to withhold wages from employees who refuse to get the vaccine. I believe that number is something like 70 million people.
Locally, the Santa Barbara Unified School District has passed a resolution demanding that all employees get vaccinated.
On and on and on…These are just a few scraps of the depressing information that crop up by clicking here and there on the most cursory search.
I don’t know what will happen with the Italian situation, or even worse circumstances around the globe.
I realize that, for the most part, my only beneficial contribution comes from creating a circle of peace within my immediate realm.
As mundane as that is, it’s what is in front of me. It is the clay from which I may mold my preferred day-to-day life.
Today, a precious element has been added to the ingredients of my clay. Sprinkled over the clay and sand, water and minerals, diamond dust now glitters.
The magical diamond of gratitude.
It sparkles like fairy dust in a dewy meadow, and when I remember to embody that vibrational song of gratitude, I know I contribute something that is valuable beyond measure.
