A couple of weeks ago I reflected that I have nothing. It’s since occurred to me that I’m not alone. Nobody has anything really. That’s the conclusion I came to after reading another of Joel Goldsmith’s essays, one simply entitled “Gratitude.”
According to Goldsmith, gratitude is like love, both of which emanate from God. “The act of expressing Gratitude is in truth the act of recognizing and acknowledging (within yourself) the Source of all your good…which is God. It is impossible to express Gratitude without expressing Love, as they are both components of God and, therefore, inseparable from God.” He goes on to elaborate that gratitude is an aspect of love, and all love originates from God.
If gratitude and love come from an infinite Source, then there are no limits to them. Furthermore, it would be foolish to look for them from anyone else or even from ourselves, as they come from God. Closely related to love and gratitude is supply. Have you ever found yourself wishing you had more money to give so you could show your gratitude (or appreciation or love) to a greater extent? In that instance, you recognize your money (supply) as an expression of your gratefulness or love. Essentially, they’re all the same thing, and each comes from God, an infinite Source.
Having pondered all of this I have to conclude that it would be pointless to look for anything from another person or entity: not appreciation, love, gratitude, supply, or any good thing. They don’t have them to give. All of these originate from God and are expressed through various people and channels. Keeping in mind last week’s discussion on the appearance of mutations when we focus on channels rather than Source, we can see how important it is to be clear about this point. If not, we’ll limit our experience of God’s good.
If when we examine all of this carefully we can see that God is our Source, why do we continue to struggle and repeatedly slip back into looking for fulfillment of our needs and wishes from employers, the government, our family and friends, and so forth? Why don’t we get it for once and for all? For me, it’s because God most often works through all of these people and entities to provide love, gratitude, supply, and anything else we desire. The organization listed on my paystub is the community college district, not God. It’s the parents of the students I tutor that hired me, not God, although God was the force behind it. But if I’m not careful, I can easily forget who is truly responsible for my good.
In a similar fashion, I can also take on more than my share of the responsibility for caring for myself and others in my life. I now regularly affirm that I let God be God, trusting that the energy, intelligence, confidence, love, and gratitude I need to be successful will be provided to me. I don’t have to work for them or earn them, just as I don’t have to worry about how I’ll take my next breath. I just need to remember that I have no identity separate from my Source. The Master Teacher made this very clear many times in His teachings. I’ll look more at this next week…