Ep. 36 The Importance of Practicing Gratitude

In this episode I share some quotes and poems about gratitude in honor of Thanksgiving Day in the US. If you live elsewhere I hope you'll also take a moment to be thankful and to commit to making gratitude a daily practice as part of your Shadow work. This episode includes:

• Why we need to give thanks even if we can't see anything positive around or within us.
• How the intentional practice of gratitude helps "clean the window" through which we view life and adds more clarity, peace and order to our lives.
• Gratitude is the ability to see each moment of life as sacred, even when challenges, darkness, pain and confusion are present.
• Gratitude can be practiced only in the present moment. (Poem "Being Home" by Gunilla Norris)
• Gathering together with loved ones and with our past memories is a powerful experience of the richness of life and the depth of connectedness. (Poem "Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo)
• What nourishes us is sometimes the invisible and the insignificant. (Poem "The Traveling Onion" by Naomi Shihab Nye)

"To be joyful in the universe is a brave and reckless act. The courage for joy springs not from the certainty of human experience, but the surprise. Our astonishment at being loved, our bold willingness to love in return--these wonders promise the possibility of joyfulness, no matter how often and how harshly love seems to be lost. Therefore, despite the world's sorrows, we give thanks for our loves, for our joys and for the continued courage to be happily surprised." - Molly Fumia