Happy ThanksGiving

HAPPY THANKSGIVING It will be the Thursday of the year! Lets roast some gratefulness, appreciation, and gratitude in an Expansion oven.





Let’s assemble our ingredients starting with your self. Find your most basic
component of gratitude, your breath. Put your attention on your breath. Appreciate a single breath, and then stir in some Thanks Source I am breathing.





Breathe through your nose and catch the wafts of you. Smell the smeller. Today it will be a prime sense and source in your aroma heaven. Take a moment to appreciate this sense.


Intensify odors and discern the members of the smell universe.


No scent and no meal are without the memories of tastes and smells that have gone before.

Appreciate grandma’s fragrances; the sit down Turkey dinners at home, the vegetarian years with the yams. Expand into appreciation of those frozen moments. Extend as far into them as you can. Effortlessly occupy all your past scents and mix liberally with gratitude and appreciation.


Since we are cooking let’s get an impression of our mouth, tongue, chewers and tasters. Get some impression of the space they occupy in you. How far do they extend? As effortlessly as you can, taste in all directions. Intensify and include all the tastes you appreciate.


Now gather impressions of gratitude. It’s Thanksgiving, time to bring out the best, use only with special guests, the gratitude you’ve been saving for a special occasion is for now. Intensify and expand your attention into the space of gratitude you have created. Feel where the gratitude comes from. Be grateful at your source.


Time to mix specific thanks into the Feast of Appreciation.


Intensify the feeling of the freedom you occupy. Appreciate that freedom with many breathes.


Extend and engage all the specific types and kinds of Thanks you create.


Add Thanks for all of your body.


As effortlessly as you can, make your Thanks extend in all directions.


Add a full serving of Thanks for your feelings and senses.


As effortlessly as you can, make your Thanks extend in all directions.


Pour in Thanks for your ideas, intentions and goals.


As effortlessly as you can, make your Thanks extend in all directions.


A dash of Thanks for all you remember, and all you don’t.


As effortlessly as you can, make your Thanks extend in all directions.


Add a heaping amount of Thanks for the other bodies, friends, & family.


As effortlessly as you can, make your Thanks extend in all directions.


Spice the feast with Thanks for the decisions you make.


As effortlessly as you can, make your Thanks extend in all directions.


Pull out the Thanks for the epiphanies.


As effortlessly as you can, make your Thanks extend in all directions.


Sprinkle on Thanks for the actions created.


As effortlessly as you can, make your Thanks extend in all directions.

Add that one more jewel of Thanks for finding a way to create your Feast of Thanks, & sharing your thanks.

Attention to higher thoughts

There are virtues, that at times, are so rare, so small in comparison, that what is happening that is fixed attention or a plethora of distraction seem to constitute all & everything.

Paying attention as an investment means staying open to the possibilities that virtues and meaning exist in each moment.

It means discernment as to what is happening and what can happen continues to happen,
"There are many rooms in my fathers house," appears somewhere in Biblical translations."

As Does, "There are more things under heaven and earth than dreamed in your world Horatio, " may come altered a bit from Shakespeare.

And the one I was weened on, Beelzebub said to his grandson Hassiem, "Dear Boy, always remember that as the sunsets, those higher centers exist whether we are aware of them or not.

"
So paying attention is in degrees.

As with all temperature we are hot and we are not.

We remember, we forget, we may even have forgotten that there is no death, as in there is no loss of love, self or otherwise but when one's body dies, a new vessel begins its journey and only the waters from the river Lethe and we forgot how connected, how much time we have to remember to bring all virtues into existences.

HOPE

I am turning 61 at the end of this year.

It has been 40 years and 6 month since I last felt any hope in the American government.

For two thirds of my life I have not felt the joys and pride of being on the team.

Oh there were times, the way we felt the pride and partied for the Bi-centennial.

The Viet Nam was ended and some friends came home alive, but suffering.

A lying president was impeached and resigned and a really nice guy from Georgia was president. But he was as inept as the Ford he defeated.

The cowboy president brought down the wall and ended what I thought was to be the end of the world in nuclear holocaust. That was relief and I felt the need to take a serious look at the future and Raleen and I invested in America with IRA’s & SEP’s.

During the Clinton era I grew to expect long term business boom, conflict resolution, sex scandals, but any hope that may have been growing collapsed with his successor and the dot coms, collapse.

All to be further buried under the rubble of 911.

And it got worse when we attacked a country. We are the aggressor. I don’t know if shame is the opposite of hope, but I am ashamed, and the whole planet suffers from our aggression. We had become the evil empire pointing at others our finger, winning a war, and losing more peace.

BUT today I felt that hope at 3:33 am when I got ready to vote.

It felt like Christmas, a special gift was coming, it was under the tree and all I needed to do was vote and open the package. I felt joy at my polling place, and with all those who wore there I voted stickers. NPR talked about 80+% turn out. Raleen and I both cried.

It’s 4:30 PST, and I want that package, and I feel the fears and doubts of there not being a present under the tree as large as a bike.

BUT just the taste of hope and the civility of waiting, of the candidates having fought the fairest in the last eight years and that maybe 80% of US voted.

I feel the possibility that we, US, have the power and guts to get out, and fairly elect leaders.

I now sit in front of the computer and say, whatever happens in the next few hours, Lets JUST BE NICE

Let US win or lose like we were taught, shake hands and agree to disagree.

Let US lead, as in Let US have no more blame, excuses, spun stories of someone else did it to US.

No matter what happens, it can’t happen to US again if we believe in the hope of change, of responsibility of accountability of the creative power of our imagination to WE THE PEOPLE, in order to form a more perfect union, are taking back the country.

I HOPE We now know FREEDOM is a process that we must work at always.

Namaste

Gary