Its a good challenge, Ann. I never much cared for affirmations of the day, or any of that. You show a lot more gratitude for Share, through your response to her, than she does, through the unfocused expression of gratitude she has made.
Oftentimes, when people are blocked from seeing themselves completely, due to past trauma, they attempt to reconnect with themselves, by seeing teachers, who make them feel good, or adopting any strategy, like "mindfulness", or affirmation, to try to increase their range of feeling. Until that trauma is recognized, and healed, the expressions of that limited range of feeling, can come across, to others, as vague, dry, and empty, despite the actual words and ideas professed (even 'gratitude'). Or, as much of Barry's stuff does, it comes across as too well rehearsed; detailed, but like a house that has been vacant for a long time. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com> wrote: ---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote: I'm into gratitude these days. I just find one little thing to feel grateful for and then a whole bunch of other stuff pops into my mind. How does one get "into gratitude"? Isn't it something spontaneous and unexpected? Isn't it something that can occur at any moment, unannounced and heartfelt? Or maybe you just decide it is the day to feel grateful because you haven't felt that for a while and it is probably time -sort of like deciding you better take that multi vitamin because you haven't done so for a week now. Feeling grateful for things in your life, in the world around you isn't some prescriptive necessity. It's either present or it isn't. What, in particular, are you grateful for today Share? And did you feel that right out of the wild blue yonder? Or did you have to conciously put your attention on the fact that it was Monday and so you had to experience some aspect of gratefulness - like wearing that pair of underwear that corresponds to the appropriate day of the week because it says "Monday". http://www.gratefulness.org/brotherdavid/a-good-day.htm http://www.gratefulness.org/brotherdavid/a-good-day.htm I've even been grateful for gratitude (-: On Saturday, October 26, 2013 9:11 AM, Richard J. Williams <punditster@...> wrote: Hope - yeah, that's the ticket! A detailed depiction of a certain taboo male fantasy: the uninhibited poor American anti-social bachelor, alone and self-absorbed, wearing a goatee and a black T-shirt, typing into an iPhone - utterly free. That's our Uncle Tantra - full of hope that someone, anyone, will love him for what he is - a great and wise spiritual teacher. Go figure. There's_Gonna_Be_a_God_Damn_Riot_in_Here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2175989/ On 10/26/2013 8:27 AM, TurquoiseB wrote: That's what it says on the steet sign across the road from where I'm sitting. The Street Of Hope. Cool. And the password for the free Wifi at this cafe is 'cafe'. That's cool, too. And they have Westmalle Tripel. That's just WAY cool. What can I say? I am easily amused by little things. But still, doesn't sitting down in a new cafe to write in and discovering that you're literally sitting on the Street Of Hope sound like a *sign*? Maybe what I should write about, in this new writing cafe, is HOPE. OK, here goes. Hope. I still have it, in spades. Despite what has been said about me on this forum and others in the past, I am *not* at heart a cynic. I know few people *more* hopeful than I am. And I see ample reason in the world I see around me to *be* hopeful. It's really not such a bad place. Get over it, if you believe it is. This world is full of great beauty and great art and great love. And these things are there even in the darkest corners of supposed hopelessness. And what you focus on, you become. When I find someone who's invented a new artform, as has Elena Divina with her Cyr wheel in the videos I posted earlier, I focus on that, and I feel more hopeful. A world that can produce that is FAR from hopeless. It's like the ending to Woody Allen's "The Purple Rose Of Cairo." Cecilia (Mia Farrow) has had a bad day. She's on the street, homeless after telling her abusive husband to fuck off, and finding out that the other man she'd fallen in love with is fictional. She has nowhere to stay, and nowhere to go, and has very little money in her pockets. But she finds herself standing in front of a movie theater, and spends one of her last coins to go in and watch the movie. And up on the screen is Fred Astaire. And suddenly there is hope. Because no world that has Fred Astaire in it could possibly be hopeless.