Gratitude is Not a Virtue
Gratitude and appreciation play a role in manifestation, but it's not the role that everyone thinks.
We cannot see manifestation clearly if we bear a moral code during the examination.
A lot of people think that gratitude increases receiving, and it's thickly girded with beliefs about being worthy and earning receiving through the morally-good practice of being grateful.
Manifestation is not something we turn on by being good in any way, it is how all of reality is unfolding around us all the time. It does not turn off. it does not care how good you are from a human perspective.
The truth is that appreciation is a practice of exquisite HAVING and exquisite having allows us to receive more, WE allow more, because we are confident in the systems on the other side of our receiving portal.
Receiving and having are best understood with a horse. Even if you LOVE horses, a horse is not necessarily a gift.
In receiving, you get to ride the horse.
If, after the horse ride, you were offered the opportunity to take that horse home with you for free, most of us would likely decline just based on the logistics of the thing, and how a free horse is anything but free.
Receiving is complete the moment it happens. We experience the entrance of a resource.
Having (or not) is what happens after that, based on our structures of having, holding, and distribution.
Appreciation is our acknowledgement, regard, and practice of valuing and respecting, retaining, and increasing the value of what we HAVE received, and now HAVE.
Some of the deepest acknowledgement and regard is in taking something entirely for granted, like we do with gravity.
Acknowledgement and regard go beyond our conscious thoughts, they are about our deep beliefs.
A deep belief in gravity's power is resonant in each one of us. Gravity has never failed to apply to us, even in times we wished it would. This belief is so deep we never need to think of it to rely on gravity completely. Our trust in and reliance on gravity is in EVERY action we take. THAT is subconscious acknowledgement and regard.
This is the level of acknowledgement and regard in the nervous system of a small child who will throw violent tantrums with their parents. They have unquestioning regard for their parents' love, and are enacting trust that their parent will not forsake them even for the worst behavior they can think to enact.
Appreciation is a way of passing the time as well as increasing the value of your experience and the value of all you have.
It’s not a virtue, it’s simply a worthy investment.
