FEBRUARY - Appreciation & Fun

                                                                                Illustration by Miki Howenstein

​There are times when you feel grateful for all you are and the good things surrounding you. Hopefully, a fuller awareness of your true self will help to cultivate such a feeling. Yet, there will still be times when it is difficult to appreciate anything. For example, everything may be going wrong or you may be simply getting into one of those ornery moods. Like any worthwhile spiritual gift, a spirit of gratitude requires a discipline of consciously incorporating it into your life. Just like meditation, expressing appreciation is most beneficial when done regularly, even when (or rather, especially when) you don’t feel like it. And living in a spirit of gratitude enriches both the one bestowing it as well as the one receiving it. Grounding yourself in a spirit of appreciation fills you with a firmly planted contentment……..

(From page 48 of the book “Jumbo Jumble”)

Author’s Comment: The word “discipline” sounds like an unpleasant necessity at best and downright torture at worst. Yet, when you instill a discipline of feeling appreciation for the good things in life and, yes, a commitment to have fun on a regular basis, your spirit is infused with a life-generating energy which brightens and lightens your own life and those around you. Your “spirituality” is made physically manifest to others and you yourself increasingly feel a glow which warms your whole being. Far from being a burden, disciplining yourself to recurrent doses of appreciation and fun becomes a wellspring for a deeply-enjoyable existence.