Virginia Is For Families

Today I feel grateful for the ability to meditate and the fact that I am still alive after more than a half century of turmoil. I can understand why probably a lot of people think that I am so cheerful it is annoying! All I can say is “I bet that if you were depressed for forty years and suddenly started feeling great all the time you would be cheerful too!”

But in all those years of struggle there was never any question about just packing it in. It always amazed me when people decide to end their lives as a way of dealing with their problems. Especially when they jump off of high buildings or bridges! Put me on a ledge and you would have to pry me off with a crowbar. Heights are scary. If I suddenly changed my mind there would be no question but to have dinner out in the garage with the car and several locked doors.

But I would never do it! First of all look at what I would be doing to my family! And then there are a lot of spiritual reasons not to do it. Sylvia Browne says that if you commit suicide you have to come right back! You don’t get to spend time in heaven. Bummer!

And I did have some ways of coping with the misery of depressed moods in those years . One of them was to meditate for awhile and then begin to appreciate the many things that were wonderful about life even during the worst times. Because in every moment of life there are treasures to be found. What’s that movie that has been on a million times this Christmas with Jimmy Stewart? The Frank Capra movie It’s A Wonderful Life?

I guarantee that if we take the time to focus within on Spirit while meditating it does not take long to find the same spot that Jimmy Stewart found with his angel. And you don’t have to die to do it! You don’t have to dream like Scrooge or enter an alternate universe like George Bailey.

Feeling gratitude is very, very powerful medicine. Unfortunately for many of us it wears off too soon. And we don’t go back to the place where we felt it often enough. If we spent all our waking hours feeling this way we would lead remarkable and transformed lives indeed!

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More of The Twelve Days of Christmas

http://davidnotes.com/2008/01/04/suggestions-for-the-twelve-days-of-christmas-11-gratitude-for-this/

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