By Celeste Smucker
The struggle ends when the gratitude begins. —Neale Donald Walsch
A daily gratitude practice is a great way to relieve stress, lift depression and enjoy better quality sleep.
Just as important, regular expressions of gratitude can increase your self-awareness by bringing you more consistently into the present moment, awakening you to life changing events and connections you may have missed, maybe for your whole life.
Among them are a trail of synchronicities that follow you everywhere you go and may even direct you to (and keep you on) your spiritual path.
Let's take a deeper look.
The Life-Changing Power of Synchronicities
Famous Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung defined a synchronicity as "a meaningful coincidence where an inner psychological state and an external physical event occur together without a direct causal connection."
The key here is the apparent lack of a direct causal connection. Is it truly missing?
In fact, the connection may be there but in a form you don't immediately recognize.
Here are some examples of synchronicities:
A long time ago I joined a writing group at the urging of a good friend. I eventually dropped out and sometime after that the group disbanded. Years later I experienced two related synchronicities.
The first one occurred when I joined an online writing course.
Since the course had several hundred participants from around the world, our teacher randomly divided us up into small groups of 10-12 people to interact with during the course. Synchronistically, one of these individuals lived less than 45 minutes away from me.
Eventually we met in person and over coffee agreed it would be nice to organize a local writing group.
The next day I called the friend from my former writing group to see if she wanted to help organize another one. At that time I had not seen nor spoken to her for over eight years.
Yet, remarkably, the first words out of her mouth were, "I'm so glad you called, I was just getting ready to call you."
Someone from our previous group had contacted her the day before about starting another one, which, a few weeks later, we did.
In another situation I was with friends in a bookstore. As I walked down an aisle a book fell off a shelf and hit me in the head. Fortunately, it was a small paperback.
I put it back and it fell and hit me once again. One of my friends said, "I don't know about you but I'm buying that book. There must be an important message in there." She was right.
In retrospect I am grateful to this friend for giving me a much needed wakeup call. If not I might have continued to move unconsciously through life.
Her intervention may also have saved me from getting hit by something bigger, like a brick, that may otherwise have been needed to wake me up and take actions I had been putting off.
Where is gratitude in all of this?
A daily gratitude practice is a constant reminder to bring your focus back to the present moment. In that space, you are better able to notice and appreciate all the good things in your life you might otherwise have missed. And this includes (but is not limited to) synchronicities.
Synchronicities Are Everywhere
Engage in the joyful experience of Aware Presence or unified consciousness that underlies everything. —Master Charles Cannon
If you take a serious look backwards at your life, you may discover examples of synchronicities you either missed altogether or perhaps missed their significance.
Yet noticing synchronicities can change your life, influencing your decision making and sending you in directions you may not have pursued otherwise, enriching your spiritual journey.
An acquaintance relayed a personal story that is a powerful illustration. He was in a large auditorium listening to a speaker he thought might be the spiritual teacher he had been looking for.
He decided to ask for a sign that this was the case.
Suddenly he heard a voice in his head urging him to change seats with a companion sitting in an aisle seat next to him. Surprised, he nonetheless agreed. Soon after that, the speaker walked by, looked him in the eye and winked.
The person who had been sitting at the aisle later told my friend that he too had received an inner message telling him to make the seat change.
There was no apparent connection between my friend's thoughts about this speaker and his urge to switch seats. However, by acting on this synchronicity, his life changed forever.
In my case, the book I bought that day long ago gave me new ideas to incorporate into the writing I was doing at the time.
Support from the writing group I helped resurrect brought valuable feedback I would not have received otherwise. Thanks to this group I made writing more of a priority. I also made some interesting new friends.
Beyond increasing your awareness of synchronicities, could a regular gratitude practice actually cause them to show up in your life?
As your self-awareness expands you may become better able to tap into what the above quote calls "unified consciousness that underlies everything," including the potential for synchronicities in your life.
And this potential may come into being energized by your commitment to a consistent daily gratitude practice.
Gratitude Enhances A Holistic View of Life
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. —Franz Kafka
Imagine you are taking a walk on a brisk autumn day.
You enjoy the bright colors of the changing leaves and appreciate the crisp feeling of autumn air now that the long hot days of summer are past.
After a time you see a bench with a lovely view and decide to take a break. You listen to the rush of water in a nearby stream and think thoughts of gratitude for the walk, the scenery and all the good things in your life.
On another day you may decide to take a refreshing run along the same path. Now when you take a break you can express gratitude for healthy muscles and lungs that allow you to experience the rush of air around you as you speed along.
Regardless of the experience, being fully present to it opens you to a fresh new perspective.
Instead of experiencing yourself as an individual, separate from nature and other people, you begin to sense the interconnectedness of all things.
You may also recognize this wholeness as the source of synchronicities and can celebrate this expanded awareness as part of your gratitude practice.
It's Not Just the "Good" Things
It's easy to express gratitude for things and happenings you consider to be "good:"
- Unexpected money miraculously appears just when you need it.
- You finish a project you've been working on for ages.
- Someone gives you a compliment.
- A friend assists you when you are in a bind.
- Someone lifts your mood and changes your day.
- You hear from an old friend you haven't seen in ages.
At the same time, it is often just as easy to ignore or push back at events that you might think of as "bad luck:"
- You break your arm and can't work or fulfill your usual obligations
- A friend you've relied on for years moves away
- Your computer or your bank account get hacked
- You get sick with a mysterious illness no one can diagnose.
In spite of the cause, why not step back, suspend judgement and express gratitude from a more holistic view.
For example, express gratitude for the friend who showed up and got you to the emergency department when you broke your arm, or organized others to do your grocery shopping or clean your house.
You could also be grateful and fully enjoy what may be a much needed break from your regular routine as you celebrate time to heal not only your arm but from lifestyle choices that wore you down, tired you out and caused you to trip and fall.
Start Small
If you already have a daily gratitude practice, keep it up.
If not, why not start by trying something simple like noticing one thing to be grateful for each day that you might (in the past) have overlooked.
Or start a gratitude journal with an intention to write down just one or two things daily you are grateful for. Then, when you have established a habit, start increasing the length of your list.
You'll be amazed at what a difference it makes.