I know that many of you are now familiar with the concept of Gratitude and the use of Gratitude as a means for manifesting, finding happiness, and expanding the heart space. For those of you not yet in the regular practice of Gratitude, I encourage you to embrace it as part of your self-care spiritual practice. It will bring in more good and great things in your life and kick your manifesting up a gear. The aspect of Gratitude I wish to explore with you is the conscious use of Gratitude as a healing tool.
Healing is a multi-faceted practice involving working with the heart, mind, energy, and spiritual self. Gratitude works on the heart space, aligning the heart’s vibration with your highest energetic and spiritual vibrations. Our innate vibrational frequency, where we resonate at the soul level, is one of harmony, and it is where we heal and grow through healing.
To heal and grow from any negative experience, we need to transform the emotional feelings and energies we associate with the experience, incident, or person (s). To be able to positively transform any negative experience, we need to reframe how we perceive the experience.
For many of our experiences, we can move through the healing stage quickly. We may decide to grow from the experience or move on; that is our choice. One does not automatically follow on from the other. Growth, like healing, is a conscious choice. I have a commitment to healing and growth, so deciding to complete the healing cycle and move into the growth cycle is a Spiritual Pathway commitment. Everyone must make their own choices.
Without judgment, I offer this Gratitude Exercise:
Before expanding and giving context on the practice, I would like to give you my understanding of our blockages to healing from my perspective as a Buddhist Meditation Master and Master Teacher trained in Lao PDR.
One key aspect of healing is removing emotional and intellectual attachment to our responses to the event. This is a very natural occurrence; it is how we try to make sense of what happened, our ego-centred response. Individual responses may become embedded in our emotions and intellectual rendering or understanding of the event depending on our relationship with ego. Naturally, once this occurs, it is now encompassed in our energetic and spiritual signatures.
Our emotional responses can range from victim and outrage, defensive or aggression, justification or acceptance. The emotional or intellectual standpoint is not as important as our degree of attachment to the emotion, perception or viewpoint we adhere to. A healing process has several established processes regarding emotional responses and language used to describe the event and its impact. As an example, for the Grief Process, we must pass through all the stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) to allow us to heal. If we become stuck within any one of the stages, then our healing stagnates.
When we become stuck, we stay within our closed heart space, our vibrational integrity is impacted, and our sense of self and well-being becomes askew.
Depending on the impact of the attachment to the pain, we can do enormous damage to ourselves, our relationships, and the people around us. To enable us to move through our healing, we must remove our attachment to the event and our emotional and intellectual responses to the event.
Consider the power of attachment; it can define us through our viewpoint, response patterns, language, and understanding of ourselves in this world. The Gratitude Exercise that I use is one where I ask people to reconsider their standpoint and perspective on the event, the people, or the circumstances that resulted in the pain. I ask clients to find and acknowledge aspects within or around the event that they can be grateful for.
“I am grateful that I found out before I married him/her what they are capable of.”
“I am grateful for what I have learnt in this workplace.”
It is not an easy exercise, as it forces you to reconsider and rewrite your internal dialogue. It can be enormously challenging to your sense of self.
However, it will dramatically change your relationship (emotional and intellectual responses) to the event, remove your attachment, release your heart space, and recharge your emotional and spiritual well-being.
Most importantly, it will accelerate your healing.
Michelle Luehman, Our Expert (Former)
Michelle Luehman is a healer, guide, spiritual coach and philosopher. She combines her innate spiritual work with what she has learnt through her spiritual studies and business skills.
- Michelle Luehman, Our Expert (Former)
- Michelle Luehman, Our Expert (Former)
- Michelle Luehman, Our Expert (Former)
- Michelle Luehman, Our Expert (Former)
- Michelle Luehman, Our Expert (Former)
- Michelle Luehman, Our Expert (Former)
- Michelle Luehman, Our Expert (Former)
- Michelle Luehman, Our Expert (Former)
- Michelle Luehman, Our Expert (Former)
