When you feel gratitude, you are the closest to the natural state you were born to live in.”
Abraham - Hicks
 
How do we make inspired, guided choices in our lives in full alignment with our higher-selves? How best do we answer the questions in our lives, big and small?
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These are the questions I have been asking myself for several days now. I wanted a specific formula, a structure to work with for asking and getting answers from my higher-self and from my spiritual support team.

I knew that it began with asking the question. I knew the next step was to take it into meditation and wait for the answer. This is where I bogged down. My mind would keep worrying at the question, even as I tried to meditate. I’d see a fleeting visual image and wonder, is that my answer? Then I’d bring myself back to quiet and have a thought about something unrelated. Maybe that’s my answer, I’d think, and so on. Letting go and allowing was hard work.

The answers are all there for us, accompanied by such LOVE. You have only to ask and allow. But how do we allow?

Today, I began again. I asked my question out loud to focus my subconscious on my intention. I closed my eyes and quieted my mind, thinking ‘allow.’

But, how do I allow? 

A feeling of deep gratitude filled me. Gratitude for the love of Spirit. Gratitude for the asking and the answering. Gratitude for connection. I breathed deeply of that feeling of gratitude and said internally, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Love filled me tingling right down my legs, tears filling my eyes. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Breathing in gratitude and love. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

I got it. Gratitude opens the door to allowing. Gratitude is the magic, the path opener. Gratitude opens the floodgates of inspiration.

Imagine if you will an enormous spiral, a vortex of loving energy with the tip surrounding your whole body, and the wider part extending high above your head stretching upward into the heavens. This is YOU, in alignment with your higher self.

As you allow, through gratitude, all that is your higher self, all the energy, knowledge, inspiration and guidance funnels downward to and through you, allowing you to live in clarity, inspired action and the daily joy of gratitude.

Gratitude opens the door to allowing and guidance because it raises your vibration, to the level where you are able to connect with the energy of your higher self and your spiritual support team. They cannot come down in energy to you, you must raise your energy to meet theirs to receive guidance and the answers to your questions. Your higher-self and your spiritual support team are as delighted to communicate with you as you are to communicate with them, but you must make yourself energetically available.

Your higher self and spiritual support team are always with you, offering support and guidance, but as much as we want answers when we are feeling sad, angry, hurt, depressed or any of the negative emotions, the energy with which we are vibrating when we are feeling that way closes the door to receiving communication from loving Spirit.
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We must raise our energy first, and one way to do that is through gratitude. Gratitude for even the simplest things is a place to start. Then work your way up from there. Gratitude tunes your radio dial to receive guidance from loving Spirit through your higher self.  


Photo by Jacob Morch on Unsplash window door

“One thing about trains: It doesn't matter where they're goin'. What matters is deciding to get on.”
The Polar Express, directed by Robert Zemeckis, book by Chris VanAllsburg

What inspires you today?
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I’ve felt inspired by the bright, blue sky this morning, the sun shining off new fallen snow. I’ve felt inspired by the woodstove, fire crackling warmly within. I’ve felt inspired to create Christmas decorations, hanging our wreath and stockings, putting up the little tree in our front hall.  I’ve felt inspired listening to Christmas music,  and that magical Christmas movie, The Polar Express.

Inspiration follows the energy of the day. It is not always linked to the same activities or ideas. It comes and goes on its own schedule. If we’re lucky we get on for the ride and are carried along delighting in the flow.

Can we do this intentionally? Like waiting at the train station for the train and leaping aboard as it comes rumbling, steaming and puffing to a stop just long enough for us to get on?

I think we can. I think we are meant to allow our lives to follow our inspiration, that small, shining gem hidden within the layers of the every day sameness. Magic is found within our inspiration.

The Christmas season is all about magic. The magic of the twinkling lights, the mystery of the presents under the tree, the Spirit of Christmas, the time of year when love and giving is the theme, and everywhere you look there are representations of magical beings, beautiful decorations and sparkling colors.

No matter what holidays you celebrate, the child within us longs for magic, the magic that is Spirit. Feeling and following our inspiration from within is our connection to that magic. That’s where the real magic is in this 3D world we live in. The magic lives within each one of us.

The train of your inspiration is stopping at your station. All aboard! 

Photo by Bill Anderson on Unsplash

 “Despite my extreme skepticism, practicing gratitude changed my life. It didn’t turn me into some happy-go-lucky person I was never meant to be (or, frankly, wanted to be). But I developed a fundamentally different way of thinking and moving through life, one in which I stopped taking for granted all the tiny good moments that were already part of it. I stopped looking for happiness out there and learned to find it right here.”
— Nataly Kogan
 
In this season of Thanksgiving how do you feel grateful when things in your life are going wrong? What if the people you love are suffering? What if you are upset about the environmental situation? What if things are not going well in your life? Your world? How then do you feel grateful?

The answer is in the understanding that how you feel is not about what is happening in your outside world. Though we are conditioned to believe that it is. Rather gratitude comes from the inside. It is a matter of where you choose to focus your attention.
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“Gratitude should not be just a reaction to getting what you want, but an all-the-time gratitude, the kind where you notice the little things and where you constantly look for the good even in unpleasant situations.”
— Marelisa Fabrega

Sometimes the best way to attain that state of gratitude is to focus not on what you are worried about but upon what is right in your world. You can feel grateful for the commonplace things, the things you usually take for granted. You can look for the silver lining within the clouds. As you do so you create alignment. There is nothing that is going on in your outside world that is not supported by your inner alignment.  

That is why gratitude is such a powerful spiritual tool.

Your Higher Self and Spirit know what you are worried about. Your Higher Self and Spirit know what are the best actions you can take to create healing, improvement, betterment of whatever the situation is. Your Higher Self and Spirit need your permission given through prayer, to intervene and set the spiritual ball of healing rolling.

As you release worry and focus upon what you are grateful for, you move back into alignment. As you do that you will be inspired into what will truly support the situations you are concerned about. From that centered place you will be able to connect with, hear and feel inspiration.

Gratitude is the tool that can move you from worried wheel spinning to inspired action. 


Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash