Thanksgiving and the Good Things of Life are Mirrors of One Another

 

Good and beautiful things appreciate themselves within human gratitude.

Human gratitude crystallizes itself in good and beautiful things.

Gratitude is the organic outgrowth of good and beautiful things,

And good and beautiful things are the organic outgrowth of gratitude.

Generally, we think of thankfulness as an attitude that is caused by the goodness and beauty of life.  However, in a non-dual world, thanksgiving is much more profound than this.  In actuality, gratefulness is not merely the effect of a cause.  Rather, it is the organic outgrowth of life's goodness and beauty.  In other words, good and beautiful things are able to appreciate themselves within our gratitude! The two sides constitute a single reality, with the good and beautiful things being the objective side, and their own gratitude - present within our acts of appreciation - being the subjective side.

However, the non-duality of goodness and gratitude runs the opposite way as well. Here, good and beautiful things are actually the organic outgrowth of our own gratefulness.  Viewed superficially, our thanksgiving is the cause of the good and beautiful things appearing within our lives as an effect. A whole host of self-help books try to make this point. But again, in a non-dual world, the situation is much more profound than this. Rather than thanksgiving being the cause and good things manifesting themselves as the effect, those good and beautiful things are actually a sort of crystallizing or outgrowth of our thanksgiving!  They are gratefulness embodied in concrete form.  It is the perfect balance of these two sides - gratefulness manifesting itself on one side, and good and beautiful things appearing on the other - that is the source of a happy and meaningful life. Each side is thus a part of a seamless circle that has no beginning and no end.

Photo: Upper Ice Lake, San Juan Mountains, CO, August 14, 2011