Be. Receive. Give thanks.

 "Be. Receive. Give thanks."

"You are worthy dear one, and you have been since the day you took your first breath.

Sarah Blondin 

Sarah Blondin is a meditation teacher on Insight Timer, author, and podcast host for "live awake." You can read more about her in this post from last June. In it I write about timely teachers. She has been one of mine this last year as I have become more consistent in my mindful meditation practice. This practice, this new habit, is one I have tried before and walked away from. Or should I say "thought my way away from."

I developed a thinking problem in my childhood. It stemmed from emotions that were stunted or lacking entirely. As an active alcoholic, I had a drinking and thinking problem for ten years. In the thirty-plus years since I took my last drink, my alcoholism has continued to show itself in my faulty thinking patterns. I am not making light of any of it. Recovering people may joke about our "thinking problems,'" but we know they are dead serious. 

So this healthy thinking frontier has been tough terrain for me for a long time. My first gratitude journal, from my dear friend Terrie, over 25 years ago, got me started on the path of living gratefully.  But my mind continued to wage war through unreasonable expectations-mostly of myself-overdoing, trying to fill the hole inside that I used to fill with alcohol with wrong-sized ego instead. I was always either "not enough" or "too much."

Among other things, regular meditation practice has helped me befriend my mind. My enemy brain shrank in size. When it flares up, I don't feed it, I release it. This surrender makes all the difference. 

So the words I started this post with are weighty words. Simple, but not always easy. Be right here, right now. Receive the grace that is sent to every human who wakes up each new day. Give thanks for the abundance around us if we but notice it. You are worthy. I am worthy.