Gratitude and Appreciation

There is a big difference between sincere gratitude and profusely saying thank you.

The difference is sincerity, and that affects how the giver feels about giving to you in the future. When you sincerely feel gratitude, then one thank you is enough, even a smile will do, but if you do not have that sincerity, the more you say thank you, the worse it appears.

It is not merely being grateful or appreciative, it is being sincere. If you think about any time you have done or given something to someone and the gratitude was sincere, compared to the times it was not, or no appreciation at all was given, you can recognize what we are talking about.

Now, if you do not know what true gratitude is, then it is difficult to understand this. The problem is that true gratitude is so rare that we do not have the examples to follow to understand what it is to begin with. We will expand on gratitude later in this lesson.

This brings another similar but different topic, that of knowing true quality. We can only know what is good by comparison, that is the law in this world of duality. There is no way to know good without bad. If we refer back to the lesson on the gullibility of humans, and bring that to the disce
ment of quality of all things, then we can begin to see the dangers of potentially if not probably being misled in our lives and search.

We can be so sure that we know the right thing or the best thing, but that is all limited by our own experience and so when you realize how small you are, or your experience is, relative to the whole planet, never mind the universe, you will start to develop humility if you contemplate and accept how little you actually know.

It is vital to distrust your intellectual mind, reminding yourself that it is not your true self and question all things. If you determine that you know something, then you stop learning. If you innocently accept something as being of high quality or of truth, then you limit your potential to that level. But if you are always questioning and doubting, then you will continually search for more and expand your being.

This is of course in relation to our search for our own self improvement, never use this as a means to judge another human being. It would be the same to say that you wish to acquire knowledge, both of things of the world and knowledge of your own being. If you do not know what you can do, then you cannot achieve it because you have no goal to set your direction. But if you have seen what a human being can do or be, then you have set a new target and potential that is possible for you to reach.

Another pitfall is the thought that all is just as it should be and everything comes in its own time. Perhaps for many things in this world, those things outside ourselves, giving birth to a baby, the opening of a flower, the ripening of a fruit, that may be true, but here we are conce
ed with the development of the full potential of our own individual being which we are the sole master of and set the limitations, or lack thereof.

If you accept that life will bring to you what you need and you will progress according to an assumed natural progression, so you do not have to work harder or put in any level of exertion, that breeds nothing more than mediocrity. If you are not satisfied with any part of your life, it is wholly up to you to put in continuing more and more effort to change and improve it according to the rules and manner of proven methods. That means you follow the rules of instruction exactly as they are given, not modifying them to suit your personal opinion. If you know so much that you can change the rules, then why have you not achieved all you seek?